Human Rights Reports

http://www.ichrp.org/files/reports/40/131_web.pdf

The International Council is delighted to announce the rerelease of its groundbreaking report, Corruption and Human Rights: Making the Connection, in a joint endeavour with Transparency International. The report was initially launched in February 2009 and has been well received by civil society organisations, human rights advocates, anti-corruption campaigners, governments and private enterprise alike.

With the involvement of Transparency International, it will now form part of the resources available to the global network of more than 90 established Transparency International national chapters and chapters-in-formation.

Managing Director of Transparency International, Cobus de Swardt, praised the report as an important reconceptualisation of the connection between corruption and human rights. He remarked that “for too long the anti-corruption and human rights movements have been working in parallel rather than tackling these problems together. Through this first and innovative report on human rights and corruption, the ICHRP has provided an important conceptual basis for aligning the work of both movements”.

Council Research Director Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona, who directed the publication of the report, also welcomed the participation of Transparency International in the rerelease of the report, saying “Transparency International is universally regarded as the leading civil society organisation within the anti-corruption movement. We hope that this jointly released report will become an important and useful resource for TI chapters across the globe”.

Please see the Council's website for more background on the project.

The full report, available in English, can be downloaded free of charge (in PDF format). A copy of the report can also be ordered electronically through the Council’s website.

ICHRP, 48 chemin du Grand-Montfleury, CH-1290 Versoix, Geneva, Switzerland
Phone: +41 (0) 22 775 33 00 • Fax: +41 (0) 22 775 33 03 • ichrp@ichrp.org
International Council on Human Rights Policy

http://www.aegistrust.org/images/PDFs/Suspected%20War%20Criminals%20and%20Genocidaires%20in%20the%20UK.pdf

16 June 09 - A new report – 'Suspected War Criminals and Genocidaires in the UK: Proposals to Strengthen our Laws' –published today by the Aegis Trust brings together, for the first time, details of people entering the UK who are suspected of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide, some of whom cannot be prosecuted here due to legal loopholes – but cannot be easily returned home or extradited either, due to the risk of unfair trial or torture.

The report examines 18 cases, including those of suspected genocidaires from Rwanda, alleged torturers from Zimbabwe, Iraq, Liberia and the Congo, and alleged war criminals from Afghanistan, Sudan, Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka. They include such people as a Lieutenant Colonel from KHAD, the Soviet-era Afghan government’s secret police; an alleged Tamil Tiger assassination hit squad driver, and a member of Sierra Leone’s ‘Mosquito’ rebel group, which was notorious for murder, rape, looting, burning, sexual slavery and forced amputations.

Government statistics reveal that since 2004 immigration action has been recommended for 138 suspects, and 22 cases have been referred to the police.

“There are two ‘impunity gaps’ in UK law which preventing prosecution for international crimes,” says the report’s editor, Nick Donovan, Head of Research, Policy and Campaigns for the Aegis Trust. “Those suspected of genocide, crimes against humanity and most war crimes cannot be prosecuted in the UK if they committed those acts before 2001. And non-residents such as students, tourists or asylum seekers without residence status can’t be prosecuted even if those acts were committed after 2001.

“This report shows that this not a hypothetical issue. It’s about individuals suspected of the most heinous crimes anyone can commit; individuals that this country needs to bring to justice if we do not want to remain a safe haven for war criminals.”

The report contains proposals for strengthening UK law, including proposed amendments to the International Criminal Court Act that would close the loopholes currently benefitting war crimes suspects in the UK.

Parliament debates legal changes, but Government’s position unclear

It comes at a time when Parliament is already considering such changes to the law, in the form of a amendment tabled by Lord Carlile QC (the Independent Reviewer for Terrorism Legislation) to the Coroners and Justice Bill. During the Bill’s second reading in the Lords on 18 May, powerful speeches in support of the planned amendment were made by Baroness D’Souza, former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer QC, Lord Goodhart QC, Lord Lester QC, Baroness Cathain, Lord Mayhew QC and Lord Alton, among others.

“We need to change the law.... I will strongly support the amendment ... [and] do not believe for a moment that it would divide any feeling in this House at all,” commented Lord Falconer QC from the Labour benches. No-one spoke in opposition to the amendment. As Lord Goodhart QC of the Liberal Democrats noted, the proposed reform “seems to have the almost complete support of Members of your Lordships’ House.” Lord Mayhew QC, a former Conservative Attorney General, called on the Government to support the amendment: “I hope that, when it comes to be debated in Committee, Ministers will support it.”

The former Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald QC has also publicly supported such reforms in evidence to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights; as has one of the candidates to be the next Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow MP.

However, the Government’s position is currently unclear. Responding for the Government on 18 May, Lord Bach, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Justice, stated: “We are actively considering this issue, and I have no doubt that we shall have an interesting debate in Committee on this very important area of concern.”

If the Government were to support only a partial closure of existing loopholes in the law, war crimes suspects such as those detailed in the new report could continue to find safe haven in the UK.

http://www.phr.org.il/phr/article.asp?articleid=722&catid=42&pcat=42&lang=ENG

9 Jun 2009

We are honored to present you with PHR-Israel’s 2008 Annual Report. A separate report was released on PHR-Israel’s activity during the attack on Gaza Strip that began during the final days of 2008.

First, we shall open with the outputs of 2008: This year, we received 2,935 new appeals, and treated 13,505 patients at our clinics. PHR-Israel’s volunteer medical staff dedicated 7,480 work hours, providing medical assistance, diagnosis and consultation on individual cases and principle issues. PHR-Israel’s administrative volunteers dedicated 527.5 work hours to assisting staff in their ongoing work.

World’s Leading Jurists Call for Investigation into Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes in Burma

New report from Harvard Law School finds that UN documents on Burma provide grounds for investigation into international crimes; calls for more concerted UN action on Burma

Cambridge, MA - Five of the world’s leading international jurists have commissioned a report from the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School, calling for the UN Security Council to act on more than fifteen years of condemnation from other UN bodies on human rights abuses in Burma. The Harvard report, Crimes in Burma, comes in the wake of renewed international attention on Burma, with the continued persecution of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi. The report concludes with a call for the UN Security Council to establish a Commission of Inquiry into crimes against humanity and war crimes in Burma.
http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/hrp/documents/Crimes-in-Burma.pdf

The Harvard report is based on an analysis of scores of UN documents – including UN General Assembly and Commission on Human Rights resolutions, as well as reports from several different Special Rapporteurs. These indicate that human rights abuses in Burma are widespread, systematic, and part of state policy – legal terms that justify further investigation and strongly suggest Burma’s military regime may be committing crimes against humanity and war crimes prosecutable under international law. Major abuses cited by the United Nations include forced displacement of over 3,000 villages in eastern Burma, and widespread and systematic sexual violence, torture, and summary execution of innocent civilians.

Yet, despite such documentation from multiple UN organs, the UN Security Council has not moved to investigate potential crimes against humanity or war crimes in Burma, as it has in other areas of the world, including Darfur and Rwanda.

“Over and over again, UN resolutions and Special Rapporteurs have spoken out about the abuses that have been reported to them in Burma. The UN Security Council, however, has not moved the process forward as it should and has in similar situations such as those in the former Yugoslavia and Darfur,” the jurists write in the report’s preface. “In the cases of Yugoslavia and Darfur, once aware of the severity of the problem, the UN Security Council established a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the gravity of the violations further. With Burma, there has been no such action from the UN Security Council despite being similarly aware of the widespread and systematic nature of the violations.”

The five jurists who commissioned the report, from Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South Africa, are Judge Richard Goldstone (South Africa), Judge Patricia Wald (United States), Judge Pedro Nikken (Venezuela), Judge Ganzorig Gombosuren (Mongolia), and Sir Geoffrey Nice (United Kingdom). Among other accomplishments, Judge Goldstone served on South Africa’s Constitutional Court and was the first prosecutor at both the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. Judge Wald served as Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Judge Nikken served as President of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Judge Gombosuren served as a Supreme Court Justice in Mongolia, and Sir Nice was the deputy prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the principal prosecution trial attorney in the case against Slobodan Milosevic in the Hague.

Each of the five jurists has dealt directly with severe human rights abuses in the international system, and all five call for the UN Security Council to establish a Commission of Inquiry to investigate and report on crimes against humanity and war crimes in Burma.

The Harvard report specifically examines four international human rights violations documented by UN bodies over the past fifteen years: sexual violence, forced displacement, torture, and extrajudicial killings. The report focuses on UN documents since 2002, to allow examination of the most up-to-date UN material, although UN reports dating back to 1992 have consistently condemned a wide-range of violations in Burma.

Tyler Giannini, the Clinical Director of the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School and one of the report’s authors, said its findings clearly demonstrate that a Commission of Inquiry on Burma should proceed.

“The UN Security Council has taken action regarding Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sudan when it identified information strongly suggesting the existence of crimes against humanity and war crimes,” said Giannini. “As our research shows, UN documents clearly and authoritatively suggest that the human rights abuses occurring in Burma are not isolated incidents – they are potential crimes against humanity and war crimes. Failure by the UN Security Council to take action and investigate these crimes could mean that violations of international criminal law will go unchecked.”

For media interviews in the United States, please contact Michael Jones at 617-495-9214 or mijones@law.harvard.edu, or Julianne Stevenson at 617-682-5519 or jstevenson@llm09.law.harvard.edu. For media interviews in Thailand, please contact Tyler Giannini at +66 89 020 6646 or giannini@law.harvard.edu.

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/defenders/reports/report.aspx?s=eng&p=index

Human Rights First’s report, Baseless Prosecutions of Human Rights Defenders in Colombia: In the Dock and Under the Gun, examines the use of politically motivated criminal charges to harass, stigmatize, and endanger human rights defenders in Colombia. It is based on an analysis of 32 cases using primary documents as well as extensive interviews with government officials and human rights defenders. The first thorough review of the problem and its root causes, the report reveals a clear pattern of judicial mistreatment and persecution.

http://www.cohre.org/store/attachments/COHRE%20RWP%20MDGs%20publication.pdf

COHRE PUBLICATION ON HUMAN RIGHTS AND MDGS

The Right to Water Programme (RWP) of the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) has released a report which addresses the need for MDG-based policy making on water and sanitation to incorporate human rights standards. The publication analyses MDG-based policies and sector strategies from five countries, identifying current trends and any critical gaps. It reviews the extent to which such policies are consistent with, are conflicting or fail to reflect human rights principles. It also shows how gaps in MDG-based policy making can be usefully filled by more explicit and systematic consideration of human rights standards. The report titled, The significance of human rights in MDG-based policy making on water and sanitation: An application to Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Sri Lanka and Laos is available at http://www.cohre.org/resources and www.cohre.org/watsannews

http://reliefweb.int/rw/lib.nsf/db900sid/MUMA-7S888W/$file/OHCHR_Report_2008.pdf?openelement

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) passed several historic milestones in 2008, including a number of significant institutional developments, the adoption of new international legal instruments, a change of High Commissioner and three highly symbolic anniversaries.

Among notable developments was the launch, in April, of the Human Rights Council's new Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism, in which OHCHR plays an important facilitative role. Under the UPR, the human rights record of every country will for the first time be subject to regular peer review. Also significant was the adoption by the General Assembly of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which establishes a procedure by which individuals can seek justice for violations of economic, social and cultural rights, and the entry into force of a new legal instrument to protect the rights of people with disabilities, namely the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities. With the completion of the move from New York to Geneva of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), OHCHR at last assumed full responsibility for servicing all UN treaty bodies.

The year also saw a change in leadership at OHCHR, with former International Criminal Court judge Navanethem Pillay taking over from Louise Arbour as High Commissioner. An internal restructuring led to adjustments in the Office's senior management structure and the creation of several new senior-level posts. There was an emphasis on consolidating recent growth, particularly in the field where half of all OHCHR staff are now based, and reinforcing the Office's capacity to fulfill its mandated responsibilities, especially in relation to the Human Rights Council, the UPR, treaty bodies and special procedures.

Finally, in a year of anniversaries, 2008 marked 60 years since the adoption by the General Assembly of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The adoption of this Convention signified a first, concerted effort by the world community to consign to history the horrors of the Holocaust, and 15 years since the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, which led to the creation of the post of High Commissioner for Human Rights and subsequently the establishment of the Office in its present form. Finally, on Human Rights Day, 10 December, OHCHR led the world in celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with a variety of events designed to raise awareness about human rights and the responsibility of States and others to uphold them.

These and other developments are described in detail in this review of OHCHR's work in 2008. The report documents the many activities undertaken during the year, presents an assessment of results achieved, and identifies some of the challenges encountered. It is a comprehensive report card on implementation of the Office's programme of work, set out most recently in the High Commissioner's Strategic Management Plan (SMP) for the 2008-2009 biennium. It also contains detailed information on funding sources and expenditure, including financial