ASIA: Rights Principles Slowly Being Eroded at U.N. – Activists

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Dec 13 2002 (IPS) - Asian human rights activists ended a week-long conference here Friday determined to stall what they call the steady erosion of human rights principles and practices within the U.N. system.

Most troubling to some of the over 500 participants who attended the Asian Civil Society Forum 2002 here was an assault by governments on the global body’s human rights mechanisms and institutions, including the Geneva-based U.N. Commission on Human Rights (CHR).

”There is a move by certain Asian governments with notorious human rights records to weaken the role of human rights in the U.N. in the future,” said Ngawang Choephel of the International Campaign for Tibet. ”The Human Rights Commission is one case, where the governments want to reduce its competence.”

What makes this worse, critics say, is the fact that Asian governments have failed to stop what they called ”disturbing patterns” amounting to smaller space for activists to challenge governments’ reports on their rights records to the United Nations.

This, they add, goes against the grain of many U.N. treaties and international conventions on human rights.

”Almost all Asia-Pacific governments have been inimical to the human rights standards set at the U.N.,” bluntly added Ravi Nair, coordinator of the New Delhi-based Asia-Pacific Human Rights Network.

These countries include China, India, Pakistan and Iran, he says. ”They have been very sharp and intelligent in their efforts, by achieving their objectives without doing it openly and being perceived as the bad guys.”

At their meeting here, activists from over 33 Asian countries trotted out examples to buttress these arguments, including the cutting down from five to 1.5 minutes of the time given each non-government organisation (NGO) to make verbal interventions at the CHR’s sessions.

As disturbing, says Nair, has been erosion of the time allocated for independent human rights experts, called special rapporteurs, to present their reports on a range of themes to the CHR.

The themes include extrajudicial or summary executions, freedom of opinion and expression, torture and violence against women.

The CHR, which is made up of 53 member states, meets every year from March through April in Geneva.

If governments get their way, say the activists, the CHR could end up like another U.N. rights body – the Sub-commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, which has 26 human rights experts assigned to study human rights issues and report to the commission.

Currently, according to participants at a special session on the CHR, experts on the sub-commission have been compelled to stop naming countries that have committed human rights abuses.

”This has ended the principle of naming and shaming governments for rights abuse, a principle that made the sub-commission significant to NGOs,” said an Indian rights activist during the session.

A South Asian diplomat agrees, saying that NGOs have lost interest in the sub-commission because its powers to honestly voice out human rights violations have been restricted.

”The sub-commission should have good NGO participation and interest for it to be useful,” he said. ”Earlier, for almost two decades, NGOs had good access to the sub-commission to raise human rights violations at the U.N.”

To avoid the CHR becoming a toothless body, Asian activists say they look to the March annual session, to be chaired by Libya despite its notorious human rights record, as a key battleground to assert their views and lobby for the integrity of the CHR.

”Asian NGOs must influence the U.N. system to ensure that the real human rights picture emerges,” said Choephel. ”Whether we like it or not, the U.N. is a system that can be used. We have to change the opinion of governments on human rights.”

”We request the U.N. and its member states to provide the space and opportunities to strengthen and expand NGO participation rights within the U.N. system and to increase its resources to improve its relations with NGOs,” said the final statement of the Asian civil society groups here.

This is an important message in order to ”save the U.N.” from being manipulated by governments not keen on upholding human rights, says Aurora Parong, executive director of the Task Force Detainees of the Philippines, an independent rights lobby based in Manila.

”Civil society groups have to get the U.N. to revert back to its principles about ‘we the people’ than the current trend toward national security interests over people’s rights,” she added. ”The ‘war against terror’ campaign has made our task more challenging.”

Seong-Hoon Lee of Pax Romana, a Catholic group working on intellectual and cultural affairs, said of this week’s meeting: ”This is the first time Asian NGOs have come together in this way. It will be useful to help them map out a strategy for the Geneva meeting.”

ASIA: Rights Principles Slowly Being Eroded at U.N. – Activists

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Dec 13 2002 (IPS) - Asian human rights activists ended a week-long conference here Friday determined to stall what they call the steady erosion of human rights principles and practices within the U.N. system.
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