Wednesday, October 7, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
RIGHTS: Governments Pay Lip Service to Human Rights, Says Amnesty International
Marwaan Macan-Markar
- Governments are only paying lip service to the issue of human rights, Amnesty International (AI) says, accusing 149 countries of having violated the human rights of their citizens in the last year.
In its latest annual report, released this week, AI accused 125 countries of permitting torture and ill-treatment, 61 of allowing extrajudicial executions and it criticised 28 for judicial executions.
The London-based human rights lobby group also pointed a finger at the 63 countries that have “prisoners of conscience” and the 30 countries where disappearances had occurred.
Such abuse reflects a lack of commitment by governments to uphold and defend the internationally recognised principles of human rights, it charged. “Governments have adopted the rhetoric of human rights, but few have delivered this as a reality,” the organisation said in its Annual Report 2001.
AI also focused on other perpetrators, it said were responsible for a number of rights violations. They include armed opposition and paramilitary groups and multinational companies.
This week’s report also drew attention to a new area of concern for the 40-year-old organisation: the human rights implications of the current world trend towards globalisation.
Of particular significance to AI was the speed at which the scale of economic expansions has been accompanied by “debt, poverty and widening inequalities”. Consequently, it has brought “poverty to the forefront of the human rights agenda”.
Many states claim that they have been forced to pursue economic policies which undermine social, economic and cultural rights, stated the report. But such a line of argument, according to AI, is “a disingenuous claim”. After all, it pointed out, “governments have the power to defend their people against the arbitrary actions of multinational corporations or the pressures of intergovernmental financial institutions”.
For the organisation’s secretary-general Pierre Sane, AI’s new thrust underscores its belief that “the indivisibility of human rights is not an abstraction”, since the context which gave rise to human rights violations “is invariably complex and cannot be divorced from issues of wealth and status, injustice and impunity”.
“We have to maintain our focus on the individual victim to articulate what indivisibility means in real life,” he wrote in the report. “Accountability extends beyond the police officer wielding a baton, not only to his or her political masters, but also to those who profit from inequality.”
And as the report notes, the world’s human rights movement needs to challenge any efforts to pursue profits at the expense of human rights.
In this context, it shed light on the international trade in high voltage electro-shock batons, shields, stun guns and stun belts. “In the last two years, over 150 companies operating in 22 countries have been making or marketing electro-shock weapons,” which are often used by the police and security forces for “cruel and inhuman” forms of punishment.
Regards violations in the realm of political and civil rights, its major findings included the level of political killings in the Americas, repression of religious and ethnic minorities in Asia, rape and disappearances in Africa, and the widespread use of torture in the Middle East and North Africa.
In the Americas, AI singled out Colombia for the disturbing number of political killings last year — 4,000 — and the estimated 300 disappearances, while countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, Chile, Peru, Paraguay, Jamaica and Guyana were taken to task for the prevalence of torture and ill-treatment.
In countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Trinidad and Tobago, human rights defenders, political opponents and journalists suffered harassment, threats and attacks, it stated. “In Cuba, individuals and groups peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression and association continued to face repression.”
In Asia, the report named China, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Pakistan and Indonesia as countries where religious and ethnic minorities had been persecuted. Political activists were not spared either, given that from Malaysia to India “thousands of people were arrested for their political activities”.
And in a number of countries with civil conflicts, government forces were not the only ones who committed rights violations, it added. “Armed opposition groups were responsible for human rights abuses against civilians in Indonesia, Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Fiji and the Solomon Islands.”
Regards Africa’s record, AI identified seven countries where there had been “large scale” killing of civilians, rape, torture and disappearances during 2000, including Burundi, Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Angola. “Both governments and rebel forces were responsible for extrajudicial executions of suspected opponents and helpless civilians,” the report said.
And in other countries, like Kenya, Tanzania, Cameroon and Togo, politically motivated harassment of opponents was the norm, according to AI. “In Zimbabwe, members of the judiciary and the press were constantly under physical threat.”
The reports findings on violations in the Middle East and North Africa shed light on the widespread use of torture, unfair trials, harassment and intimidation of human rights defenders. For instance, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia were named for their high levels of torture.
While in Iran, Jordan, Yemen and Lebanon, people were harassed and arrested for holding political views that went against the grain of government thinking, the report stated. “Hundreds of political prisoners remained in detention in Libya without charge or trial,” it said.
This report did not spare countries in the industrialised world either for human rights violations. According to AI, the United States was a grave offender having executed 85 people in 2000. “In flagrant breach of international standards, this figure includes people who were under 18 at the time of the crime.”
Torture was prevalent in parts of Europe, the report stated. “Torture and ill-treatment by police continued to be the most widely reported human rights violation throughout Europe.”
For AI, its statistics confirm why human rights organisations need to be more vigilant in order to “hold states accountable” for rights violations.
There is much that governments “can and should do”, it argued. And that includes efforts to protect workers from “the worst forms of exploitation”, stop attacking human rights activists and combat impunity, “which is the poison that allows human rights violations to spread, to recur and to re-emerge”.
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RIGHTS: Governments Pay Lip Service to Human Rights, Says Amnesty International
Marwaan Macan-Markar
- Governments are only paying lip service to the issue of human rights, Amnesty International (AI) says, accusing 149 countries of having violated the human rights of their citizens in the last year.
(more…)
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RIGHTS: Governments Pay Lip Service to Human Rights, Says Amnesty International
Marwaan Macan-Markar
- Governments are only paying lip service to the issue of human rights, Amnesty International (AI) says, as it notes that 149 countries have been guilty of violating the human rights of their citizens in the last year.
(more…)
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