General view of the plenary session of the World Conference on “Religions, Creeds and Value Systems: Joining Forces to Enhance Equal Citizenship Rights”, held June 25 in Geneva, with the participation of the director general of the IOM, William Swing, as a special guest. Courtesy of the GCHRAGD

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Jun 25 2018 (IPS)

The world is “basically at odds with itself,” International Organisation for Migration (IOM) Director General William Swing said Monday, June 25, describing the critical state of human migration between countries and continents.

“I have to say that we are not only living in turbulent and troubled times; I have never known a world such as the one we have today,” said the veteran U.S. diplomat who this year ends his second five-year term at the helm of the IOM.

Swing was addressing the first World Conference on “Religions, Creeds and Value Systems: Joining Forces to Enhance Equal Citizenship Rights”, organised by the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue (GCHRAGD), which brought together academics and religious and political leaders on June 25 in Geneva."We have, in addition to that, more people on the move than at any other time in recorded history, owing to the demographic oddity that the world’s population quadrupled in the last century." -- William Swing

Swing’s warnings come at a time when the European Union is trying, so far in vain, to come up with a common policy with regard to the arrival of thousands of immigrants each week, and when U.S. President Donald Trump is not abandoning his government’s policy of separating immigrant children – more than 2,000 so far – from their undocumented parents – a procedure widely described not only as “cruel” but as “torture”.

“I’m not aware of any significant negotiations or political processes underway right now, and with all of this, we have a countercyclical reaction by the world community — basically, fear of the other, anti-migrant and anti-refugee sentiment, that not only is putting human life at stake but denying us the contributions these migrants make,” Swing said.

“So my first point is: I believe that we are in the middle of a perfect storm. We have a dozen conflicts from the western bulge of Africa to the Himalayas, with absolutely no hope in the short and medium term of resolving any of these,” he added.

The IOM head also said: “We have, in addition to that, more people on the move than at any other time in recorded history, owing to the demographic oddity that the world’s population quadrupled in the last century.”

“Unfortunately, while most of this is occurring regularly, orderly and safely, we have at least 65 million people who have been forced to move,” Swing stressed.

Furthermore, he said, “We have the impact of violations of international humanitarian law on all sides, a serious decline of international law of tort…and an absence of any leadership on the major issues.”

The GCHRAGD, where Swing was speaking, is an institution under the patronage of Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan.

Bin Talal gave the opening speech at the global conference, in which some 50 religious leaders from the world’s different religions and faiths, as well as international experts on migration, participated.

International Organisation for Migration Director General William Swing speaks at the World Conference on “Religions, Creeds and Value Systems: Joining Forces to Enhance Equal Citizenship Rights”, held June 25 in Geneva. Credit: GCHRAGD

The prince said that “Together we can share the responsibility of challenging conventional thinking about the underlying causes of loss of human dignity, marginalisation and oppression.”

The conference, held at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, was a contribution to the celebration of the 70th Anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and approved a global 10-point strategic plan to achieve its aim of promoting equal citizenship rights.

The document unveiled by Idriss Jazairy, executive director of the GCHRAGD and co-host of the conference, who stressed that it would be presented to different U.N. bodies.

The veteran Algerian diplomat said that one of the points in the declaration was “To preserve the diverse ethnic, cultural and religious heritages of transit and host countries, while, at the same time, offering opportunities for integration to arriving refugees and migrants.”

Jazairy added that the aim of the initiative, as stated in the document, “is to promote mutual contributions and respective resilience, thus avoiding forced assimilation of migrants, refugees and internally displaced persons, in line with the proviso set forth in Sustainable Development Goal 16 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”

The IOM director general applauded the incorporation of this proposal in the conference’s strategic plan.

“It seems that (the document) underlines the importance of respecting diversity and promoting the contributions that migrants and refugees have generally made,” Swing told IPS.

“And I’m very pleased to see that it deals with the question of integration, which is at the heart of the issue. And very often people get there and they’re not properly integrated. So I think that’s important,” he emphasised.

During the conference, Swing criticised those who ignore the contributions to society made by immigrants.

He noted, for example, that a study by the IOM and the McKinsey Global Institute “determined that although only 3.5 percent of the world’s population are migrants, they are producing nine percent of global wealth measured in GDP terms, which is four percent more than if they had stayed at home.”

“So, if we’re in a storm, we need to find the high ground. We do this by following the teaching of all faiths, that men, women and children are all children of God and members of the universal family,” Swing told the religious leaders drawn together by the GCHRAGD.

“If we are to prevent future storms, we obviously have to make some changes. We have three challenges, in my view. Number one, is the challenge of changing the public narrative, which, right now, is toxic. We’ve become used to building walls rather than bridges….Until we can change that narrative, people will continue to be abused and have their rights disrespected,” he said.

The second challenge, he added, is the challenge of demography. With a rapidly declining population, the global north “is in need of skills and persons to do the jobs. At the same time, we have a rapidly expanding largely unemployed youthful population in the global south — the median age in Africa is 25, while in Europe it is 50.”

“That has to be addressed through programmes of public education and public information,” Swing recommended.

Lastly, “we have to learn to address the challenge of inexorably growing ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic diversity,” he said.

“…I would simply leave you with the message that movement of people, human mobility, is not an issue to be resolved, it is a human reality, as old as humankind, that has to be managed,” he concluded.

Stamps commemorating the UN Free and Equal Rights Campaign in defense of LGBTI rights, launched in 2016, which caused unrest in 54 African countries and Russia. Credit: UN Postal Administration

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Feb 10 2017 (IPS)

The first-ever independent UN expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, Thai lawyer Vivit Muntarbhorn, has already begun the process of open and transparent consultations with individuals, social organizations and States, although some of them still object to the mandate.

Muntarbhorn, an international law Professor at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, has the mission of helping protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people (LGBTI), who are victims of violence, hatred and discrimination in many countries.The new U.N. expert hopes to "invite a broader understanding of human diversity."

The Thai jurist, a graduate from English University of Oxford and a collaborator of several UN agencies since 1990, is now part of the special procedures system of the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council, which safeguards the civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights, and is made up of 57 experts, 43 thematic and 17 mandated by country.

Muntarbhorn began his work at the end of January, following a contentious vote in June 2016 at the UN Human Rights Council to set the mandate that world forum agencies and social organisations have been demanding for decades. Of the 47 States that make up the Council, 21 voted in favour, 18 against and six abstained.

The approved text “was watered down by a series of amendments led by regressive countries like Russia and members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation such as Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia,” said Pooja Patel, researcher at the Geneva-based International Human Rights Service.

At the end of 2016, the independent expert’s mandate overcame other obstacles posed by African countries before the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly, which deals with social, humanitarian and cultural issues.

On the other hand, Muntarbhorn received a strong support from social organisations as well as States, mainly from Latin America and Western Europe, as well as the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Thai jurist Vitit Muntarbhorn, the UN independent expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, begins his mandate in favour of the rights of LGBTI people with an emphasis on five interrelated areas. Credit: Jena Marc Ferré / UN

The European Union’s representative, Jérôme Bellion-Jourdan, emphasised the attitude of the seven Latin American countries -Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico and Uruguay– which presented the original resolution to create the mandate and defended it throughout harsh debates.

Following these discussions in the Council and in the General Assembly “the numbers and support for this mandate around the world has only grown,” said André du Plessis, an Advocacy Manager of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA)

Muntarbhorn acknowledged that the dissent among countries is important, but said he intends to establish consultations with all. “We are trying to strengthen and reinforce implementation of existing standards effectively,” he said in an interview with IPS.

The expert pointed out that the term “sexual orientation” is about “how we feel towards others and it’s an external dimension of what we are, while gender identity is the internal dimension of what we are, which may be different in terms of identity from the gender or sex assigned at birth. And this is very much to do with transgender persons.”

The new UN expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity faces problems such as the rejection of the African bloc, where in many countries LGBTI people suffer very harsh laws against their rights. Credit: Amy Fallon / IPS

All people have sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI), he reminded, “But SOGI are part of everyone. And the sad fact is that everybody has SOGI, but those who have a different SOGI are persecuted for being different from the perceived rather strict heterosexual male/female binary norm,” Muntarbhorn noted.

“And that’s inviting a broader understanding of human diversity, which has to come from a young age. And this is one way of preventing misunderstandings and misconceptions which ultimately may lead to violence and discrimination,” he added.

The expert’s immediate agenda includes a presentation to the Human Rights Council during its next session, from Feb. 27 to Mar. 24, as well as his first evaluation visit to a country, Argentina, from Mar. 1 to 10.

In his work plan, Muntarbhorn will emphasise “five areas interrelated and mutually reinforcing that are instrumental in the protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

“These linchpins are: decriminalisation, destigmatization, legal recognition of gender Identity, cultural inclusion with gender and sexual diversity and empathization.”

On decriminalisation, the expert said, “I think that there are 70 countries now that still criminalize and five to seven that still give the death penalty. This is a major concern. We need to dialogue well with these countries. ”

A 2015 ILGA report shows “Same-sex sexual acts – death penalty (13 States [or parts of]), six per cent of United Nation States.”

“Death penalty for same-sex sexual behaviour codified under Sharia (Islamic law) and implemented countrywide (4): Africa: Sudan. Asia: Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, and implemented provincially (2): 12 northern states in Nigeria and the southern parts of Somalia,” the report details.

The death penalty for same-sex sexual behaviour codified under Sharia but not known to be implemented for same-sex behaviour specifically (5): Africa: Mauritania. Asia: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Qatar and UAE.

Death penalty for same-sex sexual behaviour codified under Sharia implemented by local courts/vigilantes/non-State actors (2): Asia: Iraq and Daesh (ISIS / ISIL)-held territories in northern Iraq and northern Syria.

Muntarbhorn noted that “there are also cases of countries where there may be a law criminalizing same sex relationships, affecting particularly gays. The very same countries are also very open about transgender people. And this is the reality at local level.”

“It’s very important not to generalize too much, but to look at the specifics and to try to improve across the board with fully human rights guarantees comply with international standards,” he said.

Since the 1980s nearly 15 countries have decriminalized, “so it’s really possible. And even 10 years ago or two years ago I wouldn’t have thought that an independent expert on SOGI would be here,” Muntarbhorn said.

Regarding the destigmatization, the expert recalled that “until 1990s, even at the international level gays were classified as mentally ill, when in reality they are only part of the human biodiversity.” That year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) removed homosexuality from the list of mental diseases.

“But we still have this classification particularly as regards transgender persons and intersex persons. We want to find a way of moving forward respectful of people’s identity without stigmatizing them, without medicalizing the issue, without pathologizing the situation and classifying someone as mentally ill,” he said.

The legal recognition and gender identity is very much linked with trans persons as well as intersex persons to some extent, because trans persons want to have their identity recognized legally even though it may be a different identity from their sex at birth.

“So this also is very much linked to the compulsory surgery which is imposed on them if they wish to change their identity in several countries. But in other countries even the possibility of gender identity change is none at all,” Muntarbhorn said.

“Trans are being classified as males when they feel that they are female, they dress as female and encounter a lot of problems, including bullying, including stereotyping, including problems in bathrooms, problems going to immigration, and ultimately torture,” he said.

“A lot of transgender persons are killed even in countries that recognize transgender identity change,” he noted.

On cultural inclusion, “in the specific case of LGBTI, we have positive elements such as in some communities, transgender people are protected and valued, almost as gods and goddesses, in history,” the Thai jurist said. “But in other situations we have the negative traditional practices that kill, that harm, that persecute people who are different in terms of sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Muntarbhor found “that happens in many communities, including some application of certain interpretation of religious laws, as well as the remnants of colonial laws that used to criminalize these relationships.”

About the term of the “empathization,” the expert explained that he uses it “meaning nurturing empathy, a certain understanding, self-understanding, for other people so that we are humans.”

“And this means attitude, it means knowledge, it means mindset, and it’s to do with education, but more than education. It’s to do with socialization, it’s to do with linking up with families, communities, from a young age, so that we feel empathy, a certain understanding of those who are different from us in terms of gender and sexual diversity,” Muntarbhor concluded.

The Atomic Bomb Dome serves as a memorial to the people who died in the Aug. 6, 1945 bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. The building was the only structure left standing near the bomb’s hypocentre. Credit: Courtesy of Barbara Dunlap-Berg, UMNS

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Aug 3 2015 (IPS)

The accounts of survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki will serve as inspiration for leaders of Christian churches grouped in the World Council of Churches (WCC), which advocates the elimination of nuclear weapons.

A delegation of members of churches from Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, South Korea and the United States are making a pilgrimage to the two Japanese cities annihilated by atomic bombs dropped by the United States on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945.

“The generation of survivors of the atomic bombings are in their eighties, those that survived. And this generation is passing,” said Peter Prove, director of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs of the Geneva-based WCC, the largest and most international ecumenical body.

“But these are the real witnesses, those who could give testimony about the human impact of atomic weapons. And I think that we need to capture that moment and to amplify it,” he told IPS.

Bishop Mary-Ann Swenson of the United Methodist Church of the United States said “We will be in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to remember the horror of the atomic bomb.”

“As we gather in places devastated by the deadliest of weapons 70 years ago, we are aware that 40 governments still rely on nuclear weapons,” said Swenson, who is heading the pilgrimage.

“Nine states possess nuclear arsenals and 31 other states are willing to have the United States use nuclear weapons on their behalf,” she added.

Prove explained that the members of the delegation were carefully selected.

“The members of this delegation for this programmed visit are very strategically chosen. They come from countries that are nuclear powers, either historic ones from the War World Two period (1939-1945), like the USA, or more recent ones, like Pakistan, from outside the NPT (Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons) framework,” he said.

The rest of the delegations come from the group of 31 countries mentioned by Swenson: “…so-called ‘nuclear umbrella states’. States that are not nuclear armed themselves but who rely upon protection, if I can use that term, from other nuclear powers, in this case the U.S. especially,” Prove added.

The aim of the pilgrimage is for senior leaders of churches from the seven countries to experience the 70th anniversary of the bombings and to meet the Hibakushas, as the survivors are known.

On their return, “they will convey that message of human impact back to their own governments, back to their own communities, in the interest of trying to make the case for a legal ban on nuclear weapons,” Prove said.

The delegates will have to “point out that there is a legal gap, that all other major categories of weapons of mass destruction have a legal ban….which isn’t the case for nuclear weapons.”

“Churches are good networks for doing that, in their own communities and vis-à-vis their own governments in many countries,” said Prove.

The WCC delegation will meet with Hibakushas and with religious and social figures from Japan during the activities and ceremonies to mark the 70th anniversary, whose central events will be held Aug. 6 in Hiroshima and Aug. 9 in Nagasaki.

The U.S. atomic attack left around 66,000 dead and 69,000 injured in Hiroshima – a total of 135,000 victims. In Nagasaki there were 64,000 victims: 39,000 killed and 25,000 injured.

With respect to the second phase of the church mission to Japan – advocating a ban on nuclear weapons in the rest of the world – Prove said the WCC’s strength is primarily its network of member churches around the world, much more than the Secretariat in Geneva.

“We do represent one quarter of global Christianity, 500 million people in 120 countries. So the real activity will be the extent to which those church leaders and their churches follow up with their own governments,” he said.

“And that would vary from country to country. Obviously a Norwegian church leader potentially has much greater access to influence their government than let’s say, a Pakistani church leader might do relative to their government.

“The World Council of Churches is itself a product of the post War World II period. It’s precisely because of the shock of the atrocities of the destruction of War World II that the WCC really ultimately came into existence,” Prove said.

“So, it’s a reaction to the genocide, to the Holocaust, it’s a reaction to the atomic bombings, it’s a reaction to global war and conflict in general.”

“The WCC has had a long-term commitment to working with civil society partners for nuclear disarmament, for the elimination of nuclear weapons,” he said.

“The lack of success in that project is really a function of the dysfunctionality of the international architecture for those processes,” he maintained.

As an example, he pointed to the collapse of the NPT review conference – the main nuclear disarmament negotiations – held Apr. 27-May 22 at United Nations headquarters in New York.

“The mechanisms for controlling and eliminating nuclear weapons do not function because they are in the hands of those states with an interest in maintaining nuclear weapons,” said Prove.

The WCC supports the global majority of states – 113 – that have signed the humanitarian pledge calling for a legal ban on nuclear weapons.

“So we have achieved a majority of states in support of this ban and we want to encourage a negotiation process for a legal ban on nuclear weapons. And we are hoping that this majority of states will exert their majority in that process,” he added.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

The human rights exam in Geneva complained that U.S. President Barack Obama has failed to keep his promise to close down the Guantánamo military base. Credit: Shane T. McCoy/U.S. Navy

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, May 12 2015 (IPS)

Without the emperor’s clothes, like in the Hans Christian Andersen story, the United States was forced to submit its human rights record to the scrutiny of the other 192 members of the United Nations on Monday.

Washington attended the country’s second universal periodic review (UPR) in the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council, which reviews each U.N. member country’s compliance with international human rights standards.
“So today was a demonstration of the no confidence vote that world opinion has made of the United States as a country that considers itself a human rights champion,” said Jamil Dakwar, director of the Human Rights Program (HRP) of the American Civil Liberties Union, a non-profit organisation that has worked to defend individual rights and liberties since 1920.

“I think that there was a clear message from today’s review that the United States needs to do much more to protect human rights and to bring its laws and policies in line with human rights standards,” he told IPS.

Although the UPR has come in for criticism because its conclusions are negotiated among governments, it is recognised for starkly revealing the abuses that states commit against their own citizens and those of other countries – and the Monday May 11 session was no exception.

One of the demands set forth by the 117 states taking part in the debate was for Washington to take measures to prevent acts of torture in areas outside the national territory under its effective control and prosecute perpetrators, and to ensure that victims of torture were afforded redress and assistance.

With respect to torture, among the positive achievements mentioned was the release of a report on abuses committed as part of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) interrogation practices.

The head of the 20-member U.S. delegation that flew over from Washington, acting legal adviser in the State Department Mary McLeod, gave an indication that the negotiations for the visit by Juan Méndez, U.N. special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay were not closed.

In March, Méndez, an Argentine lawyer who lives in the United States, complained that Washington did not intend to give him access during his visit to the more than 100 inmates in Guantanamo.

The country’s closest ally, the United Kingdom, congratulated the United States on its commitment to close Guantanamo, announced by President Barack Obama before his first term began in January 2009. But the British delegate said they would like to see it actually happen.

“The problem with Guantanamo is that it created a system of indefinite detention that we would like to see shut down with the facility,” Dakwar said. “It also created a flawed system of military commissions that provide a second system of justice. This system should also be shut down.”

Ejim Dike, executive director of the U.S. Human Rights Network, said the concerns brought to the attention of the U.S. delegation revolved around issues of poverty, criminalisation and violence.

“In the United States we have more money today than we ever had. We have the highest child poverty rate of any industrialised country. However, for the UPR no one from the government mentioned poverty,” Dike commented to IPS.

The Cuban delegates addressed the issue, urging the United States to guarantee the right of all residents to decent housing, food, healthcare and education, in order to reduce the poverty that affects 48 million of the country’s 319 million people.

A number of countries asked the United States to ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, in effect since 1976 and considered one of the pillars of the U.N. human rights system.

They also pointed out that the United States has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Nor has it ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Furthermore, it has not recognised the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, or the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) conventions on forced labour, minimum age for admission to employment, domestic workers, and discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.

McLeod also said that her country is not currently considering the ratification of the Rome Statute, which created the International Criminal Court.

Dakwar said the debate in the UPR highlighted “the issue of the lack of a fair criminal justice system that is being demonstrated through the stops and frisks, racial profiling, racial studies in the death penalty. You see it in the police violence and killing of unarmed African-Americans with no accountability.

“Its inhuman and unfair system of immigration needs to again be brought in line with human rights…That means…no detention of migrants, and ending migrants’ family detention,” he added.

Another of the main recommendations to the United States is that it desist from targeted killings through drones.

“The United States continues to violate human rights in the name of national security and it needs to roll back these policies and bring them in line with the U.S. constitution and international law,” Dakwar argued.

“Also in the domestic system we have surveillance of Muslim communities. There is a guidance by the Department of Justice that they allow the use of informants within communities, particularly Muslim and Middle Eastern communities,” he added.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

“Where are they? Our disappeared.” A protest march by the mothers of victims of forced disappearance in Mexico City. Credit: Daniela Pastrana/IPS

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Feb 16 2015 (IPS)

“The U.N. Committee on Enforced Disappearances is not a court, and I say this to avoid any misunderstanding,” German expert Rainer Huhle said while presenting the committee’s recommendations to the government of Mexico, where the problem has reached epidemic proportions.

Huhle, one of the 10 members of the committee, explained how the language and rhythms of international diplomacy work even in a pressing case like the tens of thousands of enforced disappearances reported in Mexico.

“The information received by the committee shows a context of generalised disappearances in a great part of the country, many of which could qualify as enforced disappearances,” says the report containing the committee’s concluding observations, presented Friday, Feb. 13.

It notes that disappearances were already occurring in December 2010, when the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance went into effect.

The text uses the conditional tense to urge the Mexican government to take action, in a tone of mild rebuke, repeating, for example, “the state party should…” in several of its recommendations – but without ignoring any of the most serious aspects of the crime of enforced disappearance.

“I think the analysis is very thorough,” María Guadalupe Fernández, whose son was disappeared, and who belongs to a group of victims’ relatives in the northeastern Mexican state of Coahuila – Fuerzas Unidas por Nuestros Desaparecidos en Coahuila y en México – told IPS.

The lawyer Michael Chamberlin, of the Fray Juan de Larios Diocesan Human Rights Centre in Coahuila, told IPS it was “positive that the committee recognised that disappearances are widespread, because it puts into perspective the magnitude of the phenomenon in Mexico.”

Chamberlin was also pleased that the committee “pointed to the lack of a precise registry of disappearances linked to efficient search mechanisms for recent and past disappearances, sensitive to gender, age and nationality.”

The lack of precise information on the number of disappeared was one of the points that was most emphasised by the committee, which demanded that the Mexican state resolve the issue over the next year.

According to a Mexican government figure cited by rights watchdog Amnesty International, some 22,600 people have gone missing in the last eight years.

“These figures have changed in magnitude several times,” Huhle told IPS. “We can’t trust these statistics because we don’t know how they get them.”

The committee considered the case of Mexico at a special hearing held Feb. 2-3 in Geneva.

“Within a year, we hope the authorities will tell us what they have managed to do. They should understand that this is a priority. Of course, we don’t expect everything to be perfect in one year, but by then they should have taken a few steps forward,” he added.

The committee also set a one-year deadline for Mexico to address the problem of missing migrants, most of whom come from Central America, and a smaller proportion from several South American countries, “who cross Mexico trying to reach the ‘paradise’ north of the Rio Grande,” Huhle said.

The committee was more emphatic in declaring its concern for missing migrants, “including children…among whom there are apparently cases of enforced disappearance,” say the concluding observations.

The third demand by the committee, also with a one-year deadline, is that Mexico “must redouble its efforts with a view to searching for, locating and freeing” people who have been disappeared.

Chamberlín also said it was positive for activists that the committee demanded that the legislation in Mexico’s different states be harmonised, and that it underlined the impunity surrounding forced disappearances and pointed out how the authorities avoid carrying out proper investigations by disguising disappearances as other crimes.

Fernández, the mother of José Antonio Robledo Fernández, an engineer who went missing in January 2009 at the age of 32, stressed that the committee “put a spotlight on a grave problem that has overwhelmed Mexico.”

It did this, she said, by demanding the implementation of mechanisms “that will not just be medium- to long-term plans but will be immediate, so the state will support the families who go around the country looking for our loved ones.”

But Fernández did not agree with the committee’s decision to give the Mexican state until 2018 to live up to its recommendations, with the exception of the three one-year deadlines regarding the registry of disappearances, migrants and the search for missing people.

“I really doubt that the state will live up to this and meet all of the recommendations of the committee in support of the indirect victims of this national emergency and that it will put an end to all of the human rights abuses and implement standards that should be immediate,” she said.

Among the gaps left by the committee, Chamberlin said it had failed to mention the lack of independence of the prosecutor’s office “as one of the main causes of the impunity in terms of disappearances.” It only mentioned this in the case of the military justice system, the lawyer said.

Nor did it refer to the lack of penalties for government officials or employees guilty of negligence or corruption, he added.

Chamberlin noted that the committee did not take into account the crisis of credibility suffered by the country’s justice system. He said it should have urged the state to fully cooperate with the group of experts on forced disappearance appointed by the Inter-American Committee on Human Rights (IACHR).

The experts will make several visits to different parts of the country this year, as part of the precautionary measures issued by the IACHR in the case of the 43 missing students from the Escuela Normal Rural de Ayotzinapa, a rural teachers college in the southern state of Guerrero, who were disappeared on Sep. 26.

The IACHR group of experts “will not only try to investigate and to overcome shortcomings in the investigation, but will also try to give certainties to the victims’ families,” said Chamberlin.

The human rights activist called for “a more proactive role by the committee and not only as an observer of the serious situation in Mexico….When it comes down to it, how many countries can you describe as having a ‘context of generalised disappearances’?”

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Julian Assange in one of his rare public appearances in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has been in hiding since June 2012. Credit: Creative Commons

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Jan 30 2015 (IPS)

There is a window of hope, thanks to a U.N. human rights body, for a solution to the diplomatic asylum of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, holed up in the embassy of Ecuador in London for the past two and a half years.

Authorities in Sweden, which is seeking the Australian journalist’s extradition to face allegations of sexual assault, admitted there is a possibility that measures could be taken to jumpstart the stalled legal proceedings against Assange.

The head of Assange’s legal defence team, former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, told IPS that in relation to this case “we have expressed satisfaction that the Swedish state“ has accepted the proposals of several countries.

The prominent Spanish lawyer and international jurist was referring to proposals set forth by Argentina, Cuba, Ecuador, Slovakia and Uruguay.

The final report by the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR), adopted Thursday Jan. 28 in Geneva, Switzerland, contains indications that a possible understanding among the different countries concerned might be on the horizon.

The UPR is a mechanism of the Geneva-based Human Rights Council to examine the human rights performance of all U.N. member states.

The situation of Assange, a journalist, computer programmer and activist born in Australia in 1971, was introduced in Sweden’s UPR by Ecuador, the country that granted him diplomatic asylum in its embassy in London, and by several European and Latin American nations.

The head of the Swedish delegation to the UPR, Annika Söder, state secretary for political affairs at Sweden’s foreign ministry, told IPS that “This is a very complex matter in which the government can only do a few things.”

Söder said that in Sweden, Assange is “suspected of crimes, rape, sexual molestation in accordance with Swedish law. And that’s why the prosecutor in Sweden wants to conduct the primary investigation.

“We are aware of Mr. Assange’s being in the embassy of Ecuador and we hope that there will be ways to deal with the legal process in one way or the other. But it is up to the legal authorities to respond,” she said.

Assange’s legal defence team complains that Sweden’s public prosecutor’s office is delaying the legal proceedings and refuses to question him by telephone, email, video link or in writing.

Garzón noted that parallel to the lack of action by the Swedish prosecutor’s office, there is a secret U.S. legal process against Assange and other members of Wikileaks, the organisation he created in 2006.

“The origin of the U.S. legal proceedings against Assange was the mass publication by Wikileaks of documents, in many cases sensitive ones, which affected the United States,” said Garzón.

Wikileaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and other classified U.S. documents revealed practices by Washington that put it in an awkward position with other governments.

Assange sought refuge in the embassy after exhausting options in British courts to avoid extradition to Sweden to face questioning related to allegations of rape and sexual molestation, of which he says he is innocent. He has not been charged with a crime in Sweden and is worried that if he is extradited to that country he will be sent to the United States, where he is under investigation for releasing secret government documents.

If the legal process in Sweden begins to move forward, there would be a possibility for him to be able to leave the Ecuadorean embassy, where he took refuge on Jun. 19, 2012, and give up the diplomatic asylum he was granted by the government of Rafael Correa on Aug. 16, 2012.

In the UPR report, Sweden promised to examine recommendations made by other countries and to provide a response before the next U.N. Human Rights Council session, which starts Jun. 15.

Garzón has urged the Swedish government to specify a timeframe for the legal action against Assange, as the delegation from Ecuador recommended in the UPR.

“The Human Rights Committee, another specialised U.N. body, stipulates that precise timeframes must be established for putting a detained person at the disposal of a judge,” he pointed out.

Söder told IPS that Sweden’s legal system does not set any deadline for the prosecutor to complete the pretrial examination phase, as reflected in the Assange case.

Garzón is also asking Sweden to introduce, as soon as possible, “measures to ensure that the legal proceedings are carried out in accordance with standards that guarantee the rights of individuals, concretely the right to effective judicial recourse and legal proceedings without undue delays.”

He also called for the adoption of administrative and judicial measures to make investigations before the courts more effective. With respect to this, he mentioned “the practice of measures of inquiry abroad, in line with international cooperation mechanisms.”

In addition, the international jurist demanded measures to ensure that people deprived of their freedom are provided with legal guarantees in accordance with international standards.

The Swedish delegation agreed to study a recommendation by Argentina to “take concrete measures to ensure that guarantees of non-extradition will be given to any person under the control of the Swedish authorities while they are considered refugees by a third country,” in this case Ecuador.

These should include legislative measures, if necessary.

This is important because Assange is facing the threat that the Swedish or British authorities could accept an extradition request from the United States for charges of espionage, which carry heavy penalties.

In his comments to IPS, Garzón said he was “disappointed” that the Swedish state has not accepted one of Ecuador’s recommendations.

He was referring to the request that Sweden streamline international cooperation mechanisms on the part of the judiciary and the prosecutor’s office in order to ensure the right to effective legal remedy, specifically in cases where the person is protected by the decision to grant asylum or refuge.

It was stressed in the UPR that the right to asylum or refuge is considered a fundamental right, and must be respected and taken into account, making it compatible with the right to legal defence.

The director-general of legal affairs in Sweden’s foreign ministry, Anders Rönquist, argued that there is no international convention on diplomatic asylum.

The only one referring to that issue is the inter-American convention, he said, adding that the International Court of Justice in The Hague does not require recognition of diplomatic asylum.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

UNCTAD Secretary-General Mukhisa Kituyi in his office. Credit: UNCTAD

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Jun 13 2014 (IPS)

As it turns 50, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) finds itself engaged in an ongoing struggle to reduce economic and social inequalities in the world.

“Compared with 50 years ago, today inequality within countries has risen in a startling number of countries both rich and poor,” said UNCTAD Secretary-General Mukhisa Kituyi.

“Indeed, today some individuals are now as wealthy as entire countries,” the Kenyan economist told IPS in this interview at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva.

UNCTAD emerged through the efforts of countries of the developing South and for that reason within the concert of the United Nations it is known as the agency that represents poor countries.

When UNCTAD was created on Jun. 16, 1964, the member states agreed that “Economic development and social progress should be the common concern of the whole international community,” Kituyi said.

According to the U.N. General Assembly resolution that created UNCTAD, one of its principle functions is: “To formulate principles and policies on international trade and related problems of economic development.”

Kituyi said the resolution signaled “a move beyond the principles that had previously led to the establishment of the Bretton Woods institutions [the World Bank and the Institutional Monetary Fund] and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade [GATT – the predecessor to the World Trade Organisation].”

Its unique characteristics and its close ties to the developing South put UNCTAD in the sights of the countries of the industrialised North and the institutions that revolve around them. In its 50 years of life, the Conference has managed to overcome a number of offensives aimed at modifying its pro-South policies and cutting its budget.

Kituyi, who took over as UNCTAD chief in September 2013, discussed with IPS his vision of the social and economic context in which UNCTAD is operating.

Q: What would you say is society’s reaction to inequality today?

A: The unequal distribution of income and wealth has inflamed passions and spurred public debate in a manner unseen in more than a generation. Across the world, people with different cultural, religious, and political beliefs are increasingly in agreement that an unequal society is not only unjust, but also unproductive.

Q: Could you give an example?

A: Inequality has captured our imaginations, as evidenced by the recent surprise success of French economist Thomas Piketty’s book, “Capital in the Twenty-first Century”. Talk of global taxes [as proposed by Piketty] to reduce inequalities, unthinkable just a decade ago, has recently splashed across the headlines and across the airwaves of even the most ‘laissez-faire’ conservative news outlets.

Q: What conclusion do you take away from this bestseller, which has sparked widespread discussion and debate?

A: The popularity of Professor Picketty’s book is more a reflection of the broader realisation by society as a whole that unsustainable economic practices leading to the over-accumulation of wealth are not only unfair, but can bring crisis and stagnation, even conflict.

Q: How has the international community reacted?

A: At the United Nations in New York, diplomats from every corner of the world are now working to agree on Sustainable Development Goals that would pick up where the Millennium Development Goals leave off in 2015. Beyond obvious environmental concerns about climate change, economic and social sustainability are also central to these discussions.

Q: What is being considered with regard to the question of inequality?

A: A goal to reduce inequality within and among countries by 2030 is on the proposed list currently being considered by member states. This is a direct consequence of the growing consensus on inequality’s detrimental effects on lasting prosperity.

Q: What precedents are there in this respect?

A: Our newfound, heightened concern for reducing inequality and ensuring prosperity for all must build on the strong aversion for inequality, which has been at the heart of a half-century of United Nations work.

Q: And in the case of your organisation?

A: When UNCTAD was founded exactly fifty years ago, our member states specifically called for ‘the division of the world into areas of poverty and plenty to be banished and prosperity achieved by all.’

Q: What has happened in these five decades?

A: The key difference between today and fifty years ago is the nature of the inequalities we face. The new global economy has brought with it both immense hopes but equally immense inequities.

A half century after UNCTAD’s founding we have seen promising declines in inequality between countries, as a number of developing countries, notably the BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa] countries. But others as well have experienced significant growth performance and moderate success in transforming the structure of their economies from agriculture towards industry and services.

Q: What strategies have been followed?

A: Even 15 years ago, when we were formulating the Millennium Development Goals, the focus was still on reducing inequality between countries, by reducing extreme poverty through growth. Globalisation, which enabled poverty to be cut in half worldwide over the past 20 years, has acted as a double-edged sword, leaving behind the less well-off both in the poorest countries and in the advanced economies as well.

Q: What policies are needed now?

A: The role of the multilateral system in providing global public goods to help compensate those who have lost out from globalisation has never been more necessary.

That is why as we mark UNCTAD’s fiftieth anniversary, we know that while the world may have changed from when the organisation was created, the need for the inclusive space of dialogue which our conference provides is stronger than ever.

Q: And with respect to each specific area of the economy?

A: To help reduce inequalities in our member states trade must serve as an enabler not a disabler, finance must be constructive not destructive, and technological progress must serve the interests of all segments of society.

Q: How can all of this be put into practice?

A: Well thought-out national development strategies are needed to ensure this, particularly in the least developed countries and in Africa. These are all areas where UNCTAD expertise is unparalleled, and moving forward into our next half century we will bolster our work to serve both the developing and developed countries to support these critical areas.

Excerpt:

A U.N. Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva. Credit: Jean-Marc Ferré/U.N.

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Mar 28 2014 (IPS)

The bloody events that marked the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war between government and Tamil separatist forces will be the focus of an independent international investigation, according to a United Nations Human Rights Council decision.

The serious human rights violations denounced by U.N. agencies are blamed on both sides. The inquiry will cover the abuses committed during the final period of the 1983-2009 war and after the government’s victory.

Juliette de Rivero, Geneva director of Human Rights Watch, told IPS that nearly five years on, the victims are still awaiting justice and for those responsible to be held to account.

“There are still no answers for the up to 40,000 civilian deaths for the last months of the fighting in Sri Lanka, nor for the 6,000 forcibly disappeared,” she said.

The Sri Lankan government rejected the Human Rights Council resolution adopted Thursday Mar. 27 on the argument that it erodes the sovereignty of the people of Sri Lanka and the core values of the U.N. Charter, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the basic principles of law that postulate equality among all people

The resolution was approved with a 23 to 12 vote, with 12 abstentions.

Tamil leaders following the debate in Geneva, where the Council is based, were not completely pleased with the resolution either.

One of the leaders, Visvalingam Manivannan, told IPS that “Our most pressing concern is that the High Commissioner’s (Navi Pillay) report or the resolution say nothing to halt the ongoing genocide against the Tamil nation.

“We are of the opinion that this can only be achieved through the establishment of a U.N.-sponsored transitional administration (in Sri Lanka) established through the aegis of the U.N. Security Council,” said Manivannan, who represents Vigneshvssu Vssu Vssu, an NGO in Special Consultative Status with the U.N. Economic and Social Council.

The case of Sri Lanka has been unusual in terms of the alignments it triggered among the Human Rights Council’s 47 member countries.

The resolution was sponsored by the United States and co-sponsored by the United Kingdom, Macedonia, Mauritius and Montenegro, with strong support from the European Union countries in the debates.

Alongside Sri Lanka, Pakistan took the lead in protesting the resolution, with outspoken support from China and Russia.

This time, Colombo lost the backing of three key Asian nations: India, Indonesia and Japan, which abstained from voting.

The North-South divide that persists in the Council, as in other multilateral bodies, was blurred in this case. Of the 13 African nations, three voted in favour of Sri Lanka, four voted for the U.S.-sponsored resolution and the remaining six abstained, including South Africa.

Among the Latin American members, there was no middle ground. Cuba and Venezuela voted against the resolution and defended the arguments set forth by the Sri Lankan ambassador.

Meanwhile, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico and Peru aligned with Washington. “We did it to end the impunity,” a diplomat from one of these countries told IPS.

Sri Lanka ambassador Ravinatha Arayasinha reached a different conclusion.

“A majority of the 47 members of the Human Rights Council -12 countries opposing and 12 other countries abstaining – has made it clear that they do not support the action taken by the United States, the UK and the co-sponsors of this resolution to impose an international inquiry mechanism concerning Sri Lanka.”

The resolution noted that in her report, the high commissioner had concluded that Sri Lanka’s national justice system and human rights mechanisms had systematically failed in their duty to discover the truth and deliver justice.

The Council thus accepted Pillay’s recommendation that an international inquiry be launched to carry out an in-depth investigation.

A leader of the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF), Gajendrakumar Ponnampalan, told IPS that “The remedy for violations at the level of gravity that occurred ultimately cannot be anything short of a credible international investigation and a judicial process through the ICC (International Criminal Court) or an Ad Hoc special tribunal.”

A group of experts appointed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon concluded that Sri Lankan government troops were involved in widespread abuses, including indiscriminate bombing of civilians, summary executions and rapes.

From 80,000 to 100,000 lives were claimed by the civil war between the Sri Lankan army and separatists demanding a Tamil state in the north of the island.

The conflict came to an end when the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Velupillai Prabhakaran, died in the fighting.

The U.N. experts accused the Tamil separatists of using civilians as human shields, recruiting child soldiers, and killing families trying to flee the fighting.

The U.N. Council resolution called on the Sri Lankan government to carry out a credible independent investigation of the allegations and to put an end to human rights abuses in the South Asian country.

Ponnampalan said “There is an ongoing genocide carried out by the Sri Lankan state, whose goal is the de-Tamilisation of Sri Lanka.

“Any reconciliation project has to include the Tamil nation – smaller in number on the island – and the Sinhala nation – a majority within the current configuration of the Sri Lankan state,” the TNPF leader said.

But “The Sinhala nation has no intention of ‘reconciling’ with the Tamil nation and wants it to assimilate into its vision of a Sinhala Buddhist Sri Lanka,” he maintained.

“Indeed, the only ‘remedy’ for the Tamil people in Sri Lanka is fleeing or assimilation,” he argued.

The Syrian independence flag flies over a large gathering of protesters in Idlib. Credit: Freedom House/cc by 2.0

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Jan 18 2014 (IPS)

The future of the complex armed conflict in Syria, which involves religious and ethnic factors as well as pressures from neighbouring countries and the strategic interests of global powers, will begin to take shape next week at a conference known as “Geneva 2.”

On Jan. 24 it will become apparent whether the warring parties in Syria will accept a negotiated solution to the three-year conflict that has already ended the lives of over 100,000 people and displaced 2.3 million from their homes, while some 9.3 million people are in extreme need of humanitarian aid.“Geneva 2 will not end the war. It can’t.” -- David Harland, the executive director of HD Centre

Representatives of the government of President Bashar al-Assad and delegations from the rebel forces that have been fighting against it since March 2011 are due to meet on that date in the Swiss city of Geneva.

So far, neither side has given a clear indication of its willingness to participate in the talks, in what are apparently delaying tactics aimed at strengthening their bargaining positions.

Prospects for the negotiations appeared to shift in recent weeks as infighting broke out among opposition forces.

A source who is well-informed about the internal situation in Syria told IPS that some opposition groups want freedom in order to combat other forces that are also opposed to Assad.

At the moment, “the more moderate groups are succeeding in military operations against the more radical Al Qaeda groups,” which are completely opposed to a ceasefire, the source said.

The Geneva 2 conference, organised by the United Nations, will open formally on Wednesday Jan. 22 in Montreux, on the northeastern shore of Lake Geneva, at the opposite end of the lake from Geneva itself.

The Montreux meeting will be attended by governments from 30 countries and delegates from international organisations, as well as U.N. representatives headed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Participants are likely to deliver exhortations for peace and to be largely critical of the Assad regime.

In the last few weeks the United States and Russia have intensified efforts to guide the negotiations towards two primary goals at this first stage: achieving a ceasefire and opening up corridors for aid to reach those most in need.

David Harland, the executive director of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD Centre), a prívate organisation based in Geneva, said the best solution for the difficult humanitarian situation is to deliver aid with the cooperation of the government and all parties.

“At the moment it’s not happening,” he said. “A lot of convoys have been blocked.”

Most convoys have been blocked because they have not received approval from the Damascus government, or because of fighting, or by criminal gangs or extremists, Harland said.

“It’s now very hard to carry out humanitarian operations in areas controlled by the opposition,” he said.

In the run-up to the conference, it is Harland’s view that a ceasefire may be very possible in areas where the opposition forces are surrounded, as in the Houla region and the city of Homs, in the western province of the same name.

A ceasefire will also be possible in areas where the government is holding out in enclaves within territory controlled by the opposition, as in Dar’a and Dayr az Zawr, in the northeast, and Idlib, in the north, he said.

While maintaining a low public profile, the HD Centre successfully offers mediation services and specialises in armed conflicts. In Syria, Harland, a former diplomat from New Zealand, has held meetings with Assad and with leaders of the armed opposition.

On the basis of these, Harland believes that “Geneva 2 will not end the war. It can’t,” he underlined.

The Geneva process has assumed that the U.S. and Russia have enough common ground on Syria to move things forward.

So far, over a period when over 100,000 people have died, this has not been the case, he said.

The problem is that the Geneva process has not found a way to give much voice to Syrians active in the opposition on the ground. “This will have to change if the peace process is to gain traction,” Harland said.

Geneva 2 will be a success “if it opens the door to a new type of peace process,” he said.

A successful peace process would have to be informed by the Syrian people themselves, but implemented with help from the outside.

“It would have to be a minuet: consultations with the Syrians on the ground, and then decisions taken by the U.N. Security Council on the basis of those decisions,” he said.

With respect to inviting Iran to attend the Montreux meeting, a move which Moscow backs but Washington opposes, Harland said Iran’s participation “could be very useful.”

“I think that we need a mechanism where all of the players who are shaping the reality inside Syria are present at the discussions and are held accountable,” he said.

In Harland’s view, the Syrian conflict resembles the 1992-1995 Bosnian War which resulted from the dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia.

Both Bosnia and Syria exhibited internal political issues and internal ethnic religious issues, he said.

Then there is a second circle of regional players which are supporting one ethnic religious community or another.

And finally, a third circle of global powers, mainly the U.S. and Russia, but not excluding China.

In this scenario, he said, the particular difficulty facing Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, who is coordinating the negotiations in his capacity as United Nations and Arab League Special Envoy to Syria, “is that some alignment of all three circles is necessary before there can be any serious prospect for peace.”

That is, there must be some basic accord among the Syrian parties, some basic accord among the regional parties and some basic accord among the U.S. and Russia and the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

Harland acknowledged that the pacification of Bosnia came about after intense bombing of Serbian targets by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) air squadrons.

“In the case of Syria, I think it’s extremely unlikely that there would be a decisive external intervention,” he said.

For one thing, there is a difference of scale: Bosnia is a country of four million people that is very close to Europe and the West, both geographically and in term of interests.  Syria has six times that population, and is rather further away, Harland said.

Another difference is that the relative power of the United States in 2013 is “less than it was in 1995, when the U.S. intervened militarily in Bosnia,” Harland concluded.

The U.N. declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas would protect farmers like this woman weeding a field in South Sudan's Eastern Equatoria state. Credit: Charlton Doki/IPS

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Jul 27 2013 (IPS)

Staunch opposition by the U.S. delegation and, to one extent or another, by European countries has blocked the approval this year of a draft multilateral declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas, which is backed by the developing world.

Bolivian diplomat Angélica Navarro, chair of the intergovernmental working group tasked with drafting the declaration, recommended that it meet again in mid-2014.

Navarro said that in the meantime, she would hold consultations with representatives of governments, civil society and the United Nations, which is promoting the initiative through its Human Rights Council.

“From the start we knew the process would be difficult, because the positions of some countries clashed with certain provisions in the declaration,” said Malik Özden, representative of the Europe-Third World Centre (CETIM), a Geneva-based NGO that is behind the draft declaration.

Özden told IPS that industrialised nations critical of the draft document wanted to remove some fundamental elements from the text, such as references to land grabbing and intellectual property rights over agricultural technologies and inputs, especially seeds.

The draft declaration seeks to protect peasants who work the land themselves and rely above all on family labour in agriculture, cattle-raising, pastoralism, and handicrafts-related to agriculture.

The term peasant also applies to landless people in rural areas engaged in various activities such as fishing, making crafts for the local market, or providing services.

Besides the human rights and fundamental freedoms of peasants, the document recognises their right to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, as well as their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.

The declaration also upholds their right to land and territory and to benefit from land reform, as well as their right to determine the varieties of seeds they want to plant and to reject varieties of plants which they consider to be dangerous economically, ecologically and culturally – aspects that collide with the interests of transnational agribusiness corporations.

Christophe Golay, from the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, said the draft declaration guarantees individual rights that can be collectively exercised.

But in the case of seeds and ecological diversity, the document includes completely new rights, he told IPS.

However, Golay pointed to a few gaps in the draft declaration, such as the lack of references to social security for peasants and to their protection in conflict zones.

The working group, which met Jul. 15-19 in Geneva, heard reports from experts, academics and delegates of peasant organisations.

In the meeting, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier de Schutter and his predecessor Jean Ziegler (2000-2008) did not hesitate to support the draft declaration.

But the United States raised jurisdictional objections, arguing that the Human Rights Council and its subsidiary bodies were not the right forum for discussing many of the issues proposed by the declaration.

A U.S. delegate even noted that the Council’s Advisory Committee, where the peasants’ right initiative first emerged, frequently mentioned the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in its report.

For that reason, he maintained, many of these debates should also take place in the FAO Food Security World Committee.

“The Advisory Committee final study admits that the draft declaration enumerates new rights, but many of these proposed new rights are not human rights,” the U.S. delegate said. “That is, they are not universal rights, held and enjoyed by individuals and that every individual may demand from his or her own government.”

He also said the draft declaration proposed to afford peasants collective human rights. But “we believe that efforts to create human rights for groups instead of for individuals are inconsistent with international human rights law,” he said, adding that “I want to be clear that we are not prepared to negotiate a draft declaration on the rights of peasants.”

The European Union also criticised the Council’s creation of the working group, and said it would not participate in negotiations of the draft declaration, although it left open the possibility of discussing improvements in the conditions of peasants in other forums.

The developing countries said they would continue backing the draft declaration, but conceded that certain points could be modified in order to reach a consensus.

Navarro told IPS that the working group was authorised by the Human Rights Council to hold sessions for three years in a row, and mentioned the possibility of the negotiations dragging on, even for decades, as has occurred in the case of international treaties in other areas.

But Özden was optimistic, even though he agreed with Navarro that the process could take years. “We hope the representatives of the states will be sensitive to the arguments of citizens and not just those of transnational corporations,” he said.

The number of peasants worldwide has not been stated in the documents presented to the working group.

In 2010, FAO estimated the number of people involved in agriculture at 1.394 billion, 1.357 billion of whom were in the developing world.

The U.N. agency noted that since 1950, the proportion of people dedicated to farming had steadily gone down, as the percentage of people involved in other economic activities had grown.

Brazilian diplomat Roberto Carvalho de Azevêdo was named the new director general of the WTO with broad support from the developing world, beating out his Mexican rival Herminio Blanco, who was backed by the industrialised nations.

“The results of the selection process reveal that most members of the WTO (World Trade Organisation), the majority of whom are developing countries, are dissatisfied with the current status quo – which Blanco represented,” Deborah James, coordinator of the Our World Is Not For Sale (OWINFS) network of dozens of organisations, activists and social movements worldwide, told IPS.

She said the countries were frustrated “in terms of continuing the current failed model of corporate globalisation, based on liberalisation and deregulation – that the WTO consolidates globally – without regard for the negative impacts of these policies on workers, farmers, and the environment.”

WTO director general-designate Roberto Carvalho de Azevêdo. Credit: WTO/CC BY SA-2.0

Azevêdo’s formal appointment on Tuesday May 14 was seen as a breath of fresh air in the rarefied climate which has numbed the WTO – headed over the last eight years by French economist Pascal Lamy – for at least a decade.

In its statement before the WTO General Council, which endorsed the appointment of Azevêdo to a four-year term starting Sept. 1, the South Africa delegation said “we celebrate a triple victory: it is a victory for the principle of diversity, it is also a victory for the principle of consensus, and it is a victory for the principle of multilateralism.”

It also urged the WTO to guarantee that its leadership reflected the diversity of its 159-nation membership, representing all of the world’s regions.

“Today we succeeded in ensuring that Latin America is represented in the leadership of the WTO for the first time,” the delegation said, adding that it would soon be Africa’s turn to contribute its rich leadership to the global trade body.

The WTO and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), have been governed by representatives of industrialised nations with the exception of the period 2002-2005, when the organisation was led by Supachai Panitchpakdi of Thailand.

James said “Now it will be up to the new Director General Azevêdo to respond to the obvious need that global civil society (through the OWINFS network) has been highlighting: for the transformation of the existing system, to ensure that it can provide countries sufficient policy space to pursue a positive agenda for development and job creation, and so that trade rules can facilitate, rather than hinder, global efforts to ensure true food security, sustainable economic development, global access to health and medicines, and global financial stability.”

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) urged Azevêdo to put a priority on access to medicine.

MSF Director of Policy and Analysis Rohit Malpani said “Mr. Azevedo’s appointment comes as least developed countries (LDCs) member states have requested to remain exempt from implementing the TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement until they are no longer classified as LDCs.

“The request for extension would allow these countries to avoid monopoly protection for medicines, diagnostics and medical devices,” he added.

This request and other demands by the LDCs, along with the questions of agriculture and trade facilitation, are among the issues likely to be on the agenda of the WTO ministerial conference slated for Dec. 3-6 in Bali, Indonesia.

Azevêdo has avoided making clear statements on the WTO’s future because he is merely director general-designate until September.

However, in an acknowledgement of the difficulties facing the negotiations in Bali, the Brazilian diplomat warned that if the meeting is “not successful, it will make the road a lot more difficult ahead.

“We need to move the WTO from where we are today to an organisation that is again meaningful, that again delivers negotiated outcomes that the world hopes and expects from us.”

But the differences among the negotiators are not the only threat to the conference in Bali. The Asian Peasant Coalition (APC) announced that “We will register our strong resistance against the WTO in its 9th ministerial meeting.”

The APC will hold a series of coordinated activities against the WTO meeting, in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines and Sri Lanka, said the organisation’s deputy secretary general, Rahmat Ajiguna.

The WTO accords in agriculture “resulted in massive displacement, destruction of local industry, and increasing land and resources grabs,” the APC added.

Roberto Carvalho de Azevêdo (left) and Herminio Blanco are the two finalists in the race for WTO director-general. Credit: WTO and Pepe Ocadiz CC BY-SA 3.0

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Apr 30 2013 (IPS)

The complicated challenge of invigorating the debilitated World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the multilateral trade system that it governs will fall, for the next four years and for the first time ever, to a Latin American.

The 159 member states of the WTO will choose between Roberto Carvalho de Azevêdo of Brazil and Herminio Blanco of Mexico, the two candidates for the post of director-general of the organisation who have weathered the complex selection process that began Dec. 1.

The decision between Azevêdo and Blanco will be known on May 8, but will not be formally announced until May 31. The current director-general, Pascal Lamy of France, will conclude his two consecutive terms of office that began in 2005, on Aug. 31, and his successor will take up the post on Sept. 1.

Lamy will be leaving unfinished the Doha Round of talks which he was instrumental in promoting in 2001, as EU Commissioner for Trade.

After eight years of leadership by Lamy, the multilateral system appears debilitated by the proliferation of bilateral and plurilateral trade agreements, encouraged mostly by industrialised nations.

Behind these failures in achieving a balanced opening of international trade flows is the reluctance of countries of the North to attend to the development needs of the countries of the South, a constant feature since the creation of the WTO in 1995.

The extent of the discord is clear at the present WTO negotiations aimed at achieving a modest agreement to keep up appearances at its next ministerial conference, to be held in Bali, Indonesia Dec. 3-6.

Industrialised countries are pushing for trade facilitation, such as increased speed and efficiency of border controls for trade goods. Developing nations fear that such an agreement will only increase their imports without benefiting their exports.

Longstanding demands, such as differential treatment for developing countries, a special trade regime for the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and arrangements to mitigate the effects of the food crisis, have again fallen foul of stumbling blocks in the discussions on the draft Bali agreement.

The difficulties tripping up the trade negotiations have apparently not been reflected so far in the process of designating the new WTO director-general.

Seven other candidates from different countries were eliminated in earlier stages of the selection process. In the first phase, Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen of Ghana, Anabel González of Costa Rica, Amina Mohamed of Kenya and Ahmad Hindawi of Jordan were deemed unlikely to command a consensus.

In the second stage, concluding Apr. 24, Mari Pangestu of Indonesia, Tim Groser of New Zealand and Taeho Bark of South Korea were held to have insufficient support.

But the two remaining candidates for heading up the WTO, Blanco and Azevêdo, are backed by two blocs, the industrialised and the developing countries, respectively, with opposing trade interests.

Blanco was educated at the University of Chicago, associated with the neoliberal economic ideas that predominated in a large part of the globe in the last few decades of the 20th century. He was part of the nucleus of this school of thought which governed the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and therefore Mexico, from 1985 to 2000.

But his most significant feature is his participation as chief negotiator, between 1990 and 1993, of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which came into effect Jan. 1, 1994.

Although he has no practical experience of WTO affairs, it is taken for granted that Blanco’s candidacy has the support of his NAFTA partners, the United States and Canada, and will benefit from the influence they can exert on the rest of the world.

For his part, Azevêdo has demonstrated his negotiating skills at the WTO, where he heads the Group of 20 developing nations, a coalition proposing the reversal of protectionist policies in agriculture applied by industrialised countries.

He won resounding victories for his country in two disputes before the WTO, one against U.S. cotton subsidies, and one against the EU for similar protectionism for sugar growers.

But above all, Azevêdo’s candidacy rests on Brazil’s foreign policy over the past decade, as an emerging nation together with Russia, India, China and South Africa in the BRICS bloc, and its openness to offering a helping hand to other developing countries on every continent.

Whoever is appointed will find a paralysed WTO, riven with dissensions that obstruct the reaching of understandings.

For instance, on Apr. 24 a panel of experts presented the report “The Future of Trade: The Challenges of Convergence”. The make-up of the panel, decided exclusively by Lamy, had been questioned by governments and NGOs.

During the presentation, Deborah James, of the Our World Is Not for Sale (OWINFS) network, objected that in spite of their WTO membership, there were not any representatives of LDCs on the panel, and only one African and one Latin American. The rest were almost all from developed countries and the business sector, while there was only one workers’ representative, she said.

“It seems that this report was actually drafted in large part by the Secretariat, and according to several panelists many of their comments were not well reflected” in the final text, James complained.

Sanya Reid Smith, also of the OWINFS network of NGOs and social movements, observed that “the report says that trade is a means, not an end, so presumably for developing countries, development is the end goal.

“So it is interesting then that the report explicitly says in a number of places that there should be ‘convergence of trade regimes,’ but it does not mention convergence of levels of development,” the activist said.

Jürgen Thumann, the president of BUSINESSEUROPE, an organisation representing 20 million companies in 35 countries, was annoyed by the interventions from the OWINFS representatives.

“These two young ladies – with blonde and black hair, I see from here – I would like to ask you to be a little bit more tolerant in the future and show a little bit more respect,” Thumann said.

James told IPS that Thumann’s comment showed BUSINESSEUROPE is intolerant of input from the public, as well as being sexist and ageist.

“His insulting tone epitomised the panel’s lack of transparency and non-inclusiveness,” she maintained.

Néstor Osorio: “Young people are and always have been involved in the origins of the biggest innovations.” Credit: UN Photo

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Apr 15 2013 (IPS)

Innovation, as the fruit of science and technology, will play a fundamental role in the Sustainable Development Goals that could go into effect in 2015, says Néstor Osorio, president of the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

In its next session, in September, the U.N. General Assembly will receive the first draft of the SDGs currently being drawn up with the input of governments, scientists and social organisations.

The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) is also taking part in the drafting process, and will discuss the question in its Annual Ministerial Review in Geneva, next July.

If they are approved, the SDGs will build upon the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which were adopted by the international community in 2000 in New York with a 2015 deadline.

Using 1990 as a baseline, the governments committed themselves to halve the proportion of people who experience hunger and live in extreme poverty, reduce infant and maternal mortality by two-thirds, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other major diseases, ensure environmental sustainability and achieve a global partnership for development.

Osorio, Colombia’s permanent representative to the U.N., explained some aspects of the SDGs in an interview given to IPS during a recent visit to Geneva.

Q: Do you think innovation should be one of the goals for this millennium?

A: I believe it is a cross-cutting issue within many of the objectives for the post-2015 period. We’re talking about the SDGs – that is, how to do something beyond the MDGs and bring together industrialised and developing countries in an ongoing process of irreversible compliance with fundamental goals for integral sustainability.

Q: In other words…

A: We’re talking about water conservation, more liveable cities, food security, infrastructure and curtailing (greenhouse) gas emissions. We have to decarbonise the planet. And all of this forms part of innovation.

Q: Who would be the actors involved in this task?

A: Those who can participate in a very efficient manner, as we have seen, are young people.

Young people are and always have been involved in the origins of the biggest innovations. Microsoft, Facebook and others have been created, innovated, by 20 or 25-year-old kids.

So there’s a very important link here: how innovation and connection and preparation of future work go together. And when it comes to gender equality, we’re talking about the same thing. In other words, it’s a cross-cutting issue.

Q: How could developing countries foment innovation?

A: I think they could do it with a fundamental commitment by governments, which translates into budget allocations.

The partnership between government and private sector is also essential throughout this process. I’ll cite an example of what we have done in Colombia: the policy of President Juan Manuel Santos has been to earmark – and a law was approved to this end – a portion of oil and mining industry royalties to the Institute of Sciences and Technology.

Q: And with respect to the private sector?

A: Companies gradually discover what their needs are and how they have to adapt to the requirements of sustainability.

(For example), there can’t be investment in projects that use huge quantities of water, because that is wasteful. Companies have to adapt to the requirements that the world presents.

Q: And with regard to the state?

A: The public sector must be aware of the importance and significance of science, technology, culture – and what they bring in terms of innovation – for the development of society. For the improvement of infrastructure, cities, transportation, and for providing better living conditions for men and women.

That’s why it is very important for it to translate into legal instruments, budget allocations and government plans.

Q: What can be expected of the ECOSOC sessions in July?

A: The debate in the High Level Segment, as it’s called, will be the culmination of the ministerial meeting.

Science, technology and culture is the theme this year for ECOSOC. But the question of financing will also be discussed.

The economic situation in the industrialised world is very serious because it has consequences, what I call collateral damages, because as incomes and economic conditions have declined in those countries, there is less money for financing development and a lower propensity for technology transfer.

I hope that very concrete policy recommendations will come out of July’s sessions.

Q: What is the climate ahead of the meeting?

A: Two weeks ago I was in Tanzania with all of the African ministers, and I was surprised to see that there is real awareness and interest in giving science and technology a predominant place in government priorities.

Q: Do you have an overview of innovation in developing countries?

A: In agriculture, immense progress has been made to increase productivity and fight pests and diseases. This is already common in coffee, cacao and cereals.

Research in India for boosting the productivity of grains and guaranteeing food security has been extraordinary. In Brazil, the new coffee-growing techniques, on 100-hectare plantations with permanent irrigation and fertilisation, have multiplied productivity 30- or 40-fold.

Q: And what about innovations with environmental effects?

A: Yes, those too, especially in different areas of agriculture, with improvements of rural conditions. For example, one concrete innovation is harnessing small waterfalls to produce energy.

I’ve seen how small turbines have been created to use a waterfall just one metre high to provide lighting in the home of a small farmer.

It’s not rocket science – or CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) science – but simple things. It’s about creating grinding machines that don’t waste water. For example, in Colombia, a coffee pulping machine was developed that takes the beans and processes them with a minimum amount of water, which is later recycled and does not end up causing pollution.

Excerpt:

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Apr 5 2013 (IPS)

India’s refusal to grant patent protection for the anti-cancer drug Glivec, developed by Swiss drugmaker Novartis, is a victory for the developing world, which depends on low-cost exports of generic medicines from the Asian giant, said public health specialist Germán Velásquez.

The triumph celebrated by the Colombian expert, who is a special adviser for health and development at the South Centre, was a landmark ruling against Novartis handed down Monday Apr. 1 by India’s Supreme Court.

The Geneva-based South Centre is an intergovernmental organisation of more than 50 developing countries that functions as an independent policy think tank.

Velásquez, who worked for over 20 years in the World Health Organization, explains in this interview with IPS his point of view on the legal battle in the courts in New Delhi and its consequences for developing countries.

Q: How do you interpret the ruling by the Supreme Court of India?

A: There are problems with the information that is being reported. Nearly everyone says that India rejected the patent for Glivec. That’s true, but it’s not all the verdict says.

Q: Could you explain?

A: At the heart of the verdict is the ratification of the criteria set by the Indian law for the approval of drug patents. That is, whether or not it meets the requisite of containing a genuine innovation.

Q: Could you describe the legal battle?

A: It all starts with the adoption of the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), one of the treaties established at the same time the WHO was born, in 1995.

India was the only developing country to use the (entire 10-year) transition period to enforce TRIPS, in 2005, when it passed the patent act.

Q: What happened to the patent applications presented during that decade-long transition?

A: They accumulated, until there were around 10,000 applications, and it was not until 2005 that the patent office began to examine them. They included the application for the Glivec patent.

But the new standards turned out to be stricter, such as the one that indicates that the innovation can’t be just a small change to a molecule, but has to be something substantial. In short, the patent for local sales of Glivec was denied in 2006.

Q: How does the story continue from there?

A: Novartis challenged that decision and brought a lawsuit in a court in the city of Madras (the capital of the southern state of Tamil Nadu; the city was renamed Chennai in 1996.) But the High Court of that city, three years later, also rejected the application. That year, 2009, the company appealed the decision – and lost again.

Q: What options are left to the company?

A: This is the aspect that hasn’t been sufficiently reported. In a cynical, perverse and very serious move, Novartis says (prior to the ruling): “If they didn’t give me the patent, I’ll go to the Supreme Court, but to ask this time for the elimination of the strict criterion established in article 3 of the patent act.”

“If more flexible, lower standards are set, then my medicine will be in,” was its reasoning.

Q: So the dispute took on this other face?

A: Yes, because with the intention of introducing its drug by force, the transnational corporation was trying to modify the law of a country – and of a country like India. I think that its executives were being short-sighted when they made that decision. This has been very costly for them in terms of their image.

Q: How do you reach that conclusion?

A: It is clear that it was a misstep to denounce India’s patent law, with the risk of losing. The transnational industry in general had suffered a blunder in South Africa, when it was forced in 2001 to back down from legal action against a law that authorised the patenting of lower-price imported medicines in order to address the AIDS epidemic.

You could suppose that “Big Pharma”, as the major pharmaceutical companies are called, had learned the lesson. Especially knowing that Glivec was patented in 40 countries, including the United States, China and Russia.

Q: Are you insinuating that there may be a domino effect?

A: If Novartis loses in India, as it did on Monday, any of the governments of the 40 countries could ask themselves: “Why don’t I review that patent and revoke it?” That authority is granted by the legislation of all of those countries.

Q: What standing do those 40 countries that recognise the Glivec patent have?

A: Most of them are industrialised states, large markets. But they also include some that are currently experiencing severe economic difficulties, like Greece or Spain, whose authorities could ask themselves why they should pay 2,500 dollars a month per person for a treatment against cancer. They could say: “Why don’t I just have it produced as a generic drug, and invalidate this patent.”

I think the Novartis executives did not take that into account when they launched this legal battle. Obviously, after the first impetus, they continued on to the end, and today they’re going to see repercussions.

Q: What could those consequences be?

A: It should be a lesson for the rest of the countries of the developing South. They should try to follow India’s example and introduce in their legislation clauses like the ones contained in article 3d, which restricts and sets criteria with respect to what amounts to innovation, which is necessary in order to grant a patent. That there can’t just be a small change, which is sometimes merely cosmetic, to a molecule in the medication.

Q: What prospect is there for the spread of that criterion?

A: In India, the Philippines and Argentina, that prohibition already exists, while others are introducing it through alternative routes.

Q: And other consequences?

A: India will be able to continue to make generic versions of all new medicines that are not truly original, and it will continue exporting them without any problem. It’s necessary to take into account the fact that 95 percent of the antiretrovirals consumed in Africa come from that Asian country.

So that means the Indian Court’s ruling is extremely important, with very concrete repercussions for that medicine and some 10,000 others that are on the waiting list in the patent office in New Delhi.

Q: What percentage of those could get patents?

A: In 2010, Argentina approved 2,000 pharmaceutical patents, and China 4,000. But actually, just 40 or 50 products a year are true innovations.

Q: Why that enormous difference between patents that are granted and truly innovative products?

A: The pharmaceutical industry is facing huge difficulties in coming up with innovations.

So it clings to a very short-sighted way of thinking, very short-term, but enormously profitable. This consists of launching incremental innovations, as they are called – in other words, a small product with just a gradual change, but accompanied by a major marketing campaign.

Excerpt:

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Jan 21 2013 (IPS)

The international community has adopted a binding treaty for reducing emissions of mercury, a poisonous heavy metal that harms human health and the ecosystems on which life depends.

Uruguayan diplomat Fernando Lugris chairing the Minamata Convention on Mercury negotiations. Credit: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Uruguay

The Minamata Convention on Mercury, which sets out to control and reduce products and processes using the metal, was approved on Saturday Jan. 19 by representatives of over 140 governments. It will be signed in Japan in September and will enter into force once 50 countries or more have ratified it.

Mercury is a neurotoxin affecting the central nervous system and the brain. It also damages the kidneys and other body systems such as the respiratory, gastrointestinal, haematological, immunological and reproductive systems.

The provisions of the treaty agreed in Geneva prohibit production, export and import of some products containing mercury with effect from 2020, including certain types of batteries, fluorescent lamps, soaps and cosmetics, and non-electronic medical instruments like thermometers and blood pressure monitors.

The convention does not ban elements for which mercury-free substitutes are so far not available, like vaccines where mercury is used for preservation, and uses of mercury in religious or traditional activities.

The negotiations for the Minamata Convention on Mercury, named after a city in Japan where serious health and environmental damage occurred as a result of mercury pollution in the 20th century, were chaired by Uruguayan diplomat Fernando Lugris, backed by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Achim Steiner and UNEP experts.

In an interview following the adoption of the treaty, Lugris, who brought four years of negotiations to a successful conclusion, told IPS he was very satisfied by the agreement.

Q: How would you sum up the progress that has been made?

A: I think we have reached a high level of ambition in which regulatory measures, especially to limit mercury emissions (in) to the air, soil and water, are really ambitious. We will be able to achieve very significant global reductions.

Q: What kinds of emissions are specified in the text?

A: The treaty does not seek to reduce natural emissions, because mercury is an element that exists naturally on our planet. Instead, we are trying to limit anthropogenic emissions generated by the use of mercury in man-made products or processes, and we are seeking substitutes to replace it.

Q: Will the convention affect countries’ economic situations?

A: Basically, the treaty seeks not to impose limits on (individual countries’ economic) development, but to orient them towards sustainable development so that, in the future, processes and products will be free of mercury; that is, we seek sustainable substitutes for it.

Q: Representatives of NGOs have criticised the text of the treaty. In their view the measures do not go far enough to reduce global emissions of mercury, and might even produce an increase in mercury pollution.

A: I believe civil society has to raise its voice and demand that governments make greater efforts, and this convention is an important starting point. Yesterday, there was no binding treaty for the international community. Now we have one.

However, this effort could be strengthened by future actions, through the evolution of the convention itself at the conferences of its parties.

Q: During the negotiations, did you have difficulties with the North-South division that is a feature of most multilateral debates?

A: For some issues, the North-South divide continues to exist. However, in other aspects, we perceive the world is already changing. Atmospheric emissions are a clear example, where countries like China and India are the biggest emitters because of their use of coal-fired power plants (the top source of mercury emissions).

But the United States and the European Union are big emitters too. And it was very clear that in the discussions over air pollution reduction, the negotiated package gradually took shape between the big polluters.

Q: Were you aware of any other grouping of countries during the negotiations?

A: Yes. In discussing release of mercury into water, we found the developing countries, especially in Africa and Latin America, had clearly similar realities, and their greatest need is to seek cooperation and to help vulnerable populations.

Q: How did the group of countries from Latin America and the Caribbean fare with their initiative on health?

A: The GRULAC (Latin American and Caribbean Group) clearly sought to introduce health as an issue throughout the convention, and the agreed text basically contains many measures for health protection.

The group also insisted on the need to include a specific article on health. In principle, the industrialised countries felt that an article on health was irrelevant in an environmental agreement.

However, Latin America’s persistence and its clear interest in protecting human health succeeded in getting the final session of the plenary to agree on an article specifically about health.

Q: Does the approved text provide for funding for the protection of human health?

A: As the convention will have a financing body to support its implementation, clearly the measures taken will have a positive effect on the protection of human health.

Above all it should be underlined that human health, in relation to mercury pollution, is not protected solely through the enforcement of specific measures to that end, but control of atmospheric emissions (in general) is the most important action to preserve human life.

Q: At the last minute countries like Canada, France and the United Kingdom rejected a proposal from Bolivia to include a reference to indigenous populations in the text. How did that debate go?

A: The international community has clearly formulated this issue through the (U.N.) Declaration on (the Rights of) Indigenous Peoples, which is a non-binding agreement, but unfortunately at the level of binding agreements there are still some countries that oppose making specific reference to native peoples . This is not the case in Latin America.

Q: What is your opinion on this?

A: Latin America supports the declaration on indigenous peoples and makes clear reference to the collective rights that were recognised in this declaration, which was in fact adopted in Geneva, having been introduced in the General Assembly session by the representatives of Peru, with the support of Uruguay.

Excerpt:

U.N. Human Rights Council president Laura Dupuy. Credit: United Nations

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Dec 14 2012 (IPS)

The first woman to preside over the United Nations Human Rights Council, Uruguayan diplomat Laura Dupuy, has made it with flying colours through one of the periods of greatest tension and conflict since the council replaced the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in 2006.

It has fallen to Dupuy to preside over regular and special sessions this year with heated debates over the dramatic events in Arab countries like Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and especially Syria.

The Permanent Representative of Uruguay to the United Nations Office at Geneva has won recognition from her colleagues and from non-governmental organisations for getting occasionally stormy sessions back on track.

Dupuy told IPS that being a woman was not an obstacle to fulfilling her role, which concludes Dec. 31. “Luckily I did not encounter hurdles,” she said. “In fact, I think that countries that could have put difficulties in my way were very careful not to do so.”

Q: What reactions have you observed since the annual sessions commenced last March?

A: It’s possible that some people had doubts about what might happen with a president they did not know. But they soon saw that I stuck to the rules and was firm. After that they respected me.

Q: But did you run across any stumbling blocks because you are a woman?

A: I had some problems, but…I don’t think they were very serious. The most difficult moment was when we discussed the case of Bahrain, because there were protests about my intervention and complaints about the intimidation being suffered there by human rights defenders who attended the debate in Geneva for the Universal Periodic Review on the situation in that Arab country.

Q: Were there any other tough times?

A: Yes, but they weren’t personal. What I have unfortunately seen in the chamber is that some countries, basically the Islamic nations, still have a fairly retrograde discourse. In fact, I am worried that there may be a regression with respect to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, approved in 1948.

I am also concerned that something similar may happen among the Islamic states in regard to the Vienna Declaration, adopted in 1993 by the World Conference on Human Rights, which reaffirmed that women’s rights are human rights.

Q: Have you noted this regressive tendency at any other time?

A: We see it when they continue to question or attempt to limit the scope of the new Working Group on Discrimination against Women in law and in practice. The fact that, although they did not vote against it, they expressed discontent with the new mandate, is an indication of the situation.

Q: Do you think this bias still persists?

A: It does. Unfortunately, it is being confirmed. For instance, in Egypt now, with the draft constitution. The Egyptian expert has just told me that the paragraph referring to non-discrimination for any reason, including gender, has been eliminated from the draft. This is serious. It is a central principle of human rights.

Q: Is this issue restricted to a single region?

A: No, it also arises in the declaration of human rights approved in November by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The text was negotiated merely between governments, without consulting civil society, and there was a major problem with women’s rights in the drafting of the text.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay was not satisfied. But after the ASEAN declaration was approved, another resolution was added, saying that the declaration would be implemented in accordance with the 1948 Universal Declaration.

We hope that this will be the case, and that as matters develop they will comply with this aspect. To sum up, from the point of view of women’s rights, I think there is still much that remains to be done.

Q: What have been the highlights of your presidency of the Council?

A: The period has been marked, unfortunately, by all the serious and urgent human rights situations that the Council has examined, with the willingness to listen to all the parties, including the voices that are often silenced, such as the victims of rights abuses.

In future periods, the U.N. Human Rights Council will have to discuss the best ways to tackle these crises, and ways to prevent them.

Q: Are there any indications of how the Council can deal with the problem?

A: When the Council reviewed its work and operations in 2011, among other issues it addressed the ways in which it can deal with serious cases of human rights violations.

Among other proposals, the draft suggested establishing mechanisms that would act as external, objective and independent triggers, in the case of urgent situations. The initiative was discarded, and as a result the Council continues to face critical situations mainly through the means of holding special sessions of its members.

Q: What results have these special sessions had?

A: To an extent, the special sessions have proved quite successful at dealing with urgent situations. We have always managed to reach the minimum number of 16 member states to sign the request to convene such a session, as seen by the 19 special sessions held so far.

However, it must be acknowledged that the results of these sessions always depend on negotiations.

Q: This year, what stands out is that the situation in Syria called for four special sessions of the Council.

A: Some people may think that holding four special sessions did not really help to improve the situation on the ground in Syria.

However, by holding so many special sessions as well as an urgent debate, the Council has fulfilled its political responsibilities, keeping a close watch on events and sending a commission of inquiry charged with gathering information and evidence, with a view to potential future criminal proceedings in respect to the current conflict.

Q: What are your conclusions about this case?

A: After many months of crisis and armed conflict, there is mounting pressure not only to come up with political solutions, but also to hold accountable those responsible for crimes against human rights and against international humanitarian law.

As a consequence, the priority that emerges is a political solution with peace, justice and an end to impunity.

Excerpt:

A dalit girl in India explains in the short film that her teachers stopped hitting the children with canes as a result of the human rights training.

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Sep 20 2012 (IPS)

The impact of human rights education, a rising star, is highlighted in a short documentary sponsored by United Nations experts and civil society.

The short film presented Wednesday, “A Path to Dignity – The Power of Human Rights Education”, shows how human rights teaching and training can bring about major transformations in victims and potential perpetrators of abuses.

Dalit (formerly “untouchable”) children in India, a Turkish woman abused by her husband since she was married off as an adolescent, and police in the southern Australian state of Victoria describe in the film how their lives changed radically thanks to human rights education.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay says at the start of the film that “Full realisation of human rights requires all human beings to be aware of their and other people’s rights and of the means to ensure their protection.”

“The message of this DVD says that everything starts from a single person,” Kimiaki Kawai, programme director for Peace Affairs at Soka Gakkai International (SGI), told IPS.

“If the single person stands strongly, determined, then something can happen with an impact to the society. So, in that sense education is something like empowerment – to giving knowledge, giving understanding, to sharing wisdom. So that somebody can stand firm to contribute to society,” said Kawai

The film was produced by the SGI, a Japan-based lay Buddhist movement, the international movement Human Rights Education Associates, and Pillay’s office.

Dalit children received training on human rights from non-governmental organisations in India, which enabled them to fight and overcome some of the most degrading effects of the discrimination that they suffer as a result of the Hindu caste system.

And the woman in eastern Turkey, who was hunted by her own family after she decided to leave her abusive husband, found comprehension and support from an association of Turkish women, and eventually managed to free herself from her arranged marriage and change her name.

Police in the Australian state of Victoria, meanwhile, were given human rights training from their superiors and from specialised organisations, which brought down the number of complaints of human rights abuses committed in the course of their policing work.

“A Path…” brings hope that human rights education can be deepened and expanded, Christian Guillermet-Fernández, Costa Rica’s representative to the U.N. Human Rights Council, told IPS.

At the presentation of the short film in the Palais des Nations in Geneva, the diplomat pointed out that his country had abolished its army in the 1940s and then decided to invest in education and health the funds that previously went to the military.

Hedwig Jöhl, a representative of the Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, said a country without an army is a good example for human rights education.

Guillermet-Fernández said the 28-minute documentary, directed by filmmaker and international relief worker Ellen Bruno, was a tool that could have a lot of impact in the field of human rights.

“But human rights education must still overcome many challenges,” the Costa Rican diplomat said. “We need to be innovative, creative and do things like this (film).”

Furthermore, he said, governments and civil society must work to keep the question of human rights education on the agenda of international organisations, in the Human Rights Council but also in the work of the General Assembly – two of the highest-level U.N. bodies.

One of the biggest challenges is to educate national authorities and politicians, Guillermet-Fernández said.

Kawai stressed that “Education is not a process to give some knowledge to other people. Interaction should be the core of education…Education is to inspire somebody to think by themselves and stand up, which also influences me.”

Referring to the case of the young Turkish woman shown in the film, who expressed a discrepancy between traditions and human rights values, Kawai told IPS that such differences could be overcome with “balance.”

“And balance comes from talks, not from silence,” he said. Differences of opinion arise in interactions between people, and “how can we solve the differences, the discrepancies…dialogue should come first, not violence,” he underlined.

An expert body of the United Nations has warned the Spanish government that the severe budget cutbacks it is applying must not undermine its commitment to upholding the economic, social and cultural rights of the country’s people.

Demonstrators in southern Spanish city of Málaga protesting cuts in health and education. Credit: Inés Benítez/IPS

Austerity measures imposed by the government of centre-right Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy could have “a negative and disproportionate impact on the enjoyment of those rights,” said the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR).

Committee Chairperson Ariranga Govindasamy Pillay, a native of Mauritius, said these concerns will definitely appear in the final conclusions of its review of Spain’s compliance with the provisions of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to be released on May 18.

The Committee, made up of 18 independent experts from different regions of the world, monitors observance of the Covenant by the 160 states that have ratified it since its adoption in 1966 and its entry into force in 1976.

Two particular events mark the case of Spain, which was discussed this week, said expert Jaime Marchán of Ecuador, the Committee’s rapporteur on the report presented by Spain.

One was the elections in November last year, won by the People’s Party, which replaced the government of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) led by former prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, in power since 2004.

The second feature mentioned by Marchán was “the persistence of a very severe economic crisis whose direct negative and devastating impacts have often interfered with maintenance of basic levels of protection for economic, social and cultural rights.”

In his assessment of Spain’s compliance, the rapporteur recalled that since 2004 the country has taken measures to promote economic, social and cultural rights, adopting many of the recommendations issued by the U.N. Committee in their review of Spain that year. Marchán mentioned the action plan for development of the Roma, or gypsy, population in 2010-2012 and the new 2012-2020 strategy for integration of Roma communities.

However, lawyer Carlos Villán, president of the Spanish Society for International Human Rights Law (AEDIDH), told IPS that in his country, gypsies “continue to be victims of racism and rejection by a segment of the majority population.”

A member of the Spanish government delegation told the Committee that 52 percent of respondents in a survey said they had “no or little” empathy for the Roma population. “We have a lot of work to do,” the delegate admitted.

On the positive side, Marchán noted that Spain had passed legislation on effective equality between men and women and comprehensive protection measures against gender-based violence, and had adopted measures to fight trafficking in persons.

But any favourable impression was undermined by the Spanish government’s responses to questions from Committee experts, and the latest available data.

“The measures adopted so far (by the present government) seem insufficient in the context of the economic crisis to adequately address the provisions of the Covenant for protecting economic, social and cultural rights, particularly for the most vulnerable groups,” the rapporteur said.

Even more worrying was the finding that, as a result of the severe fiscal austerity policies, many of the affirmative measures previously adopted in Spain “have been reduced or completely eliminated,” Marchán said.

This has led to backsliding in the protection measures concerning the areas covered by the Covenant, he said.

The U.N. Committee experts expressed disappointment at the reduction of the Spanish government’s official development assistance, and the rise in unemployment to the unprecedented level of over 24 percent, with youth unemployment at 55 percent.

They also noted the insufficiency of the minimum salary, coupled with cuts in health, education, and social security that have left some groups, such as undocumented immigrants, without any social coverage.

In addition, immigrants are subject to “xenophobic discourse exacerbated by the crisis,” said Villán.

Marchán pointed to the lack of a specific national plan to combat “rising levels of poverty, which already affects 22 percent of Spanish households.”

The rapporteur referred in his report to the pernicious effects of the housing bubble, which has increased the number of homeless people.

Villán told IPS that gypsies and immigrants seeking access to housing face many hurdles.

Another expert, Álvaro Tirado from Colombia, referring to the economic and financial crisis rocking Spain and other European countries, complained that when there is an economic bonanza, distribution favours the rich, while in a crisis the burden falls disproportionately on the poor.

Spain is one of the most unequal countries in the European Union in terms of income distribution, he said.

In response to these criticisms, Rafael Barberá of the Spanish employment and social security ministry said his government does not believe the poor should pay for the crisis.

“No one intends that they should bear the burden of the adjustment policies,” he said, going on to defend Rajoy’s economic measures on the grounds that “fiscal consolidation is neither a whim nor an obsession; it is the way forward to ensure that in the near future Spain can begin the process of recovery.”

“Spain does not want the poor to pay the cost of economic adjustment, nor does it want to limit anyone’s economic, social and cultural rights. On the contrary, we are convinced that those rights are an important element of development and have a positive long-term impact on growth,” Barberá said.

Committee experts expressed regret that the Rajoy government did not consult Spain’s ombudsman when drawing up the report it presented at the current session.

Tirado said they had heard the same complaint from representatives of Spanish NGOs. The NGO representatives said they were confident that the Committee would make stringent recommendations to the Spanish government.

Profound discord between industrialised nations and developing countries is threatening to ruin the UNCTAD meeting being held this week in Doha, and may even endanger the survival of this United Nations body that defends the interests of the developing nations of the South.

If there is failure to reach agreement, it will be perceived as the end of the debate on development and also the end of this body itself, warned the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Secretary-General Supachai Panitchpakdi, a Thai economist and politician.

Disagreements between the blocs, broadly identified as countries of the North and of the South, arise mainly from differing views of UNCTAD’s mandate and different visions of development and how it relates to social, environmental, economic and financial variables.

For example, industrialised countries have rejected out of hand giving UNCTAD a remit to investigate the current global financial crisis and its effects on the real economy, diplomatic sources in the capital of Qatar who requested anonymity told IPS.

On Saturday Apr. 21 at the conference’s inaugural session, 37 international and 137 national NGOs sent a message to participating governments, titled “Strengthen, don’t weaken, UNCTAD’s role in global governance” , highlighting the important role played by UNCTAD “in identifying the key causes” of the global crisis originating in 2008.

UNCTAD has assisted developing countries in seeking solutions to the impacts of the crisis, and has advocated the reform of global economic and finance policies in order to prevent similar crises from recurring, the NGOs said.

“UNCTAD is well known for having predicted the crisis in advance, a fact that is to be commended, particularly given its paucity of resources compared to institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which failed to do so,” the message says.

Signatories of the message to the governments at the UNCTAD meeting include ActionAid International, the African Trade Network, the Arab NGO Network for Development, CIDSE – an international alliance of 16 Catholic development agencies – , the European Network on Debt and Development, and Friends of the Earth International.

The Hemispheric Social Alliance, the International Trade Union Confederation, Oxfam International, Public Services International, the Third World Network, the Transnational Institute and the World Council of Churches also signed the declaration.

In the negotiations of the conference’s outcome document, UNCTAD’s role is being defended by China and the Group of 77 (G77), the developing world bloc that came into being as a result of the first UNCTAD conference, held in Geneva in 1964, and today is made up of 132 member countries.

The G77 maintained that UNCTAD was established in response to the current and emerging challenges faced by developing countries, and underscored the need to strengthen the role of the U.N. in international economic and financial governance.

In contrast, the European Union has attempted to eliminate a paragraph from the outcome document that refers to UNCTAD’s role in contributing to U.N. investigations of the causes and effects of the global economic crisis.

In addition to the EU, industrialised countries at the Doha conference are represented by the JUSCANZ (JZ) group, made up of Japan, the United States, Switzerland, South Korea, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway and Liechtenstein.

Both the EU and JZ are demanding the elimination of two paragraphs from the draft text, one on the global crisis and one on the link between the financial sector and the real economy.

They are also opposed to a reference to the need to regulate financial markets and to adopt mechanisms to prevent and overcome crises.

Supachai’s view clashed with that of the industrialised country groups, as his report, presented to the conference on Saturday, warned against the dangers of globalisation and development processes driven by international finance.

The disagreements between developing and industrialised countries are even more acute in the debate about the accords reached at the previous UNCTAD session four years ago, held in Accra, Ghana.

The G77 wants to reaffirm and strengthen the Accra Accord, so that UNCTAD can continue with its present work, following the direction laid down by its secretariat.

But the JZ wants all reference to reaffirming the Accra agreement eliminated from the outcome document, and proposes that the accord be reviewed.

The industrialised countries also reject paragraphs about the management and resolution of national debts, the responsibilities of lenders and borrowers, and an orderly solution to the debt crisis.

The JZ group opposed a section of text ratifying the continuance of UNCTAD services for the Global System of Trade Preferences Among Developing Countries (GSTP), the first scheme of preferential trade between nations of the South.

The GSTP was created in 1988 and comprises 42 countries and the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, which are also individual members of the global system.

The industrialised countries are also questioning the assistance UNCTAD provides developing nations on the negotiation of regional trade agreements and their consequences.

The JZ group wants to delete reference in the outcome document to the role of industrialisation policies in development processes.

It also wants to alter text saying foreign direct investment should contribute to development according to the priorities and laws of recipient countries, insisting that it simply state that developing nations need to attract investment.

The sources at the Doha meeting said the industrialised world’s initiatives would deprive UNCTAD of any participation on trade and environment issues, as well as in the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) to be held in Rio de Janeiro in June, and on work in the area of the green economy and research on climate and development.

On intellectual property rights in relation to development, the EU and JZ requested the deletion of a reference to UNCTAD’s role in research into benefit sharing in the areas of traditional knowledge and genetic resources.

The industrialised countries are making extremely high demands, and they will not accept leaving Doha empty-handed on Thursday Apr. 26 when the 13th UNCTAD session ends, the sources said.

Therefore, Supachai’s fears about the possible fate of UNCTAD may not be exaggerated, they said.

The reason the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is under attack is that rich countries do not want an organisation that carries out independent analysis, Rubens Ricupero, UNCTAD secretary general from 1995 to 2004, told IPS.

Credit: UNCTAD

In recent weeks UNCTAD has come under fire from powerful industrialised countries that wish to modify its mandate, which since its creation in 1964 has been the defence of the interests of poor nations.

According to officials in countries of the global South, the nations of the industrialised North see the agency’s advice on finances, the environment, food security, intellectual property and development as running counter to their own free market and free trade agenda.

Around 50 former senior UNCTAD staff members, including Ricupero, issued a statement Wednesday Apr. 11 in Geneva at a meeting with five journalists, including IPS, denouncing efforts to silence the United Nations agency.

Turkish researcher Yilmaz Akyuz, one of the signatories of the statement titled “Silencing the message or the messenger … or both?”, attributed the attempt to gag UNCTAD to leading countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), known as the “rich nations club”.

The endeavour to stifle UNCTAD is happening just when a broadly participative debate on the governance of international finance and of the entire world economy is desperately needed, said Akyuz, a former chief economist at UNCTAD and now chief economist at the South Centre, an organisation of developing countries based in Geneva.

The collective statement says that UNCTAD’s analyses of global macroeconomic issues with a development perspective have for years “provided an alternative view to that offered by the World Bank and the IMF controlled by the West.”

UNCTAD was “ahead of the curve in its warnings of how global finance was trumping the real economy”: it forecast the 1994-1995 Mexican crisis, the East Asian crisis of 1997 and the late 2001 financial and economic collapse in Argentina, the document says.

“No organisation correctly foresaw the current crisis, and no organisation has a magic wand to deal with present difficulties,” the communiqué says. “But it is unquestionable that the crisis originated in and is widespread among the countries that now wish to stifle debate about global economic policies, despite their own manifest failings in this area.”

John Burley, who worked for UNCTAD for 17 years in senior positions, and who coordinated the letter, said the attack by rich countries is aimed at important principles, such as the plurality of viewpoints in the international system, and freedom of speech in the organisation.

The attack, which will be debated at the 13th session of UNCTAD to be held in Doha, the capital of Qatar, Apr. 21-26, is not the first onslaught the organisation has had to contend with, said Burley.

Ricupero’s experience is illustrative. “When I arrived at UNCTAD in 1995 there was already a conspiracy afoot by ‘the usual suspects,’ the rich countries – not to change the mandate as they want to now, but to simply suppress the organisation they have never accepted since its inception,” he told IPS in an interview Tuesday Apr. 10.

The pretext then was the creation, a few months earlier, of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which supposedly would make UNCTAD superfluous.

“A clear indication of what I am saying is that the post of secretary general had been left vacant for nearly a year, something that had never happened before and has never happened since,” he said.

That threat was overcome by means of a vigorous reaction that “we launched with the backing of many developing countries,” Ricupero said.

The Brazilian politician and diplomat particularly mentioned the support from South Africa, which was then at the height of its international prestige under the presidency of Nelson Mandela (1994-1999).

The holding of the 9th session of UNCTAD in the northern South African city of Midrand in 1996 thwarted the conspiracy for a time, Ricupero said.

But the attacks were repeated later under a different guise, nearly always with the goal of limiting the agency’s mandate, he said.

“It is an open secret that over the past few decades, UNCTAD was deprived of the opportunity to work on areas that had been its original raison d’être, like commodities,” said Ricupero.

The pretexts for the rich countries’ attacks have varied over time, he said. They tend to be dressed up in false arguments such as the inefficiency of the secretariat, or the duplication of efforts with other organisations.

But in Ricupero’s view, the true motive is very different. “The rich countries don’t like an organisation that is outside their control, and has the capacity for independent analysis, giving advice to African countries, for instance, against the neocolonialist intentions of France and of European countries in general,” he said.

“The more the facts prove UNCTAD right in its forecasts, about the risks of finance-driven globalisation, for example, the more those who side with the powers responsible for the lamentable state of anarchy of the international monetary and financial system will try to silence it,” he said.

Against this continuing danger, there is only one weapon, “unity and vigorous reaction from developing countries,” he said.

Unfortunately, every time the rich countries have succeeded in cutting back UNCTAD’s powers, it has mainly been due to “the relative lack of interest, or qualifications, or the inefficiency, or lack of courage” of those who should be the first to defend “the organisation that exists to serve the world’s defenceless poor,” he concluded.

By Gustavo Capdevila and - -
GENEVA, Mar 7 2012 (IPS)

Social unrest and demands for change are not a negative thing during times of crisis like today, says Rubens Ricupero, a prominent Brazilian diplomat and intellectual.

Full recovery of the global economy will take at least four or five years, says former head of UNCTAD Rubens Ricupero. Credit: UNCTAD

Ricupero, who has a long and distinguished diplomatic career in Brazil, where he has held several ministerial posts as well, also says numerous multilateral negotiations, like the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Doha Round of talks, will remain stalled.

The deadlock, he says, is related to an ongoing phenomenon: a shift in global power from the North Atlantic to the Asia-Pacific region.

In these circumstances, it is difficult to reach a consensus on deeper issues in multilateral talks, Ricupero told IPS in this exclusive interview.

Q: What is your assessment of the global situation? A: In the industrialised countries, I don’t think there can be much hope of short-term recovery. The Europeans do not even have a strategy to cope with the problems of the highly indebted countries. It will take quite a lot of suffering before any solution is reached.

Growth has practically disappeared in Germany, the country that matters. In others, like Italy and the Netherlands, there is recession. It looks like this will be another lost year for Europe.

Q: And in the United States? A: A lot will depend on the presidential elections in November. It’s not possible to predict the outcome, but I would venture to say President Barack Obama will be reelected.

The U.S. economy is starting to show signs of recovery, albeit slow and insufficient in terms of job creation, but the pace should pick up somewhat over the next few years.

Q: So the outlook is discouraging. A: This year and the next we won’t see major differences with respect to the dichotomy we have experienced in recent times. The economies of the developing South continue to grow, particularly China, India and other Asian countries, and as a result countries of Latin America and the Middle East are growing as well. I don’t see on the horizon either a major threat of a catastrophe like the collapse of the Lehman Brothers in 2008 or a promising recovery.

Q: Will it be a long wait? A: Like in the 1930s, recovery will take a while. Full recovery of the global economy as a whole won’t be seen for at least four or five years.

Q: Does that go for Latin America as well? A: No. That doesn’t mean other regions won’t be able to recover earlier. You have to keep in mind that in the 1930s, with a few exceptions, like Argentina, which suffered more because of its dependence on exports to Great Britain and its decision to try to pay off its debt, the rest of the countries of Latin America were in a good position, like Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Peru and Mexico.

Q: Is the outlook similar today? A: I see two differences in our favour. First, in 1930 we didn’t have the current phenomenon of the economic growth in China, India and other Asian countries. The world basically depended on the industrialised countries.

The second difference is that in the 1930s, the countries of Latin America were already crushed by heavy foreign debt, and the great majority of countries in the region were unable to meet their payments.

This time we are starting out the decade in an incomparably better situation, with strong reserves, a low level of debt, and a more favourable internal situation in terms of growth, employment and improved social indices.

I’m talking about the situation in countries like Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Peru, not so much about those that depend more directly on the U.S. market – the countries in the northern part of the region.

Q: International negotiations are running up against serious difficulties in questions like disarmament, trade and the environment. What is your impression of the multilateral system? A: Things are not going well because there is a deadlock on nearly all of the major issues.

Q: What would you say are the reasons for that? A: There are two overlapping phenomena. One is circumstantial: the economic crisis that sooner or later will have to come to an end. Another runs deeper: for years we have been seeing a shift in the world’s centre of economic and demographic gravity from the North Atlantic to the Asia-Pacific region.

This is a phenomenon that the great French historian Fernand Braudel (1902-1985) would have called a very long-term secular tendency, such as in the case of the shift in the centre of world trade from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic in the 16th century, at the time of the big discoveries.

Q: Is that shift in power irreversible? A: It won’t stop happening. On the contrary, the short-term crises are fuelling it, reinforcing it. As the United States gets weaker economically, this obviously greatly favours the accumulation of reserves and financial power in countries like China.

It is at those rare times in history, which occur once every two or three centuries, that there is a change in global distribution. And at those times a consensus on how to cope with the deeper underlying issues is less likely to be reached in the multilateral bodies.

Q: Give me more details about this phenomenon. A: Until recently, the United States was an arbiter making the decisions in the world. It was the hegemonic power that guaranteed the liberal economic order.

It played that role since the end of World War II, with the reorganisation of the economic and financial system – the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the predecessor of the WTO, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) – and of the political system by means of the United Nations charter.

Throughout the long Cold War, the United States continued to be the country that guaranteed the production of results in the major conferences that gave rise to the so-called international regimes. That was so much the case that when the United States abstained, as in the case of law of the sea, things did not move forward.

Q: What is the new reality? A: Today the United States is starting to reassess its positions, to feel a stronger need to focus on its domestic problems, to change its military strategy. It is shifting the focus away from the Middle East and Islamic issues to Asia. And it is starting to realise that the big strategic adversary, in the long run, is China, not Al Qaeda or the Islamists.

So in this process no one is appearing to play the role of arbiter. That’s what is being seen in the incidents involving Syria in the U.N. Security Council, and also in the other major international negotiations.

Q: Are we looking at an imminent shift in power? A: No, I don’t see the possibility of a change in the short term. If Obama is reelected, he will pay more attention to big domestic problems, like he has been doing. And China and India are still facing huge challenges. They are not ready, nor do they want, to assume the weight of that responsibility.

It is a very difficult moment, which fits the great Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci’s (1891-1937) definition of crisis. Gramsci said crisis is the moment when the old world is dying away, and the new world is struggling to come forth, and in that interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.

That is what we are experiencing now. Also the fact that even the industrialised countries have started to discuss the crisis of capitalism. But they can’t come up with a solution because the same people who created the crisis are still dealing the cards.

Q: Do you think there will be some kind of reaction? A: Things are going to be very agitated over the next few years. Not in the sense of a global conflict, but in this kind of thing we are seeing: dissatisfaction, indignation, unrest, a desire for change. Which isn’t negative, because we must not ever lose sight of the fact that history is driven by times of difficulty.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say, like the Marxists, that violence drives history. But dissatisfaction does. It is at the root of the big global changes, like the French Revolution, the Protestant Reformation, the Rennaissance. During those times people were dissatisfied with how they were living.

Q: And today? A: That social unrest can be a highly creative force. It is upsetting for those who live during those periods, because it questions all values, all habits, but it is creative.

I don’t think it’s bad for people not to feel satisfied with a system that is based to such an extent on injustice and the lack of equality. People have to rebel against what the bankers have done, and are still doing.

That is why I have said: more power to the men and women who fight for an economy with greater equity, justice and balance. People must not resign themselves to this.

Q: Could the crisis affect the survival of the multilateral bodies? A: The U.N. in particular has demonstrated great flexibility. I’ll mention two episodes: In 1971, when communist China was admitted to and became a permanent member of the Security Council, it was said at the time, in the period following the Cultural Revolution, that it would cause great instability in the world. And that did not happen.

And the second: the end of communism brought about a total change in the map of the world. The Soviet Union fell apart into I don’t know how many pieces. The Yugoslav federation did too. And all of that happened with a relatively contained degree of violence, except in the case of the Yugoslavians, for other reasons.

At both times, what happened was that the organisations, particularly those of the U.N., managed to adapt to the changes. What is bad is when an organisation is so rigid that it cannot adapt, and it perishes.

The U.N. has that flexibility, which at times causes a great deal of perplexity and dissatisfaction.

Q: Do you believe the financial organisations, like the IMF, World Bank and WTO, will survive intact? A: No. I hope this movement demanding change will modify not only the internal economies of countries, in the sense of moving away from that market fundamentalism, but that it will also change the institutions that have represented that fundamentalist spirit.

And in order for that to happen, the central role has to be played by people around the world – not only in the (developing) South – who are aware of the problem, that it is not possible to continue with an organisation that foments the growth of inequality.

Excerpt:

Full recovery of the global economy will take at least four or five years, says former head of UNCTAD Rubens Ricupero. Credit: UNCTAD

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Mar 5 2012 (IPS)

Social unrest and demands for change are not a negative thing during times of crisis like today, says Rubens Ricupero, a Brazilian diplomat and thinker.

The former secretary general (1995-2004) of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) predicts that recovery from the current global economic crisis will take at least four or five years.

Ricupero, who has a long and distinguished diplomatic career in Brazil, where he has held several ministerial posts as well, also says numerous multilateral negotiations, like the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Doha Round of talks, will remain stalled.

The deadlock, he says, is related to an ongoing phenomenon: a shift in global power from the North Atlantic to the Asia-Pacific region.

In these circumstances, it is difficult to reach a consensus on deeper issues in multilateral talks, Ricupero told IPS in this exclusive interview.

Q: What is your assessment of the global situation?

A: In the industrialised countries, I don’t think there can be much hope of short-term recovery. The Europeans do not even have a strategy to cope with the problems of the highly indebted countries. It will take quite a lot of suffering before any solution is reached.

Growth has practically disappeared in Germany, the country that matters. In others, like Italy and the Netherlands, there is recession. It looks like this will be another lost year for Europe.

Q: And in the United States?

A: A lot will depend on the presidential elections in November. It’s not possible to predict the outcome, but I would venture to say President Barack Obama will be reelected.

The U.S. economy is starting to show signs of recovery, albeit slow and insufficient in terms of job creation, but the pace should pick up somewhat over the next few years.

Q: So the outlook is discouraging.

A: This year and the next we won’t see major differences with respect to the dichotomy we have experienced in recent times. The economies of the developing South continue to grow, particularly China, India and other Asian countries, and as a result countries of Latin America and the Middle East are growing as well. I don’t see on the horizon either a major threat of a catastrophe like the collapse of the Lehman Brothers in 2008 or a promising recovery.

Q: Will it be a long wait?

A: Like in the 1930s, recovery will take a while. Full recovery of the global economy as a whole won’t be seen for at least four or five years.

Q: Does that go for Latin America as well?

A: No. That doesn’t mean other regions won’t be able to recover earlier. You have to keep in mind that in the 1930s, with a few exceptions, like Argentina, which suffered more because of its dependence on exports to Great Britain and its decision to try to pay off its debt, the rest of the countries of Latin America were in a good position, like Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Peru and Mexico.

Q: Is the outlook similar today?

A: I see two differences in our favour. First, in 1930 we didn’t have the current phenomenon of the economic growth in China, India and other Asian countries. The world basically depended on the industrialised countries.

The second difference is that in the 1930s, the countries of Latin America were already crushed by heavy foreign debt, and the great majority of countries in the region were unable to meet their payments.

This time we are starting out the decade in an incomparably better situation, with strong reserves, a low level of debt, and a more favourable internal situation in terms of growth, employment and improved social indices.

I’m talking about the situation in countries like Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Peru, not so much about those that depend more directly on the U.S. market – the countries in the northern part of the region.

Q: International negotiations are running up against serious difficulties in questions like disarmament, trade and the environment. What is your impression of the multilateral system?

A: Things are not going well because there is a deadlock on nearly all of the major issues.

Q: What would you say are the reasons for that?

A: There are two overlapping phenomena. One is circumstantial: the economic crisis that sooner or later will have to come to an end. Another runs deeper: for years we have been seeing a shift in the world’s centre of economic and demographic gravity from the North Atlantic to the Asia-Pacific region.

This is a phenomenon that the great French historian Fernand Braudel (1902-1985) would have called a very long-term secular tendency, such as in the case of the shift in the centre of world trade from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic in the 16th century, at the time of the big discoveries.

Q: Is that shift in power irreversible?

A: It won’t stop happening. On the contrary, the short-term crises are fuelling it, reinforcing it. As the United States gets weaker economically, this obviously greatly favours the accumulation of reserves and financial power in countries like China.

It is at those rare times in history, which occur once every two or three centuries, that there is a change in global distribution. And at those times a consensus on how to cope with the deeper underlying issues is less likely to be reached in the multilateral bodies.

Q: Give me more details about this phenomenon.

A: Until recently, the United States was an arbiter making the decisions in the world. It was the hegemonic power that guaranteed the liberal economic order.

It played that role since the end of World War II, with the reorganisation of the economic and financial system – the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the predecessor of the WTO, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) – and of the political system by means of the United Nations charter.

Throughout the long Cold War, the United States continued to be the country that guaranteed the production of results in the major conferences that gave rise to the so-called international regimes. That was so much the case that when the United States abstained, as in the case of law of the sea, things did not move forward.

Q: What is the new reality?

A: Today the United States is starting to reassess its positions, to feel a stronger need to focus on its domestic problems, to change its military strategy. It is shifting the focus away from the Middle East and Islamic issues to Asia. And it is starting to realise that the big strategic adversary, in the long run, is China, not Al Qaeda or the Islamists.

So in this process no one is appearing to play the role of arbiter. That’s what is being seen in the incidents involving Syria in the U.N. Security Council, and also in the other major international negotiations.

Q: Are we looking at an imminent shift in power?

A: No, I don’t see the possibility of a change in the short term. If Obama is reelected, he will pay more attention to big domestic problems, like he has been doing. And China and India are still facing huge challenges. They are not ready, nor do they want, to assume the weight of that responsibility.

It is a very difficult moment, which fits the great Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci’s (1891-1937) definition of crisis. Gramsci said crisis is the moment when the old world is dying away, and the new world is struggling to come forth, and in that interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.

That is what we are experiencing now. Also the fact that even the industrialised countries have started to discuss the crisis of capitalism. But they can’t come up with a solution because the same people who created the crisis are still dealing the cards.

Q: Do you think there will be some kind of reaction?

A: Things are going to be very agitated over the next few years. Not in the sense of a global conflict, but in this kind of thing we are seeing: dissatisfaction, indignation, unrest, a desire for change. Which isn’t negative, because we must not ever lose sight of the fact that history is driven by times of difficulty.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say, like the Marxists, that violence drives history. But dissatisfaction does. It is at the root of the big global changes, like the French Revolution, the Protestant Reformation, the Rennaissance. During those times people were dissatisfied with how they were living.

Q: And today?

A: That social unrest can be a highly creative force. It is upsetting for those who live during those periods, because it questions all values, all habits, but it is creative.

I don’t think it’s bad for people not to feel satisfied with a system that is based to such an extent on injustice and the lack of equality. People have to rebel against what the bankers have done, and are still doing.

That is why I have said: more power to the men and women who fight for an economy with greater equity, justice and balance. People must not resign themselves to this.

Q: Could the crisis affect the survival of the multilateral bodies?

A: The U.N. in particular has demonstrated great flexibility. I’ll mention two episodes: In 1971, when communist China was admitted to and became a permanent member of the Security Council, it was said at the time, in the period following the Cultural Revolution, that it would cause great instability in the world. And that did not happen.

And the second: the end of communism brought about a total change in the map of the world. The Soviet Union fell apart into I don’t know how many pieces. The Yugoslav federation did too. And all of that happened with a relatively contained degree of violence, except in the case of the Yugoslavians, for other reasons.

At both times, what happened was that the organisations, particularly those of the U.N., managed to adapt to the changes. What is bad is when an organisation is so rigid that it cannot adapt, and it perishes.

The U.N. has that flexibility, which at times causes a great deal of perplexity and dissatisfaction.

Q: Do you believe the financial organisations, like the IMF, World Bank and WTO, will survive intact?

A: No. I hope this movement demanding change will modify not only the internal economies of countries, in the sense of moving away from that market fundamentalism, but that it will also change the institutions that have represented that fundamentalist spirit.

And in order for that to happen, the central role has to be played by people around the world – not only in the (developing) South – who are aware of the problem, that it is not possible to continue with an organisation that foments the growth of inequality.

Research and development, unlike other branches of productive activity, is resisting the ravages of one of the worst financial and economic crises to affect the world in the last 80 years.

This is a conclusion from the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) Report for 2011, subtitled “The Changing Face of Innovation”, which provides figures for the rate of applications for registering patents, trade marks and industrial designs in 2010 and the first nine months of 2011.

The 2010 statistics from the U.N. agency indicate that China and the United States are the leaders in innovation, but patent application filings from middle income countries have also grown significantly.

WIPO Director General Francis Gurry told IPS that some middle income countries, which belong mainly to the developing world, have markedly improved their R&D performance.

Gurry mentioned Brazil, India, Turkey, Malaysia and, of course, China, currently the global number one for intellectual property applications filed by resident citizens or companies.

The progress of these countries is linked to policies implemented by WIPO since 2007, when it adopted its Development Agenda, fostering a culture of development in all its activities, Gurry said.

“But we are definitely seeing a big new improvement in the middle income countries’ participation in the innovation system,” he said.

Brazil, India and other countries of the global South supported the Development Agenda, aimed at flexibilising rigid intellectual property regulations and facilitating use of the system by developing countries.

China is leading the world in intellectual property activity by residents of the country, a measure of domestic innovation, in all three areas: patents, trade marks and designs. Behind it come the largest industrialised countries, with India taking 10th place.

Turkey heads the next group of 10 countries, followed by Spain and Brazil, with the rest being rich nations of the North. The third group of 10 includes Thailand, Mexico and Argentina, again interspersed with industrialised nations.

The WIPO report says that patent applications in low and middle income economies like Colombia, the Philippines, Ukraine and Vietnam rose by 10 percent or more in 2010, after having fallen in 2009 along with most global intellectual property activity.

There was a strong recovery in global intellectual property activity in 2010, with a growth rate for patents of 7.2 percent, 11.8 percent for trade marks and 13 percent for industrial designs, while the world economy grew by 5.1 percent over that time.

Gurry said that 80 percent of the recovery in patent applications was driven by the United States and, especially, China.

Patent applications in China grew by 24.3 percent in 2010. And for the decade from 2001 to 2010, the Asian giant averaged an annual growth rate of 22.6 percent in patent applications filed.

“So, in the year 2001 the number of patent applications filed in China was 63,000. In 2010 it was 390,000. That’s an extraordinary difference in the course of one decade,” Gurry said.

As for trade mark registrations, WIPO says they are a much more immediate reflection of economic conditions, with a shorter time lag than patents, making trade marks to some extent the leading indicators of what is happening in an economy. Trade mark registrations in developing countries have made relative advances in WIPO rankings compared with the industrialised countries.

Gurry said trade marks “really represent a new product or a new company. In either case, the number of trade mark applications has a direct correlation with the amount of new products being put on the market or the number of big companies being formed.

“Therefore, trade marks are a very dynamic indicator of how healthy the economy is,” he said. “So when we see trade marks growing by nearly 12 percent over 2010, you can see that the economy is rebounding very well, generally.”

Statistics for 2011 are not yet available from the national offices, but WIPO estimates that in the first nine months of this year there has been significant growth in intellectual property registrations.

International patent applications increased by about 10 percent in the first nine months of 2011, and international trade mark applications were up by around seven percent.

“What will happen with the turbulence caused by the sovereign debt crisis is another story,” said Gurry. “I think the essence of the situation is that it’s unpredictable. We are not sure what’s happening.

“In the advanced economies the rate of increase of investment in intangible assets is greater than the growth rate of investment in tangible goods. When you have more investment in intangibles, of course there is more interest in protection of the intangibles, namely intellectual property.”

The latest estimates for R&D – the sources of innovation and intellectual property – are positive for 2012, with global spending projected to grow by approximately five percent, he said.

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Oct 10 2011 (IPS)

Capital punishment continues to exist because in some countries people are barraged with propaganda depicting it as a curb on crime, which it is not, said Federico Mayor Zaragoza, chair of an international commission against the death penalty that inaugurated its new headquarters in Geneva Monday.

Mayor Zaragoza, director general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) from 1987 to 1999, said that is the case of right-wing Guatemalan presidential candidate Otto Pérez Molina, a retired general favoured to win the Nov. 6 runoff who has pledged to restore the death penalty to clamp down on rampant violent crime.

At the opening of the fourth meeting of the International Commission against the Death Penalty (ICDP), made up of high-ranking personalities from various countries, Mayor Zaragoza told IPS that reactions like Pérez Molina’s might be comprehensible “because these are places where the situation is extremely difficult, especially as a result of drug trafficking,” as well as paramilitary movements. That is also the case in Mexico, he added.

But the death penalty has no dissuasive effect, just as a rise in the price of drugs does not curtail consumption, he said.

The ICDP is focusing in its meeting this week on the application of capital punishment in cases involving drug-related crimes, said another member of the commission, Ruth Dreifuss, who was president of the Swiss Confederation in 1999.

The situation in Africa, where there is an emerging trend away from the death penalty, is another question on the commission’s agenda.

Europe and South America are virtually free of the death penalty, with the exceptions of Belarus and Guyana, respectively. In both regions, said Dreifuss, the countries have supported each other in the will to do away with capital punishment.

The commission will also discuss the case of China, where the members hope a first step taken will be the provision of information on the use of the death penalty.

Although it is known that China is by far the world leader in capital punishment, there are no figures on just how widely it is used – to the extent that global rights watchdog Amnesty International will only say the country executes “thousands”, because “the information does not exist,” said Dreifuss.

The former Swiss leader said the ICDP is now based in Switzerland because her country is a staunch opponent of the death penalty. Like many other countries, it considers the death penalty a cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment that violates human rights.

At the international level there is a contradiction because although all cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment is prohibited by the Torture Convention and other global treaties, 58 countries still have the death penalty on their books, she said.

So far, 104 countries have abolished the death penalty while another 35 have a moratorium on executions, Mayor Zaragoza pointed out. “That makes a total of 139 countries without executions, which is good news,” he enthused.

The ultimate goal of the ICDP and other institutions opposed to the death penalty is complete abolition, said Dreifuss.

But the commission has set a more immediate target: a global moratorium by 2015. Many countries have taken the first step on the way to abolition – suspending executions.

Dreifuss said that while a universal moratorium is gaining support year by year in the U.N. General Assembly, “it is still far from being recognised by all.”

The moratorium should also extend to the handing down of death sentences, and not only to executions, she said.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay concurred, in a statement issued on the occasion of the World Day against the Death Penalty, celebrated Monday, Oct. 10.

“Abolishing the death penalty,” she said “is a long process for many countries, which often only comes to closure after a period of difficult and even acrimonious national debate. Until they reach that point, I urge those States still employing the death penalty to place a formal moratorium on its use with a view to ultimately scrap the punishment altogether everywhere.”

She also expressed her point of view to the members of the ICDP who visited her at OHCHR headquarters in the Palais Wilson on the shores of Lake Leman.

One of the reasons the ICDP secretariat was moved from Madrid to Geneva was to boost its visibility among the U.N. agencies and international organisations based in this Swiss city.

Besides Mayor Zaragoza and Dreifuss, the commission includes former Italian prime minister Giuliano Amato; former Haitian prime minister Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis; former foreign minister of Algeria Mohammed Bedjaoui; former French justice minister Robert Badinter; and former Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

The other members are former U.N. high commissioner for human rights Louise Arbour, from Canada; former deputy secretary for human rights in Argentina Rodolfo Mattarollo; the chairwoman of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission, Asma Jahangir; UNESCO chair on philosophy and human rights Ioanna Kuçuradi from Turkey; and former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who in 2009 added his state to the list of 15 U.S. states to abolish the death penalty.

Excerpt:

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Aug 10 2011 (IPS)

The United Nations Human Rights Council should accept responsibility, on behalf of the world forum, for the famine spreading through eastern Africa, and should call for member countries’ cooperation to overcome the desperate food crisis there, experts said.

Severely malnourished babies in Africa. Credit: Rose Ogola/WFP

At its seventh session, which opened in Geneva Monday Aug. 8 and ends Friday Aug. 12, the advisory committee decided to send a letter to the Human Rights Council requesting that it consider holding a special session, in accordance with Bengoa’s proposal.

Bengoa described to IPS the famine conditions in five countries in the region: Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, which require immediate action by the Council, the United Nations’ top human rights body.

However, the World Food Programme (WFP) “is utterly bankrupt at the moment,” Bengoa said.

Left in the lurch by defaulting donors, the WFP is in “a scandalous situation, and it barely has enough food for the next few days,” he said.

Jean Ziegler of Switzerland, another expert on the advisory committee, and a former U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food (2000-2008), said Bengoa’s idea for the Council to issue a declaration about the famine “is a useful proposal, because the U.N. and non-governmental organisations are helpless in the face of this appalling catastrophe.”

Over the past two years the WFP’s budgeted income has been pruned by half, Ziegler told IPS. In 2008 it received six billion dollars, but this year it has only 2.8 billion dollars in hand, he said.

Major Western donor countries have bailed out their banks to the tune of billions of dollars, while drastically cutting down on development aid, and especially emergency assistance, he said.

In consequence, Ziegler said, the WFP is having to refuse help to refugees arriving at the camps. The WFP simply lacks the money to help the number of people in need.

Tens of thousands of people have likely died since April, the expert said. According to the WFP, 11 million people are in urgent need of food.

In the circumstances, a declaration from the U.N. Human Rights Council might stir some consciences and prompt people to act. It would at least force countries – officially committed to protecting the human right to food – to pay their contributions to the WFP, Ziegler hoped.

Bengoa, who describes himself as “pragmatic”, acknowledged that the situation is complex, because at the moment the rest of the world is concerned about the economic crisis in the United States and other rich countries of the North.

“Obviously, the purse strings are tightly tied and will not be loosened soon. Feeding starving children in the emergency camps in Africa is not going to improve the crises in the U.S. or Europe,” he said.

Nevertheless, “it is very important for the advisory committee to make a statement, and for the Council to see, what is really happening in the camps filled with starving refugees, where people are under the U.N.’s responsibility. These people are barely getting the minimum daily calorie intake. They are on starvation rations,” said Bengoa.

To sum up, “this is a case of United Nations responsibility,” and the U.N. must issue an urgent call to its member countries, he stressed.

Another aspect of the crisis highlighted by Bengoa is the link with broader development issues, like the consequences of the absence of development programmes in east Africa and the lack of international aid and cooperation. “All these issues are exhaustively discussed in theory here at the international forums, but in reality, they are not put into practice,” he said.

The only realistic plan in this context, which would be a real success if achieved, “is an urgent meeting of the Human Rights Council where rich countries make a commitment, at least by expressing willingness to donate, or participate with the intent to contribute, and some may even name a figure for that contribution,” the expert said.

“One can allege that such commitments will not be fulfilled either, but at least they will be recorded on paper. France’s silos are full; it’s not as if Europe had no food to send to Africa,” Bengoa said.

The March 2006 U.N. General Assembly resolution that created the Human Rights Council, which replaced the former Commission on Human Rights, stipulates that if 17 states request a special meeting of the Council on a current, serious and immediate problem involving human rights violations, the Council must convene the extraordinary meeting.

Right now, “the right to food of 12 million people in five countries is being breached,” Ziegler said, so Bengoa’s proposal “is absolutely in accordance with the Council’s mandate,” he said.

Ziegler pointed out that none of the five affected countries have a stock of food reserves, because the drought has dragged on for five years, with harvests diminishing gradually to vanishing point. This shows that the present situation could have been foreseen, he said.

“They have no food reserves because food commodity prices have soared due to speculation, because hedge fund capital has flown from financial markets that were making big losses, into agricultural commodity exchanges,” he said.

When countries cannot afford to stockpile emergency food reserves because of high prices, people’s right to food is negated, the expert said. “So, speculation with the prices of basic foods – rice, maize and wheat, which provide 75 percent of normal consumption – should be banned,” he said.

Ziegler put forward his interpretation of some recent episodes on the international financial market related to the present crisis in the Horn of Africa.

Greece was recently granted a 157 billion dollar financial bailout, he noted – money that was sent to Greece so it could pay Western banks what they were owed. Meanwhile, at a conference in Nairobi, the WFP asked for 4.2 billion dollars for the period Jul. 15 to Aug. 15, and only secured one-third of this amount.

Germany, Italy, Spain and other European countries can forward billions of euros to their banks, Ziegler continued, yet the same countries have slashed their WFP contributions since October 2008.

To restore the right to food, stock market speculation on staple foods must be banned, states must be obliged to honour their statutory obligations under the convention establishing the WFP, and the debt of countries most affected by the present famine must be drastically reduced, Ziegler said.

Excerpt:

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Jul 26 2011 (IPS)

The United Nations Human Rights Committee confirmed the central role of freedom of expression in human rights, making it clear that it can only be limited in the most exceptional circumstances, and calling for the first time for unrestricted public access to official information.

After two years of debate, the Committee has produced a General Comment that outlines the admissible restrictions on freedom of expression.

Article 19 – the International Centre Against Censorship told IPS in an email exchange with the group’s headquarters in London that it welcomed the Committee’s General Comment.

The organisation is named after Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees freedom of expression, as does the same article in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

Although the General Comment does not discuss specific cases, the interpretations adopted Jul. 21 would apply to incidents involving freedom of expression, such as the violent protests triggered by the 2005 publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad by a newspaper in Denmark, or more recently, the wiretapping scandal involving Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch

“What this General Comment does is, in a very forthright and detailed way, re-emphasise the central role that freedom of expression plays for all human rights,” Michael O’Flaherty, a member of the U.N. Human Rights Committee and rapporteur for the draft General Comment, told IPS in an interview.

In the document, the Committee – whose task is to oversee the compliance of U.N. member states with the ICCPR – “makes clear that freedom of expression can only be limited in the most exceptional circumstances,” the Irish academic human rights lawyer said.

The Committee, which is made up of 18 independent experts, also identified and offered “some detail about the right of access to information,” O’Flaherty added. “And it’s the first time this element of the right has been addressed by the Human Rights Committee, and in fact it’s been very rarely addressed in international human rights law before now.”

Article 19 Senior Legal Officer Sejal Parmar told IPS that the organisation welcomed “the positive recognition of the right of access to information as a human right and important dimension of freedom of expression” and “the affirmation that any restrictions on websites, internet-based media and information systems such as internet service providers should be compatible with freedom of expression.”

The advanced version of the General Comment is to be released in English on Jul. 19, at the end of the Committee’s second annual session. Final approval of the text is to come at the October meeting, when the official translations into the other two working languages, Spanish and French, have been completed.

O’Flaherty said “the strength of the General Comment is evidenced for example in the language that was adopted by the Committee around issues such as blasphemy and insult to religion, where the Committee made clear that limits on freedom of expression for these reasons can only be in the very exceptional situations laid out elsewhere in the (ICCPR) that deal with incitement to hatred and discrimination on religious or racial grounds and so forth.”

Fabián Salvioli, another member of the Committee, said it did not linger on specific questions, like the Mohammad cartoons.

That was not necessary, he told IPS, “because the paragraph on blasphemy is very clear. Statements and other forms of expression, even offensive ones, should not be penalised, unless they incite hatred, which is something different.”

Article 20 of the ICCPR says: “Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.”

Article 19, which works worldwide to combat censorship by promoting freedom of expression and access to official information, also applauded the Committee’s decision “to strengthen its position against blasphemy laws.”

Parmar noted that Paragraph 50 of the General Comment states that “prohibitions of displays (of) a lack of respect for a religion or other belief system, including blasphemy laws, are incompatible with the ICCPR except in specific circumstances envisaged in Article 20(2) of the Covenant.”

The senior legal officer added that “it would be impermissible for such laws to discriminate against one or certain religions or belief systems or their adherents over another, or religious believers over non-believers” or “for such laws to prevent or punish criticism of religious leaders or commentary on religious doctrine and tenets of faith.”

Salvioli disagreed with the suggestion that the scandal over phone hacking by Rupert Murdoch’s news¬papers in the United Kingdom may demonstrate the need for limits on freedom of expression.

“Freedom of expression is not absolute, it already has limits,” he said. “It’s a right that is subject to limitations that are clearly outlined in article 19.3 of the ICCPR.”

The Argentine expert stressed that the Committee has jurisprudence on this question, and that any limitation that is not rational or proportionate and that fails to meet the requisites set out in article 19.3 is inconsistent with the ICCPR.

Article 19.3 of the ICCPR establishes that freedom of expression may “be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary: (a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others; (b) For the protection of national security or of public order or of public health or morals.”

“The Committee’s General Comment doesn’t say this, it’s my personal opinion: any restriction should be strictly evaluated,” Salvioli said. “That is, we cannot give a broad interpretation to restrictions of freedom of expression.

“The General Comment also provides indications on the obligation of states to guarantee media pluralism. That is another very important aspect,” he added.

Freedom of expression implies the right of people to receive information from diverse sources, which means the concentration of power, in either state or private monopolies, should be curbed, in the search for fairness, balance and media plurality, he said.

But the Committee does not tell the state how to do this, Salvioli clarified; it merely says it is the state’s responsibility to take measures, “although it should know that it has the obligation to guarantee the broadest possible access to information,” he said.

Another paragraph in the General Comment is dedicated to what are referred to as “memory laws” – which is not a legal term, but “just a quick way to describe the laws,” O’Flaherty said.

The U.N. Committee document “makes clear that no State can tell people what to think,” he said, adding that “therefore any laws that prohibit the publication of versions about the past, or different interpretations of history have to be constructed with great care, so that they don’t violate the freedom of a person to hold an opinion and they don’t go beyond what’s allowed to be restricted under the freedom of expression.”

Salvioli noted that some countries have passed memory laws. But the Committee clearly states in the General Comment that no law can keep people from expressing themselves freely on historical events – although these opinions must not be an apology for national, racial or religious hatred, as the ICCPR establishes, the expert stressed.

IPS asked O’Flaherty: If freedom of expression means access to information, then does it also cover the right to communicate?

“Oh, most certainly,” he responded. “I mentioned access to information just because that’s something new in the General Comment, but the vast bulk of this document is about exactly what you just described. It’s about your central and important human right to communicate with others, necessary not only in itself but because so many other human rights depend on it.”

The General Comment also grapples with the way new technologies are changing expression, he said.

“What we found though, is that even the information platforms are changing, that the fundamental principles that were already clearly addressed with regard to, let’s say, the traditional media, transfer over in a very logical and foreseeable way to the new media as well,” O’Flaherty said.

“Perhaps the one change would be a recognition by us and in the General Comment that the function of journalism is also changing,” he added.

Parmar’s statement says paragraph 50 “is a success for a number of organisations led by Article 19 who had argued that the Human Rights Committee should highlight the inconsistency between Article 19 of the Covenant and blasphemy laws.

“It also follows the decision of the (U.N.) Human Rights Council to reject the concept of ‘defamation of religions’ in a resolution on discrimination against persons based on religion or belief in April 2011,” he added.

Excerpt:

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Jun 27 2011 (IPS)

A second term for Argentine President Cristina Fernández would make it possible to continue ushering in the changes “we want and that our children wanted” when they were forcibly disappeared or murdered during the 1976-1983 dictatorship, said longtime human rights champion Estela de Carlotto.

Estela Barnes de Carlotto Credit: Public domain

Fernández, whose husband Kirchner died suddenly of a heart attack on Oct. 27, 2010, announced Jun. 21 that she will run for another four-year term in the Oct. 23 general elections. She is the current favourite in the polls, well ahead of the candidates of the fragmented opposition.

The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, an association working to find and reunite with their biological families almost 500 (now-grown) children and babies who were kidnapped with their parents or born to political prisoners in clandestine torture centres, was founded by a group that branched off from the world-renowned Mothers of Plaza de Mayo human rights group.

As of April, 103 of the children had been found. They had been illegally adopted by military families or others, and their identities were kept secret by the de facto regime that was responsible for the forced disappearance of about 30,000 people, according to human rights organisations.

Barnes de Carlotto arrived in Geneva Jun. 23 to attend an event at the United Nations to promote the nomination of the Grandmothers’ Association for the Nobel Peace Prize.

She sat down with IPS to discuss some of the most topical human rights issues in Argentina, as well as current political affairs.

Q: What was the Grandmothers’ reaction to the news that Fernández would stand for re-election? A: The Grandmothers’ Association was delighted. It’s very good news. We have been very supportive of both Kirchner and Cristina’s administrations, not as a political party but because of the decisions of state they have taken on human rights issues.

There has never been such decisiveness, openness and awareness within the state for solving and responding to our demands, for instance the repeal of the “Full Stop” and “Due Obedience” laws (the amnesty laws passed in the late 1980s that let military human rights violators off the hook).

They also converted the clandestine torture and detention centre in the Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA, in the Argentine capital) into a museum of memory, like other concentration camps all over the country that have now become memorials.

In addition, (the two ‘Kirchnerista’ presidencies) made reparations for human rights violations, held consultations, showed respect, and opened up the government house to every human rights event held to make reparations.

We really appreciate these actions, and we firmly believe that if Cristina can continue her policies for four more years, the kind of country that we want will be consolidated. At bottom it was also what our children wanted: social justice, the elimination of poverty and a decent life for all, not a wealthy one but a dignified one, in Argentina.

Q: Human rights organisations in Argentina have been shaken in recent weeks by the legal charges that Sergio Schoklender, the financial manager and legal adviser of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, his brother Pablo and others embezzled the organisation’s funds. What is your view of the case? A: Actually it was something we could see as outsiders, that this young man Schoklender had really bizarre attitudes, flaunting money and a luxurious lifestyle. He was also a permanent fixture in the institution, as if he were the one in charge of everything.

This came to light because of a dispute between the two Schoklender brothers. Let’s remember their history: they spent many years in prison for the murder of their parents (in 1981). Well, they did their time, so they have the right to reintegrate into society. But in this particular case it seems they have misappropriated and misused funds from the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Foundation.

This is an injury that touches us all. We have made a public statement about the difference between the two organisations. The Grandmothers’ Association is a completely separate group with our own views and minimum funding; we have clarity in all our actions and our handling of donations is transparent.

We are constantly being audited, and the auditors’ reports congratulate us for our close financial control and our tidy accounts. As the head of the organisation, I have the obligation of knowing whether things are going properly.

But in this case, I don’t know what happened to Mrs. (Hebe de) Bonafini (the head of the Mothers group), who apparently didn’t know what sort of persons she was dealing with. Now love has turned to hate and she also wants the Schoklenders punished to the full extent of the law.

What do the human rights organisations want? For the justice system to find out what happened, and if a crime has been committed, for the guilty parties to be punished.

Q: Another important issue is the investigation of the identity of the young man and woman who were adopted as young children at the height of the dictatorship by Ernestina Herrera de Noble, the main shareholder in the media group that includes the newspaper Clarín. What do you think about their acceptance of DNA testing to determine their parentage, after 10 years of refusals based on legal arguments? A: The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo were very pleased to hear that the lawyers, who say they are defending these young people, announced that they had agreed to have blood, saliva or hairs tested by the National Genetic Data Bank, to compare with all the families waiting to find our grandchildren by this means.

This was a new development because they had systematically refused to be tested for the last 10 years, through their lawyers, using specious arguments, and the judges have allowed the prevarication and prolonged the anguish of not knowing whether they are someone’s missing grandchildren.

We don’t know if they will turn out to be the children of disappeared persons or not, but we have got to the point where we can arrive at the truth. That, for us, is the most important thing.

The case of the Noble children is just another case, to us. It’s not because she’s the owner of the Clarín media group that we “want to take away”, quote unquote, her children. The point is, there were serious irregularities in the adoption process, with the adoption papers of both of them containing flaws and untruths. And their refusal made it all but impossible to find the truth.

Now if they get tested, with all the right safeguards and help from experts for both sides, and the lawyers and everything done according to the law, it will be discovered whether they are the grandchildren we think they are.

If it turns out that they are not, they will carry on with their lives and continue waiting to find out their identity. Once their blood samples have been processed and stored in the Bank, they remain there for the future, so that if there is a late claim from a search for a stolen child, they may perhaps discover the truth. I hope they are our grandchildren, because they will receive nothing but freedom, love and family.

Q: Why have you accepted the initiative by the organisation Grandmothers for Peace, that is campaigning for your association to receive this year’s Nobel Peace Prize? A: Well, the idea was proposed in Argentina many years ago. But it was Senator Daniel Filmus, formerly education minister under Kirchner, who sent our credentials to the Nobel Prize committee, and our nomination was accepted and we became candidates.

We know that we were very well placed last year, but the prize was awarded to (U.S. President Barack) Obama.

Obama should really have refused the prize because of what he was going to do the next day (increasing U.S. troop strength in Iraq). But that is the way things are.

This year we have been nominated again, and we have been invited to come and talk to people, so they can get to know us, because you can’t promote or nominate what you don’t know. And this group Grandmothers for Peace, a non-governmental organisation, has invited us to give a talk, like those we routinely give, not in pursuit of prizes but for the struggle to continue.

Excerpt:

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Jun 16 2011 (IPS)

The world’s tens of millions of domestic workers finally won international recognition that they have the same basic labour rights as other workers, in a convention adopted Thursday at the annual meeting of the ILO.

Latin American domestics and their employers in "Common Place" photo exhibit by photographers Justine Graham and Ruby Rumié. Credit: Daniela Estrada/IPS

That is the main point of the Convention on Domestic Workers, and was the biggest obstacle in the discussions, Karin Pape, coordinator of the International Domestic Workers Network (IDWN), told IPS.

It means “domestic workers are not helpers. We are not maids, and we are not servants. Certainly none of us should be slaves. We are workers,” said Pape.

Although the convention was approved by a vote of 396 to 16, with 63 abstentions, it was not an easy task.

Discussing the difficulties in reaching agreement on the new convention, ILO legal specialist on working conditions Martin Oelz said “It’s a new topic. This is a group of workers that is excluded in many countries from the labour legislation for various reasons – historical reasons, cultural reasons.”

That was a hurdle that had to be broken down, and “it took some time,” he said. The ILO, which has a tripartite system of government – trade unionists, employers and governments – began to deal with the issue as far back as 1965, he pointed out.

“But now, in a relatively short period of two years, this consensus was forged,” Oelz told IPS.

In first place, he said, many of the negotiators did not consider domestic employment as work. But “fortunately we could rely on the experience of a number of countries, for instance South Africa,” which as soon as apartheid came to an end in 1994 moved immediately to adopt legislation to protect domestic workers, he explained.

Oelz said the convention “really provides a basis, a framework” for giving this group of workers the dignity and respect they deserve.

The convention states that domestic work is still undervalued and invisible and is performed mainly by women and girls, who are often immigrants or members of disadvantaged communities and are particularly vulnerable to discrimination with respect to conditions of employment and work, and to other human rights abuses.

Based on national statistics from 117 countries, the ILO estimates that there are at least 53 million domestic workers worldwide, the large majority of whom are women and girls. But because of the hidden nature of this work, experts put the number as high as 100 million.

Somavia said the convention “goes to the heart of the informal economy,” where the lack of decent work is more marked. And domestic workers are no exception, he said.

For example, 56 percent of domestics around the world work in circumstances where there is no legislation limiting their working hours, and 45 percent do not have the right to even one day off a week, the ILO reports.

The countries that ratify the convention will be required to respect domestic workers’ rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining, and will have to take effective measures to eliminate all forms of forced labour, discrimination, and child labour.

The convention will also require governments to ensure that domestic workers understand their rights, preferably through written contracts, which should include the names of the employer and the employees, the terms and conditions of employment, such as the type of work to be performed, and the remuneration, method of calculation and periodicity of payments.

The contract should also specify the provision of food and accommodation, if applicable, the terms of repatriation of migrant workers, if applicable, the normal hours of work, the duration of the contract and the terms and conditions concerning termination of employment.

Under the new ILO standards, domestics have the right to overtime compensation, daily and weekly rest periods, and paid annual leave.

The convention states that “Members shall develop and implement measures for labour inspections” specifying “the conditions under which access to the home may be granted, with due respect for privacy.”

Parties to the new treaty will also be required to set a minimum age for domestic workers, and to make sure that the work of child domestic employees above that age does not interfere with their schooling.

In addition, domestic workers are to have a full day of rest every week, and cannot be forced to stay in the employer’s household during their rest days or annual leave.

“Victory at last,” said Isabel García-Gill, another expert with the IDWN. “Now comes the domestic work for governments: ratify and implement,” she remarked to IPS.

Only one government, that of Swaziland, voted against the convention, while the governments of the Czech Republic, El Salvador, Malaysia, Panama, Singapore, Sudan, Thailand and the UK abstained.

But along with the government of Swaziland, the representatives of the employers of 15 countries cast their votes against the convention.

The only workers’ delegate who did not vote in favour of the convention, but instead abstained, was the representative from Egypt.

During the negotiations, the governments of Bahrain, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates objected to the binding nature of the treaty, but ended up joining the majority in approving the convention.

The general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), Sharan Burrow, said the international union movement “will continue to shed light on the working conditions of migrant domestic workers in the Gulf countries, in particular Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain.”

Burrow, who celebrated the adoption of the convention as “a great victory,” said migrant domestic workers in the Gulf, mainly women from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Indonesia and Ethiopia, face “widespread oppression and violence”.

Excerpt:

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Jun 6 2011 (IPS)

The global reach of the internet, and its ability to transmit information in real time and mobilise populations, creates fear among governments and the powerful, says Frank La Rue, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression.

This has led to increasing restrictions on the use of the internet, by means of sophisticated technologies to block content, and to monitor and identify activists and critics, as well as to the criminalisation of legitimate forms of expression, says La Rue, a Guatemalan human rights lawyer.

During the presentation of his report to the U.N. Human Rights Council Jun. 3, La Rue mentioned information filtering systems used in China that block access to websites containing key words such as “democracy” and “human rights.”

Full access to contents means plurality and diversity when receiving or disseminating information through the internet. It also means a complete absence of censorship, the expert said.

The strength of the internet and the popular uprisings in recent months in North Africa and the Middle East, especially in Tunisia and Egypt, “scares politicians,” he told a press conference.

The special rapporteur stated that these uprisings were not “internet revolutions, but revolutions by the people of Tunisia and the people of Egypt, using internet.”

“So it depends on the population of a nation to change their style of government and development, but it is very clear that with internet, they have a faster means of denouncing human rights violations, struggling against impunity and letting the world know what is happening in real time,” he said.

On a visit to Algeria, La Rue told the government and experts he was convinced that the countries of the region must not neglect recognition of young peoples’ aspirations, including more freedom, more participation, and being heard.

They also want more jobs. Education levels in the region are higher than employment levels, and it is very frustrating for young women and men who have studied for a large part of their lives to find themselves empty-handed, the expert said.

This is “the moment to listen to young people and their demands, but also to give them the space to express themselves,” he stressed.

The internet has become a crucial instrument to facilitate human rights and citizen participation, and therefore it is fundamental for building and strengthening democracy, he added.

La Rue described another form of censorship: the use of criminal law, as in South Korea, where defamation is a crime punishable by up to seven years in prison.

The internet as a means to exercise the right to free expression can only serve its purpose if states develop effective policies to attain universal access to this service, the special rapporteur said.

Without concrete policies and action plans, the internet will become a technological tool that is accessible only to a certain élite, while perpetuating the “digital divide,” La Rue said.

Internet user statistics reflect this imbalance. In contrast to 71.6 internet users per 100 inhabitants in industrialised countries, there are only 21.1 users per 100 inhabitants in developing nations. This disparity is starker in Africa, with only 9.6 users per 100 inhabitants, La Rue said.

The expert said he would devote a special study to internet access in the report he is to present to the next U.N. General Assembly, which meets in September.

The Millennium Development Goals adopted in 2000 by the U.N. member states aim to halve the proportion of people suffering from extreme poverty and hunger, from 1990 levels, guarantee universal primary education, promote gender equality and reduce infant and maternal mortality, among other targets to be met by 2015..

La Rue pointed out they also include the goal of expanding the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communication technologies.

Among the initiatives in this field is the “One Laptop per Child” project, supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

La Rue congratulated Uruguay for distributing computers to the entire primary school population through this project, implemented since 2007 and known in the South American country as “Plan Ceibal”.

And in Rwanda, over 56,000 laptops have been distributed to schoolchildren, with plans for the figure to reach 100,000 by June 2011, La Rue added.

La Rue told IPS he views the concentration of media in too few hands as a threat to freedom of expression, which must be based on diversity and pluralism, he said.

People have the right to construct their own thoughts and develop their own opinions, but to do so they need diverse information, from different points of view and with different characteristics, he said.

“In Latin America we made a historical mistake when we allowed over-commercialisation of the media,” he said. “It’s true that commercial media play an important role, but they should not be the only ones. In my view, it’s important that there be commercial media, community media and public service media, so that there is diversity.”

Excerpt:

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, May 13 2011 (IPS)

The world is experiencing a change in the geographic distribution of diseases. Traditionally, infectious diseases, which claim the lives of so many children, affected poor countries, and noncommunicable diseases like diabetes, cardiac ailments and cancer plagued rich countries.

But the latest statistics released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) Friday show that the income level of nations is no longer so important, and that all countries now face the burden of both kinds of diseases.

Up to now, noncommunicable diseases tended to be identified as the ills of opulence, limited to high-income countries, WHO director of Health Statistics and Informatics Ties Boerma told IPS.

However, due to changes caused by the ageing of the population, improvements brought about by the global effort to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), changes in birth rates and other factors, developing countries are now also fighting non-infectious diseases, he said.

Boerma noted that the phenomenon began in urban areas of developing nations, among the most highly educated population groups, but it is now expanding rapidly.

That was one of the central conclusions reached by WHO experts on the basis of the World Health Statistics 2011 report published Friday.

The study confirms that important progress has been made in improving the main health indicators, fighting poverty, bolstering gender equality and education, and moving towards the other goals outlined in the eight MDGs, which were agreed by the international community in the 2000 United Nations general assembly and have a 2015 deadline, Boerma said.

Over the last 10 years, the rate of improvement of infant and maternal mortality rates – key MDG targets – has been two times faster than the progress made in the 1990s.

Many countries are still lagging, some of them considerably, which means a huge effort is needed over the next five years to meet the MDGs, Boerma said. Nevertheless, the rate of progress is speeding up overall, he added.

In the case of child mortality, the world is only halfway to the MDG target, while in the case of maternal mortality, the world is only one-third of the way there, the WHO expert said.

The question of infant mortality will be evaluated again in September, when WHO and UNICEF, the U.N. children’s fund, release new statistics. For now, “we are still standing at 8.1 million” children under five who died in 2009, Boerma said, compared to 12.4 million in 1990.

With respect to the situation in the Americas, the WHO official said the statistics show that “very good progress” has been made in many countries.

In Brazil, Argentina and Chile, for example, “there have been steady but relatively fast declines in child mortality, and coverage intervention is high. And they also reduced the inequity between the poorest and the richest. Brazil has been a very good case study of where the poorest have benefited,” he said, adding that Mexico has also progressed.

At the other extreme, of course, is Haiti, he said, adding that the health indicators are still worrying in countries like Bolivia and Peru, which have made some advances but “still have a much longer way to go”.

Boerma also cited the case of Cuba, pointing out that although it is not a rich country, it “spends quite a lot on health” and does so “in a very equitable way.

“Everybody has (free) access to health services,” he said. “So in terms of life expectancy it ranks quite high and it has low child mortality and high coverage of intervention. So it is very successful in reaching the whole population and getting good value” for its investment, he added.

The expert also noted that the United States “is not at the top” in terms of health statistics in the Americas. He said “they are at the top when it comes to the amount of money they spend on health. But they are not at the top in terms of getting good results for their investments in health services.

“One reason,” he said, “may be that coverage of the whole population is not so good. So much of the expenditure goes to relatively expensive curative interventions or interventions that benefit a smaller proportion of the population.”

The WHO study also reported that average global life expectancy rose from 64 years in 1990 to 68 in 2009. In poor countries, the average is 56 years, while it has climbed to 80 years in wealthy countries.

Life expectancy for women is five years longer on average than for men. That difference has held fairly steady, between four and five years, over the last two decades.

The WHO figures show that there is still a huge gap in health spending between low- and high-income countries, averaging an annual 32 dollars per capita in the former and 400 dollars per capita in the latter.

The study reports that high-income countries have, per capita, 10 times more doctors, 12 times more nurses and midwives and 30 times more dentists, on average, than low-income countries.

Excerpt:

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, May 5 2011 (IPS)

The global health agency and a network of non-governmental organisations opposed to nuclear proliferation have resumed their dialogue, prompted by concern over the effects of the nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima in Japan and the enduring consequences of the explosion at Chernobyl, in Ukraine.

Margaret Chan, the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO), met Wednesday with representatives of a group of NGOs who are harshly critical of the United Nations agency’s policies on the health hazards of nuclear radiation.

The coalition, “IndependentWHO”, presented Chan with demands for the adoption of measures for dealing with possible nuclear accidents like the Mar. 11 events at Fukushima and the Apr. 26, 1986 disaster in Chernobyl, in Ukraine, then a part of the Soviet Union.

Civil society wants to see urgent measures to provide medical care, treatment and adequate protection for the people who live in regions contaminated with radioactivity.

The activists also want WHO and other international agencies to ensure these people have the right kind of food to encourage rapid elimination of radioactive substances from their bodies.

Another of their proposals is the creation of a commission on ionising radiation and health, made up of independent experts, to carry out scientific research on the long-term health effects of the Chernobyl accident.

No member of the proposed commission should have any interests, financial or otherwise, with the nuclear industry or any associations linked with it, the coalition specified, calling for the commission to deliver a report at the 2014 World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of WHO.

The commission should organise working groups devoted to evaluating and describing the gaps that have remained in research on the effects of radiation on health.

The coalition is also requesting the publication of the minutes of conferences in Geneva in 1995 and in Kiev in 2001 about the consequences of the Chernobyl accident. The activists claim the documents have not been released in order to protect the interests of the nuclear industry.

Furthermore, the civil society group is calling for the amendment of the 1959 agreement between WHO and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the world’s centre of cooperation in the nuclear field, so that WHO is given full responsibility as the primary coordinating body on issues related to the health effects of ionising radiation.

Ionising radiation alters the physical state of atoms, the electrically neutral component particles of matter, transforming them into ions, which are electrically charged particles. The ions damage the normal biological processes in living tissues.

The coalition’s main proposal was distributed to the diplomatic missions of the countries represented in Geneva, but so far no state has volunteered to move the proposal at the next World Health Assembly.

The Cuban government has said it will second the motion if another country takes the lead in proposing it, activist Alison Katz of the People’s Health Movement told IPS. The Movement is an NGO network that supports the People’s Charter for Health, a declaration adopted by WHO in 1978 at the World Health Assembly held in Alma Ata, Kazakhstan.

Chan reminded the coalition representatives that while WHO can issue health guidelines and standards and promote their adoption by governments, it is up to national authorities to enforce them.

As for relations between WHO and the IAEA, Chan said the two agencies cooperate on issues of common interest in a spirit of mutual respect and autonomy.

She said the IAEA has neither any weight nor any decisive influence on the actions of WHO. But according to Katz, this statement is similar to what was said four or five years ago.

In Katz’s view, the meeting between civil society and the U.N. agency was neither a failure nor a waste of time. On the contrary, she said, the meeting with Chan showed that the coalition’s actions are having an effect.

The coalition has mounted a protest vigil since Apr. 27, 2007 outside the doors of WHO headquarters in Geneva, carrying placards calling for the agency to reassert its independence from the IAEA.

At the meeting Wednesday, Chan praised the dedication and tenacity of the civil society coalition and promised to keep communication channels open with its representatives.

Chan’s decision to meet with the activists’ delegation was influenced by the Fukushima catastrophe and by an article by Alexey V. Yablokov, Vassily B. Nesterenko and Alexey V. Nesterenko on the consequences of Chernobyl, published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

The figures for Chernobyl accident victims in this report are many times higher than the statistics produced in 2005 by WHO and the IAEA.

Katz said Chan acknowledged at the meeting that she did not believe that the total direct death toll from the Chernobyl accident was only 50, as the disputed WHO/IAEA report claimed. The agencies’ report also estimated there could be a further 4,000 deaths from cancer related to the explosion in the reactor.

According to Katz, WHO has never published a correction of the figures in their report, so Chan’s admission at the meeting that they are, in her view, mistaken was a matter of major importance.

Summing up the meeting, Katz said this time, in contrast with a previous meeting, the arguments of the civil society representatives were not disputed. “At the previous meeting, all our ideas were contradicted, with a certain amount of arrogance,” she said.

This time, instead of arrogance there was a willingness to show interest and concern, Katz said. Chan did not say that she agreed with the coalition, but neither did she dispute its views, she added.

Excerpt:

The nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan and the 25th anniversary of the catastrophe in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine have thrown into relief contradictions in the role played by the World Health Organisation, which civil society organisations have spent years pointing out.

World Health Organisation logo Credit:

An international coalition of NGOs, IndependentWHO, says the multilateral agency has never shown independence in its decisions or actions, in terms of living up to its mandate of protecting the victims of radioactive contamination.

The groups blame the WHO’s alleged inactivity in this area on an agreement it signed in 1959 with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an independent United Nations organisation founded to promote “safe, secure and peaceful nuclear technologies.”

The coalition of NGOs states that the agreement makes the WHO “subservient” to the IAEA and prevents the U.N. health agency from “taking any initiative or action to achieve its objectives: the preservation and the improvement of health.”

The WHO should break off “that incestuous relationship” with the IAEA, Russian-born Swiss journalist Wladimir Tchertkoff, who has produced seven television documentaries on Chernobyl, told IPS.

In the May 1959 agreement, the two agencies agreed to work in close cooperation and consult each other whenever either of the two plans to undertake a programme or activity in an area in which the other has a substantial interest. It also establishes restrictions to safeguard the confidentiality of certain documents.

In that framework, “the nuclear lobby has managed to get the WHO to renounce taking care of the victims of nuclear disasters,” said Swiss academic Jean Ziegler, currently vice president of the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Advisory Committee.

In line with the 1959 agreement, the WHO’s position is that “when there is a nuclear accident, we are not responsible for taking care of the victims; the nuclear agency is the sole responsible party,” Ziegler told IPS.

He described this as an appalling situation in which thousands of people die, when they could have been saved.

The latest estimate of the number of Chernobyl victims, published by the two agencies on Sept. 5, 2005, mentions 50 deaths and 4,000 cases of cancer.

IndependentWHO calls such figures absurdly low, because they fail to take into account the health of the children living in the contaminated areas, “where rates of illness are at 80 percent.” The statistics also “ignore the fate of the 600,000 to 1,000,000 liquidators,” the name given to the veterans of the Chernobyl rescue and clean-up, the coalition statements adds.

Tchertkoff pointed out that the study “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment”, a book translated from Russian that was published in December 2009 by the New York Academy of Sciences, put the total number of people who died as a result of the disaster at 985,000, between the Apr. 26, 1986 explosion of Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear plant and 2004.

According to health data cited by the book, more than 80 percent of children in the areas of Ukraine, Belarus – the Soviet republic of Belarussia at the time – and Russia that were contaminated by Chernobyl were in good health prior to the accident, while “fewer than 20 percent are well” today.

Since Apr. 27, 2007, the organisations grouped in IndependentWHO have maintained a vigil in front of the WHO building in Geneva every working day from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM.

The vigil, which consists of one to three activists, is calling for a revision of the 1959 agreement with the IAEA and demanding that the WHO work toward its objective, as outlined in the agency’s constitution: “the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health.”

But Tchertkoff was sceptical. The WHO “cannot do much because it is a victim” of a situation that was created, he said.

With respect to the accident in Fukushima, in northeast Japan, caused by the Mar. 11 earthquake and tsunami, “The WHO doesn’t know what to do,” he said.

“It doesn’t have staff capable of dealing with the situation. It only has five people, just two of whom are university graduates with no experience,” he added.

Tchertkoff also mentioned the controversy triggered by WHO policies during the 2009 flu pandemic, in particular with regard to the production and distribution of flu vaccines.

Ziegler said the WHO has been “infiltrated” by the nuclear lobby and the pharmaceutical industry.

He recalled that an independent inquiry set up by former WHO director-general Gro Harlem Brundtland (1998-2003) found that some of the agency’s staff had received payments from the tobacco industry while the agency was debating the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which was finally approved in 2005.

Tchertkoff believes there are two different tendencies in the WHO.

One is that if circumstances continue to deteriorate, like over the last few weeks, it will become necessary for the WHO to once again discuss its policy regarding nuclear radiation.

But the other group holds that a reopening of the debate would amount to a confession “that we haven’t done anything in the past few decades,” he said.

“A serious internal problem of this kind is lamentable at a time when we are looking at Fukushima, Chernobyl and all of the world’s nuclear plants, surrounded by some 410 million people living in a radius of 30 kilometres from these danger spots,” the journalist said.

IPS, which requested an interview with WHO director of Public Health and Environment María Neira, received no response from the WHO with regard to these accusations.

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Feb 3 2011 (IPS)

The rise in food prices and growing hunger, one of the causes of the popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and other countries in the Arab world, is due to financial speculation and not a lack of arable land, says Janaina Stronzake, a leader of Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST).

The shortage of staple food items and hunger are used as weapons, and they end up forcing populations to act in certain ways, said Stronzake, who also represents the international peasant movement La Vía Campesina.

The Brazilian activist sat down with IPS during a break at a Jan. 29-30 meeting organised by the Geneva Federation for Cooperation and Development (FGC) in this Swiss city, and talked about the role of small farmers in times of food crisis.

Q: What do you see as the reason for this commotion over food prices? A: The issue of food prices and scarcity, or famine, is always a complex question, with multiple causes and a series of factors that influence it.

Saying the rise in food prices is caused by the fact that people in China and India are eating better seems to me overly simplistic. It’s like saying, well, if we’re paying more it’s the fault of the Indians and the Chinese. And that’s not true.

Q: Is there a shortage of food in the world? A: This planet has the capacity to produce enough quality food for everyone, without resorting to questionable technologies, like transgenics.

In Brazil there are 120 million hectares of farm land lying idle. In other words, to produce more, we don’t have to encroach on the Amazon jungle, we don’t have to cause environmental imbalance or destroy the forests.

The only thing needed is a decent agrarian reform programme, to generate the conditions for peasants to continue farming.

Q: So what is the cause of all of this? A: One of the basic factors driving food prices up is financial speculation. That is because food products are considered commodities and are traded on the futures markets.

Q: Who benefits from the speculation? A: The transnational corporations, which benefit from playing and speculating with hunger.

To see this, all you have to do is compare the years when food prices are on the rise and the charts showing the profits of the big transnational corporations. For example, between 2004 and 2008 we saw a series of clashes and disturbances, of hungry mobs looting supermarkets for food at the same time that prices were going up.

During that period, the profits of Syngenta, one of the world’s largest agribusiness companies, soared from six to 11 billion dollars. So, while many people go hungry, corporations pocket even greater profits.

Q: How do the policies of these companies manifest themselves? A: By the way the companies try to structure agriculture, depriving farmers of the ability to produce by controlling water, seeds and intellectual property rights over products, besides grabbing the best land.

And through control of the market as well. Today just 10 firms dominate almost the entire market for soy, corn and sugar cane.

Q: How has the peasant movement reacted to the rise in food prices? A: With a great deal of concern, because they form part of a complex system that is a whole.

Polish thinker Zygmunt Bauman talks for example about “human waste.” He says it’s as if there were “superfluous” people in the world that something has to be done with. One way is for them to die of hunger, because there’s not enough work for everyone.

With the new production technologies, there is no longer a need for so many workers. So this excess population has to disappear. Not because they can’t be fed, but because within the capitalist system they neither produce nor consume. Thus, they tend to vanish. And that is one way: for them to die of hunger in a crisis of this kind.

Q: And the other ways? A: Another way is through the business of prisons, the privatisation of the penitentiary system.

At moments of acute crisis, people often resort to crime to survive. So we have all these robberies and other kinds of crimes, and then the prisons are privatised, and they become a profitable business.

The companies receive subsidies to build and run prisons, and they profit from the work of the inmates. Reminiscent of the Nazi concentration camps in Germany.

This system is spreading around the world. In Brazil, some right-wing state governments are starting to look into how prisons could be privatised.

Q: Are there other methods of extermination? A: Yes, there’s also the question of wars. How can wars continue to be fuelled, like in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, without hunger that forcibly displaces people and forces them to work as mercenary soldiers?

So there you see how hunger and high food prices are employed as weapons to force people to act in certain ways. To that we have to add other kinds of crime, like arms dealing or trafficking of drugs, women or organs. All of which are interconnected in a single system, which generates profits for a handful of companies.

Q: What do you think of international trade agreements that cover food products? A: La Vía Campesina is pushing for food products to be left outside of the scope of the agreements pushed by the WTO (World Trade Organisation). Food cannot be treated as just another commodity.

All of humanity needs food, and we should guarantee a minimum for everyone, independently of their economic conditions. And that can’t be done merely through welfare and aid, such as what UNICEF (the United Nations children’s fund) provides.

People also need to be empowered, at a community or grassroots level, to guarantee production and supply of food. That is what food sovereignty is about.

Q: What do you hope for from the Doha Round of WTO talks, which have a chapter dedicated to the reform of the global agricultural trade? A: Those negotiations don’t include us. They take us into account merely to point to the tendency of small farmers to disappear.

But the thing is that this disappearance brings with it the risk of food shortages, because agribusiness, the big corporations, the ones that are negotiating in the Doha Round, can ensure a certain quantity of food for a certain period of time, but they are only concerned about their own profits.

Excerpt:

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Sep 30 2010 (IPS)

Every year since 1976 the United States has unilaterally passed judgement, through the State Department, on the human rights situation in some 190 countries. The 5,000-page reports sent to Congress each March regularly rouse angry responses from some of the nations assessed.

But on Nov. 5 the roles will be reversed when, for the first time, Washington comes before the United Nations Human Rights Council for its Universal Periodic Review (UPR).

The U.N. General Assembly created the Human Rights Council in 2006, and equipped it with the UPR mechanism to evaluate compliance and promotion of human rights in the 192 U.N. member states over a four-year cycle (an average of 48 countries a year).

But after eight sessions assessing the human rights records of nearly two-thirds of the member states, the UPR mechanism has received mixed reviews.

At a Council debate this month, Russia clamed that negative practices, such as politically motivated criticism and charges based on specific interests, still persist in the UPR.

Cuba said the selectiveness and double standards that discredited the former Commission on Human Rights, resulting in its replacement four years ago by the Human Rights Council, still tarnish the UPR mechanism. However, it supported the present structure of the UPR and warned against attempts to change the intergovernmental nature of the process.

The delegation from Hungary said human rights were being subject to diplomatic negotiation for political reasons, and that the UPR mechanism was flawed by friendly states doing each other favours by not raising prickly subjects during the reviews.

In contrast, the United States declared the UPR a positive contribution, while urging that it be improved and that state accountability be reinforced.

Submitting its official report to the Council Aug. 20, Washington stated: “The United States is proud of its record on human rights and the role our country has played in advancing human rights and fundamental freedoms around the world.”

U.S. civil society representatives were more cautious, however. “We see this as one step in the rehabilitation of the U.S.’s reputation and its participation within the human rights structures,” Ajamu Baraka, executive director of the U.S. Human Rights Network (USHRN), told IPS.

“There are real human rights concerns within the U.S., and if the U.S. is going to be an effective partner in the Human Rights Council it has to honestly begin to address those concerns,” he added.

USHRN is made up of more than 300 human rights and social justice organisations. It is the first time such a broad spectrum of U.S. civil society organisations has come to Geneva, the headquarters of the main United Nations human rights bodies.

Previously, only organisations concerned with gender and racial discrimination had come to this Swiss city, although in recent years U.S. activists concerned about the human rights effects of Washington’s anti-terrorism policies have also showed up.

These worries have not disappeared, Baraka admitted. “People are concerned about the ongoing impact of the so-called war on terror.” The government’s policies “are targeting Muslims and the Arab communities,” he said.

“A number of states have expressed concerns about the ongoing racial profiling and treatment of migrant workers. These are a concern to many people,” Baraka stressed.

Sarah Paoletti, UPR coordinator for USHRN and a Law School professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said the Council’s review of the United States “is a unique opportunity for us to address economic, social and cultural rights in the U.S..”

“The U.S. does not exactly have a great track record when it comes to ratifying international human rights treaties,” Paoletti said.

Washington signed the U.N. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 33 years ago, but Congress has not ratified it.

The covenant requires states to guarantee equal rights to education, housing, equal opportunities and social benefits.

But in the United States, students from black, immigrant and low-income families disproportionately attend low-budget schools, widening the education and opportunities gap between these groups and the rest of society, said USHRN.

The USHRN delegation visiting Geneva also said agricultural wages have stagnated for the past 30 years.

“The pay isn’t enough to support our families decently,” said Lucas Benítez of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, founded in Immokalee, Florida by Latin American, Haitian and Maya Indian migrant workers.

Moreover, employers often abuse workers physically and verbally, and sexually harass the women, Benítez complained. “It seems incredible, but it’s modern-day slavery,” he said.

Baraka said the State Department has been taking a lead in the consultative process with civil society to prepare the UPR report, “but they have a difficult task because there are serious issues that as human rights defenders we have to raise.”

One of the reforms they are calling for is the creation of a national human rights institution in the U.S., he said. “We have been negotiating with the government and there has been some movement on that within the Obama administration.”

The activists hope that there will be some “solid recommendations” coming out of the Nov. 5 process, “that will allow civil society and the government to work together to implement them.”

A track record of non-ratification

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is not the only human rights treaty awaiting U.S. ratification.

JoAnn Ward, of the University of Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute, spelled out the long list of international treaties Washington has so far chosen to ignore.

Together with Iran, Nauru, Palau, Somalia, Sudan and Tonga, the United States has failed to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, although unlike these others, it has signed it.

Only the United States and Somalia have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. According to USHRN, 19 percent of U.S. children were living below the poverty line in 2008, a greater proportion than for adults and the elderly.

Nor has the U.S. ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, or the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, among others.

The United States cannot assert its leadership in the Council without a clear demonstration that it is committed to ratifying and implementing all of the major human rights instruments, Baraka said.

Excerpt:

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Jun 3 2010 (IPS)

What was already an open secret, detentions in secret prisons in the fight against terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in the U.S., has been clearly documented in a report on these abuses that was discussed Thursday by the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Credit: US Department of Defence

Although secret detentions are not new, and indeed had taken on the magnitude of a crime against humanity during the dictatorships in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, the practice expanded after 9/11, as part of the counterterrorism effort led by the United States.

Besides the secret detention centres, the counterterrorism methods used since 2001 include “extraordinary renditions” — the handing over of prisoners to countries where torture is allowed.

The report commissioned by the U.N. and drawn up by four independent experts describes in detail these illegal activities and the flights organised to transport terror suspects, with stopovers in a number of states that acted as accomplices.

“This is an important document because it brings together in one place the information that has been known and has been in the public awareness for a long while, but in a scattered fashion, “Amnesty International’s representative at the U.N. in Geneva, Peter Splinter, told IPS.

The report “focuses attention on how much secret detention is a global problem, and a real problem today,” he said.

The authors of the report are Martin Scheinin of Finland, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights and counter terrorism; Manfred Nowak of Austria, U.N. special rapporteur on torture; Shaheen Ali of Pakistan, vice chair of the working group on arbitrary detention; and Jeremy Sarkin of South Africa, chair of the working group on enforced or involuntary disappearances.

The report says that many countries, citing concerns related to national security, “often perceived or presented as unprecedented emergencies or threats — resort to secret detention.”

“International law clearly prohibits secret detention, which violates a number of human rights amd humanitarian law norms that may not be derogated under any circumstances,” says the report.

“Resorting to secret detention effectively means taking (detainees) outside the legal framework and rendering the safeguards contained in international instruments, most importantly habeas corpus, meaningless,” it adds.

The study’s recommendations included an explicit prohibition of secret detention, and the keeping of clear detention records, even at times of armed conflict, as stipulated by the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war.

With regard to the Council’s discussion of the study, Scheinin said “It went better than expected. The report has been very controversial and now there appears to be acknowledgement that the issue is serious enough not to be trivialised by procedural filibustery.”

He stressed that some countries that originally opposed the report, like Egypt, “chose not to speak” in Thursday’s meeting, while some “spoke in a tone which was stronger than others,” such as Syria, Russia, or Algeria, which was speaking on behalf of the African Group.

Yet other countries raised specific issues, like Ethiopia, China, Nepal or Canada, he added.

With respect to the United States, which figures repeatedly in the report — along with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) — for its post-9/11 counterterrorism policies, Ali said that country’s ambassador to the Human Rights Council, Eileen Donahoe, backed the study although she raised concerns about the methodology used in preparing it.

Scheinin told IPS that the United States had failed to implement the decision reached by President Barack Obama soon after taking office in January 2009 to close the detention facility at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba.

“As a matter of international law, that of course means that they are continuing to violate their human rights obligations by not closing” the detention centre and by not putting the persons held there on trial, he added.

The expert said, however, that “on the domestic level and on the policy level, I understand the situation. The government is unable to do anything when the legislature prohibits part of the options available: namely taking a single person from Guantanamo to the mainland United States.”

As a result, he pointed out, the pressure is on efforts to convince third countries to take in Guantanamo detainees.

The list of countries and territories mentioned by the U.N. study, in terms of different levels of involvement or complicity in secret detentions, renditions or facilitating rendition flights, is long.

The document mentions Thailand, Poland, Romania, Afghanistan, Czech Republic, Uzbekistan, Morocco, Lithuania, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Syria, Pakistan, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Djibouti, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Italy, and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

“It’s not a problem, as some delegations seem to suggest, in just a few countries. It’s a problem involving many countries, and the complicity of many intelligence and police services,” said Splinter.

“And that highlights how important is the problem that the Council and the international community must address,” added the Amnesty representative.

The study dedicates several paragraphs to the main forerunner of the current phenomenon of secret detentions: Operation Condor, a coordinated plan among the military governments that ruled Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay in the 1970s and 1980s, aimed at tracking down, capturing and eliminating left-wing opponents.

Silvia Cao, Argentina’s representative, noted that the 1976-1983 military dictatorship in her country illegally detained 14,500 people in clandestine detention centres whose existence was systematically denied by the regime. (Human rights groups put the number of victims of forced disappearance at 30,000.)

The Argentine government declared “deep concern” that secret detention continued to be used around the world, under different pretexts, such as the declaration of a state of emergency, international wars, or the global fight against terrorism, Cao said.

Lourdes Boné, the delegate from Uruguay, said secret detention centres, arbitrary detention and forced disappearance were also recurrent issues during the 1973-1985 dictatorship in that South American country.

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