RIGHTS: A UN Special Envoy to Defend Human Rights Defenders

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 27 2000 (IPS) - The United Nations will soon appoint a Special Representative to defend the world’s human rights defenders.

The 53-member Geneva-based UN Human Rights Commission has asked Secretary-General Kofi Annan to name a senior envoy, initially for a period of three years, to report on the problems facing human rights defenders worldwide.

A resolution adopted by the Commission expresses “deep concern” that, in many countries, “persons and organisations engaged in promoting and defending human rights and fundamental freedoms are often subjected to threats, harassment, insecurity, arbitrary detention and extra-judicial executions.”

The New York-based Human Rights Watch, while hailing the decision, said that human rights activists are being killed, imprisoned and harassed in countries ranging from Colombia and Cuba to Egypt and Pakistan.

“In several countries, no independent human rights monitoring is even allowed,” says Joanna Weschler, UN representative for Human Rights Watch. “It’s encouraging that the UN has finally taken real action to protect those who are risking their lives for the rights of others,” she adds.

The Special Representative will not only intervene in cases of harassment of rights monitors but also press for the implementation of the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 1998.

The resolution specifically recognises the important role that individuals, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and groups play in promoting and protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The Commission has asked the United Nations’ 188 member states to co-operate with and assist the Special Representative in the performance of his or her tasks and to furnish all information requested.

The Special Representative, in turn, has been asked to seek, receive, examine and respond to information on the situation and the rights of anyone, acting individually or in association with others, to promote and protect human rights.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says that several journalists worldwide are killed every year for defending human rights or for exposing atrocities and rights abuses.

In 1999, journalists in Sierra Leone witnessed rebels’ atrocities against civilians in the streets of Freetown. In the Balkans, journalists watched ethnic Albanians fleeing the deadly menace of Serbian police and paramilitaries. And in Indonesia, they recorded the violence of Indonesian-backed militias against supporters of political independence.

“Some who wrote about what they witnessed ended up dying because of the stories they told,” the CPJ said in its 1999 annual report.

Of the 34 journalists killed in the line of duty last year (up from 24 in 1998), 10 were murdered in Sierra Leone, mostly by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels. “Why did the RUF target journalists so ruthlessly?” CPJ asked. “Because it is the press that informs the world about atrocities, mass murders, corruption, official malfeasance.”

In a special report on the media in Pakistan, CPJ said that the former government’s relentless use of tax laws, import regulations, and other bureaucratic harassment against the Jang Group of newspapers was a graphic example of how governments wield laws that seem unrelated to censorship to disguise their repressive agendas.

Meanwhile, the United Nations has also expressed concern over the problems facing its own Special Rapporteurs in their investigation of human rights abuses in various countries.

Last year the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN’s principal judicial organ, upheld the diplomatic privileges and immunities of a high-ranking UN official who was being sued in his home country for public statements he made in the course of his duties.

The 15-member World Court said that Param Cumaraswamy, a Malaysian jurist and Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights, is “entitled to immunity from legal process of every kind for the words spoken by him” during a November 1995 interview published in a UK-based magazine called “International Commercial Litigation.”

The Court was of the opinion – by 14 votes to one – that the 1946 UN Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations was “applicable” in the case of Cumaraswamy.

Cumaraswamy was commissioned by the United Nations to investigate the independence of judges and lawyers around the world. His disputed comments related to the ability of certain companies to influence the outcome of a court case in Malaysia. The ICJ’s ruling was prompted by a request from the United Nations for an “advisory opinion” on the issue.

The Court also found, by 13 votes to 2, that the government of Malaysia now had “the obligation to communicate (the) advisory opinion to the Malaysian courts, in order that Malaysia’s international obligations be given effect and Cumaraswamy’s immunity be respected.”

In August 1998, Radhika Coomarawamy, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, was barred from visiting three Michigan prisons accused of widespread sexual misconduct against its women prisoners.

Although she had made extensive preparations to interview inmates at three prisons in Michigan, the Governor of that US State, John Engler, barred Coomarawamy on the eve of her visit and refused to co-operate with her.