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HUMAN RIGHTS: Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo in UN’s Sights

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jun 24 2004 (IPS) - Independent human rights experts are asking the United Nations to send an urgent mission to Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo, the U.S. enclave in Cuba, to monitor humanitarian conditions and legal status of the people being held on suspicion of terrorism.

The group of experts said this delegation should include the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Argentine expert Leandro Despouy; rapporteur and chair of the working group on arbitrary detention, Algerian Leila Zerrougui; and the rapporteur on torture, Dutch expert Theo van Boven.

The letter, to be addressed to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and to the U.N. Security Council, stresses that the three rapporteurs should visit together, ”and at the earliest possible date, those persons arrested, detained or tried on grounds of terrorism.”

The experts, all currently serving under the auspices of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, expressed their concern about the serious consequences that some policies adopted in the name of the fight against terrorism could have for individuals’ human rights and basic freedoms.

In the draft of the letter obtained by IPS, they also voiced their ”unequivocal condemnation of terrorism in all its forms.”

However, the human rights specialists reaffirm their individual and collective resolve to monitor, ”each within the framework of his or her mandate, the policies, legislation, measures and practices ‘developed by states in the name of the fight against terrorism.”

The move to propose this human rights delegation is the first initiative linking these three areas emerging from groupings under the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, the highest authority on this issue in the international forum.

The Commission, made up of representatives from a rotating list of 53 member states, avoided debate during its March-April sessions this year on the conditions of the detainees held in the three locations by the United States or its allies.

But now the proposal has come up for discussion during the annual meeting of special rapporteurs, representatives, independent experts and chairpersons of the working groups belonging to the ”special proceedings” of the Commission.

The sessions held this week in Geneva are focused on the issue of policies against terrorism and their effects on human rights and the rule of law.

Special proceedings are mechanisms for specific cases in regards to countries or thematic issues, set up by the Commission to ensure follow up throughout the year on the matters of greatest concern.

The special proceedings are entrusted to individual independent experts or to a working group. In all cases, the experts work without pay and their mandates can be renewed for a maximum of six years.

For the first time, all of these special mechanisms of the Commission – there are more than 30 special rapporteurs or working groups – have agreed to call for action on a specific matter.

The request for a mission to Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo is legitimate because its objective is encompassed by all of their mandates, said one expert, preferring to remain anonymous.

The human rights experts want the mission to visit the people arrested or tried for terrorism and other serious violations who are being held in Iraq, Afghanistan and at the U.S. military base in Guantánamo, Cuba.

The members of the mission would aim to ”ascertain, each within the confines of their mandate, that the international human rights standards are properly upheld with regard to these persons.”

The mission then would present a report to the next annual sessions of the Commission on Human Rights, in March 2005 in Geneva.

The meeting of independent experts, to conclude on the weekend, also debated the possibility of including special rapporteur on physical and mental health, Paul Hunt, in the proposed mission.

Hunt had expressed concern in May about the health situation of the civilian population in Falluja, the central Iraqi city where the U.S.-led occupation forces have been conducting military operations since April.

The health rapporteur said ”credible allegations” continue that the coalition forces even in the past few weeks have committed ”serious breaches of international humanitarian and human rights law” in Falluja. Ninety percent of an estimated 750 civilians killed in clashes have been non-combatants, according to some reports.

Zerrougui has also spoke out about the situation in Iraq, specifically her concern about the ”uncertainty of the legal status” of many detainees being subjected to interrogation.

The Algerian rapporteur made her statements in the context of reports of torture of detainees by U.S. and British military officers serving under the Coalition Provisional Authority.