The UN Human Rights Council chamber in Geneva. UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré.

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 7 2016 (IPS)

The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) and the UN Watch have called on UN member states to oppose the bids of some of the major human rights abusing governments from joining the Human Rights Council (HRC).

“This is absurd and outrageous,” said UN Watch’s Executive Director Hillel Neuer on the potential reelection of certain member states to the HRC.

“[HRC] has failed when it elects some of the worst human rights abusers. Who speaks for citizens? Not the Human Rights Council,” he continued at a press conference.

Geneva-based UN Watch and New-York based HRF cited Resolution 60/251 to remind governments of their obligations to uphold human rights. According to the resolution, which established the council in 2006, General Assembly members must consider candidates’ contribution to the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights.

Guided by this resolution and using criteria from various organisations including Freedom House and Reporters without Borders, UN Watch and HRF measured candidates’ suitability for election and found that eight out of 17 countries have poor human rights records and fail to qualify for a seat on HRC.

Among those countries is Saudi Arabia, currently one of 47 members of the Geneva-based council.

The Middle Eastern nation is notorious for its restrictions of freedom of speech and of the press, often prosecuting and imprisoning dissenters and government critics.

Raif Badawi, a Saudi writer and activist, was arrested in 2012 for insulting Islam and was sentenced to 1000 lashes and ten years in prison. He had expressed concerns on the lack of freedoms in the country through his blog.

“Raif speaks the language of freedom fluently,” said Ensaf Haidar, a Saudi-Canadian human rights activist and wife of Badawi.

After the ruling, Haidar received anonymous death threats and escaped to Canada with their children. She continues to work towards the release of Badawi, stating: “Our wish is one—to be reunited again.”

Saudi Arabia, which leads a coalition against Houthi rebels in Yemen, is also responsible for the indiscriminate killing of Yemenis.

The UN Human Rights Office has estimated that there have been over 9,000 casualties since military operations began in March 2015. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein noted that the Saudi-led coalition is responsible for twice as many civilian causalities as all other forces put together.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also found that the coalition was responsible for 60 percent of recorded child deaths and injuries, and listed Saudi Arabia as party to conflict who commit grave violations against children. However, the country successfully pressured the UN to remove the listing after threatening to withdraw funding from critical UN programs.

“Petrol dollars and politics are once again trumping human rights,” Neuer told IPS.

He added that as long as they are in the HRC, Saudi Arabia is able to shield themselves from scrutiny and continue committing human rights violations.

“When human rights abusers get this false badge of legitimacy, they use it to strengthen their dictatorial regime and to crush the morale of political prisoners within their borders,” he stated.

In June, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International also called for the expulsion of Saudi Arabia from the Human Rights Council, citing systematic violations of human rights.

“Failure to act on Saudi Arabia’s gross and systematic human rights violations committed in Yemen and its use of its membership to obstruct independent scrutiny and accountability threatens the credibility of both the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly,” said Director of AI’s Asia-Pacific Program Richard Bennett.

UN Watch and HRF have begun their appeals to UN member states including Canada, the United States, and European Union to comply with the minimum standards of the council by not voting for regimes such as Saudi Arabia.

It would not be the first time a member state was rejected from HRC due to its human rights record. In 2015, three-term HRC member Pakistan failed to win a reelection to the council, a shock that prompted “introspection” to its causes.

In a report prior to the 2016 elections, the UN Watch and HRF found Pakistan unfit as a HRC candidate due to its restrictions on freedom of expression, discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities, and gender-based violence.

In order to achieve such a feat again, Neuer said that member states regarded as “leading champions” at the UN on human rights resolutions must take the lead.

“Samantha Power should be taking the lead but she’s silent—that is unacceptable,” he told IPS.

Samantha Power is currently the U.S. Ambassador to the UN.

“It would be meaningful if democracies not only vote quietly but would speak out and say that we created the human rights council to have a different kind of membership and we need to uphold that,” Neuer continued.

António Guterres, the newly nominated Secretary General, will have a important role to play by ensuring human rights criteria for those elected into HRC, he concluded.

The HRC is composed of 47 member states and will hold elections at the end of October for 14 positions. Alongside Saudi Arabia, UN Watch and HRF called to reject the candidacies of China, Cuba, Egypt, Iraq, Malaysia, Russia and Rwanda from the HRC.

In my personal capacity as an academic from the Global South and a retired international civil servant, I undertook a study for the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue which was published in November 2014. This was at a time when I had no idea that I would later become a member of this elite group of Special Procedures Mandate Holder. The study is entitled “In Defence of Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council: An alternative narrative from the South”.

Idriss Jazairy. Credit: Image provided by author.

The study makes the point that this mechanism was first initiated by the South and that the countries of different regions of the South share with those of the North the paternity of this innovative way of ensuring independent monitoring of human rights worldwide. They all consequently have an equal right to contribute to enhancing the efficiency of this mechanism.

The study indicates how one can remove the barrage of objections raised by countries or groups headquartered in the North who believe they are the self-appointed defenders of Special Procedures. They have tended to act in the past as if any suggestion for improvement of Special Procedures coming from the Global South can only be motivated by a desire to undermine the independence and integrity of the said mechanisms.

In other words, this study is an appeal to the North whether to Governments or to civil society organisations from the North that they accept to discuss with the South such suggestions on their merits. It would warrant engaging with those who hold different views and seeking to broaden areas of consensus through bridge-building as our Chairman emphasized in his opening remarks rather than through “excommunication”!

I will raise five central issues:

First, the process of selection of mandate-holders: the study reviews the process of selection of mandate-holders which has been improved as an outcome of the 2010 -2011 HRC review process. Henceforth the President of the Council has to give reasons if he decides to disregard the recommendations of the Consultative Group concerning the list of appointees. This adjustment indeed makes for greater transparency but it does not insulate the President from backroom political pressure from powerful quarters.

Why could we not, in cases where paralysis or postponement threaten, put the appointment of the mandate holders to a vote? There has been no disastrous effect resulting from the fact that their counterparts in treaty bodies are selected by ballot. Are they less objective or independent because of that? Candidates could campaign, offer plans of action indicating what they would do if elected. Many methods exist to ensure equitable gender and geographic distribution.

Second, the review, rationalisation and improvement of mandates.

The challenge here is to change the cluster of 77 Special Procedure Mandate Holders into a system. This is what the Council was mandated to do by General Assembly Resolution 60/25, o.p. 6, which directed it to “where necessary improve and rationalize all mandates (…) in order to maintain a system of Special Procedures”.

Why has this not happened? There are currently 77 mandate holders as against 44 when HRC was established and on current trends their numbers will reach 100 in ten years’ time. No provisions for a sunset clause, for mergers or absorption are in the cards.

If each mandate, of which there are now over 55 including SPs in working groups and with numbers growing year on year, interact with States on top of other Human Rights mechanisms, this can become an administrative nightmare for smaller and least developed countries.

Some claim ballooning of Special Procedures has a political explanation: each special procedure has a virtual national flag on it and to eliminate, merge it or otherwise change it may be seen as an offence to the initiating country which continues to enjoy special rights over the fate of the mandate.

Be that as it may, the numbers of Special Procedures keep increasing, never dovetailing but rather duplicating with pre-existing mandates. There is obvious overlap, for instance, between the mandates on trafficking in persons, especially women and children, the one on contemporary forms of slavery including its causes and consequences and the mandate on the sale of children, child prostitution and pornography.

Likewise CEDAW having defined violence as a form of discrimination against women, it’s hard to explain why one needs two mandates, one on discrimination against women and the other on violence against women.

While these mandates have Northern roots, the initiating countries from the South are not immune to such tendencies. Thus there is an obvious link between the mandate of promoting a democratic and equitable international order, the mandate dealing with foreign debt and that related to human rights and international solidarity.

I recommend a revitalisation of the RRI process in an open ended working group of the Council.

As a staying measure, the Council should start by requiring initiators of new mandates to answer such questions as:

– is there no other UN mechanism which addresses in part or in whole the issue proposed?

– is there not a Special Procedure which covers partly or wholly this issue?

– if so why not adjust the existing mandate for this purpose?

– could the new mandate not replace an existing mandate?

In parallel, the working group would review “all existing” thematic mandates to promote coherence, avoid duplication, determine protection gaps and determine whether the distribution of SPs between individual mandates and working groups is still appropriate.

Third, the enhancement of the cooperation between States and Special Procedures

General Assembly resolution 65/281 of 17 June 2011reiterating other similar positions incorporated in resolution 60/251 and in the Code of Conduct of Special Procedures stipulates that “The Special Procedures shall continue to foster a constructive dialogue with States” (emphasis added). In its para. 94, the MOSP reiterates this commitment but then illustrates it by saying “It is thus appropriate that reminders be sent to Governments in relation to unanswered correspondence”.

Mandate holders are also urged “to follow up on replies provided by the Governments in order to request further clarification…”. Surely a constructive dialogue can go beyond sending registered letters and asking for more clarification.

Real dialogue involves give and take. Why not for instance ask the CC and the 5 geographic representatives of States members of the Council to consult on how para. 94 of the MOSP could be made to reflect not only the letter but also the spirit of UNGA resolution 65/281.

Fourth is the broader issue of how the Human Rights Council can interact with Special Procedures on issues of methodology.

This interaction has to reconcile the accountability of Special Procedures to the Council which appoints them with the full independence of judgement of these mandate-holders in the pursuit of their monitoring mission.

The following kinds of issues have been raised in the recent past which have not found an optimal solution:

Can a Special Procedure Mandate Holder, in the legitimate context of his right to select studies to present to the Council, also question initiatives under discussion by the Council itself without being requested to do so?

If a Special Procedure is mandated by the Council to present a report on a particular issue at a specified session of the Council, may he replace such report by a study that he considers as taking precedence over the mandated theme without consulting the Bureau of the Council?

May a Special Procedure or a commission of enquiry mandated by the Council to present to it a report on a specific theme, report to the General Assembly thereon before reporting to the Council without specific authority to do so?

Should Special Procedures who also interact with the General Assembly of with the Security Council also report to the Human Rights Council thereon?

Many other such questions may crop up from time to time.

During the 2010-2011 review process, all groups of countries of the Global South proposed that some form of advisory body of independent jurists could be consulted on an ad hoc basis to address these procedural issues and free more time in the Council for debates on the substance of human rights promotion and protection.

This view held by a majority of developing nations deserves respect even in case of disagreement. And indeed it was objected to by the Global North, whether at the governmental or at the NGO level, who claimed this was tantamount to imposing an Ethics Committee on Special Procedures.

Pending progress towards greater understanding between North and South on this issue, it is suggested that such issues be discussed at an annual joint meeting of the Coordinating Committee of Special Procedures with the 5 regional representatives of the geographic regions recognized by the Council. They would consult on solutions to such procedural issues including linkages between relevant GA or HRC resolutions and paragraphs 94, 102 and 105 of MOSP.

Fifth, what future structure and funding for Special Procedures?

The dissemination of thematic and country mandates between different divisions or branches of OHCHr in the past has been a cause for concern about the preservation of the independence of Special Procedures. So has their authority to fund-raise individually as per paragraph 11 of MOSP.

The latter question has been addressed recently as Special Procedures are now asked to disclose and report on the support they obtain directly in cash or in kind from outside donors. This report should be submitted to HRC in the context of standard financial reporting.

Idriss Jazairy is author of “In Defence of Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council: An Alternative Narrative from the South”, the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue.

Plumes of smoke rise into the evening Afghan sky as Allied air support brings an end to Operation Glacier 4 in February 2007. Operation Glacier 4 was a deliberate action against Taliban Forces in the district of Garmsir by Royal Marines of 42 Commando in Helmand province, Afghanistan. Credit: Sean Clee/OGL license

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 16 2015 (IPS)

The United Nations continues to come under heavy fire for singling out mostly non-Western states for human rights violations while ignoring the misdeeds of Western nations or big powers.

As part of its annual ritual, the U.N. Third Committee, which deals with human rights issues, has religiously adopted country-specific resolutions every year, mostly critical of nations like Iran, Syria, Cuba and North Korea for their infractions.“Given the importance of the U.S. to the global system of governance, it is important for this nation not to be exempt from that which it demands from others.” -- Dr Gerald Horne

But none of these resolutions have been adopted unanimously – rather, with an increasing number of abstentions.

Last November, the resolution criticising Syria for human rights violations was adopted by a vote of 125 in favour with 13 against and 47 abstentions; the vote on North Korea was 111 in favour with 19 against and 55 abstentions; and the vote on Iran was 78 to 35 with 69 abstentions.

Still, both the United Nations and its Human Rights Council (HRC) have rarely, if ever, launched an investigation into civilian killings, including of women and children, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen by drone attacks or aerial bombings by the United States and its Western allies.

“They literally get away with murder,” says one Asian diplomat, complaining about the double standards on human rights violations and war crimes.

Currently, the Geneva-based HRC has Commissions of Inquiry or Fact-Finding Missions related to four countries: Eritrea, North Korea, Syria, Sri Lanka and Gaza (on the civilian killings by Israel in the conflict back in July last year).

But most of these human rights violations, including political repression, torture or war crimes, are within the territorial borders of these countries.

Dr Gerald Horne, Moores Professor of History and African-American Studies at the University of Houston, told IPS even the recent spate of police shootings in the United States, of mostly unarmed African-Americans, merits a thorough investigation by the U.N. Human Rights Council.

“It is true that U.S. allies will object. However, the U.S. itself has established a precedent by its frequent call for investigations of the internal affairs of U.N. member states,” he said.

Yet, he pointed out, “given the importance of the U.S. to the global system of governance, it is important for this nation not to be exempt from that which it demands from others.”

In recent years, according to published reports, there has been a spate of racially motivated killings by the police or by law enforcement officials, including in Staten Island, New York, Ferguson, Missouri, Brooklyn, New York and in Chicago in the U.S. state of Illinois.

Dr Horne said “given that the U.S. is a nuclear power on hair-trigger alert, it is quite disturbing to see an urban insurrection just miles from the White House in Baltimore – after yet another killing of an unarmed African-American man.”

Arguably, it would not be unfair to suggest that this dire situation too represents a grave threat to international peace and security that the U.N. should ignore at its peril.

“I should add parenthetically that historically the U.S. has required external intervention to resolve nagging internal issues; for example, it is now well recognised that British abolitionists played a major role in forcing the collapse of slavery in the U.S. in the 19th century.”

Today’s outrages in the U.S. demand no less, declared Dr Horne, who has authored more than 30 books, including the premier study of civil unrest in Los Angeles in 1960s, along with several publications on the slave trade.

The issue of political double standards has been vociferously highlighted by Sri Lanka: a country accused of civilian killings at the end of its decades long battle against separatists in its northern province in May 2009.

Addressing the U.N.’s Third Committee last year, Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative Palitha Kohona said current developments in the Human Rights Council suggest that its credibility was gradually eroding as a result of its increasing politicisation.

“A handful of countries had been selected for adverse attention by the Council, while others in similar circumstances were ignored,” he added.

Turning to the Council’s resolution related to his country, he said the text had infringed on the fundamental principles of international law, which required that national mechanisms needed to be exhausted before resorting to international measures, and had challenged its sovereignty and independence.

Asked about the rising civilians killings attributed to U.S. drone attacks, Dr Horne told IPS the legally questionable drone warfare of the U.S. authorities is an unfortunate complement to the repetitive slayings of unarmed African-American men and boys (Tamir Rice in Cleveland had yet to reach his teen years before he was slain on videotape).

Surely, it establishes a dangerous precedent when a U.N. member state – the U.S. – is allowed to slay its own citizens and then slay others abroad, while all the while complaining about the internal affairs of sovereign states worldwide, he argued.

Asked about double standards on human rights violations, Dr Horne said assuredly, there is a double standard in international relations which is quite corrosive of international peace and security.

He said the ancestors of the U.S. authorities kidnapped Africans from the region stretching from Senegal to Angola, with a particular emphasis on the Congo River basin, then rounding the Cape to seize Africans in Madagascar, Mozambique and Zanzibar.

“This crime against humanity weakened all of these U.S. member states and then, to exacerbate the original crime, the descendants of these captive Africans are now slain like wild boar in the woods.”

Sadly, he noted, the international community has been quiet about this outrage which no doubt convinces the U.S. authorities that if they can slay their “own” citizens with impunity, then certainly they can act similarly abroad with drone warfare.

This matter cries out for “humanitarian intervention” by the international community, he declared, in a challenge to the United Nations.

Addressing the opening session of the HRC last March, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein criticised member states for ‘cherry-picking’ human rights – advocating some and openly violating others – perhaps to suit their own national or political interests.

Despite ratifying the U.N. charter reaffirming their faith in fundamental human rights, there are some member states who, “with alarming regularity”, are disregarding and violating human rights, “sometimes to a shocking degree,” he said.

“They pick and choose between rights,” he said.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

A youth who lost his leg during the conflict stands by his vegetable stall in the town of Mullaitivu in northern Sri Lanka. He has a small family to look after and says he finds it extremely hard to provide for them. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Kanya D'Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, May 29 2015 (IPS)

In many ways, Jayakumari Balendran epitomizes the plight of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka’s northern and eastern provinces, both during and after the island nation’s 26-year-long civil conflict.

Her oldest son was shot dead in 2006 while working in the coastal town of Trincomalee, about 300 km east of the capital, Colombo, by ‘unidentified killers’.

“We are just trying to remind the government that there are people, communities, hundreds of thousands of families, waiting for justice." -- Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the Oakland Institute
Abandoning her husband, she was forced to flee to Kilinochchi, a town in the north, which, at the time, served as the administrative nerve-centre for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the rebel group battling the government’s armed forces for an independent state for the country’s minority Tamil population.

Three years on, in May 2009, as the war dragged to a bloody finish, her second son was also killed – one of dozens who perished in the shelling of the Puthukkudiyiruppu hospital, an attack the army denies responsibility for.

Both boys were 19 years old at the time of their deaths.

Her third and final son, who was forcibly conscripted into the LTTE’s ranks as a child soldier, reportedly surrendered to government forces later that same month after the army overran LTTE-controlled areas and declared a decisive win over the rebels.

However, she has neither seen nor heard from him since, an ominous sign in a country where enforced disappearances are a common occurrence.

And her troubles did not end there. While protesting his disappearance, Jayakumari was arrested and imprisoned in the notorious Boosa prison, an institution that has become synonymous with torture.

Following presidential elections in January 2015 that saw the ouster of long-time president Mahinda Rajapaksa and the transfer of power to his former health minister Maithripala Sirisena, Jayakumari was released, in a move that activists took as a sign of safer and more just times to come.

But after returning to find her humble home ransacked and her possessions looted, Jayakumari was forced to place her daughter in an ashram for her own safety, while she herself move into a hut, the only place she could afford as a single mother – her husband died of cancer in 2012 – and where she now ekes out a rough living.

The converging issues that have defined her life over the past 10 years – war, disappearances, detention, displacement and abject poverty – are now the subject of an independent inquiry by a U.S. think-tank, the first of its kind to be released after the guns fell silent in 2009.

Titled ‘The Long Shadow of War’, the 37-page report by the California-based Oakland Institute (OI) details the unhealed wounds that still plague the former war zone, preventing civilians like Jayakumari from moving on with their lives.

During a press conference call Thursday, OI Executive Director Anuradha Mittal outlined some of the biggest hurdles to reconciliation, including continued heavy militarisation of the north and east, systematic erasure of Tamil history and culture, and the inability of the government to implement an effective mechanism to investigate alleged war crimes – for which both the government and the LTTE stand accused – committed during the last phase of the conflict.

Although Sirisena’s government has taken steps towards demilitarization, appointing a non-military civil servant as governor of the northern province in place of the former security forces commander who previously held the post, the presence of one soldier for every six civilians is a thorn in the side of many war-weary residents.

OI’s report quotes Defense Minister Ruwan Wijewardene as saying, as recently as February, that the government has no intention of removing or scaling down army formations in the Jaffna peninsula.

Furthermore, as Mittal pointed out Thursday, the army is not a passive presence. Rather, “it is engaged in property development, running luxury tourist resorts, whale-watching excursions, farming and other business ventures on land seized from local populations.”

Land and property have been major sticking points since 2009, with 90,000 of an estimated 480,000 people displaced during the last months of fighting still living in makeshift shelters, according to 2014 statistics published by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

The situation has been particularly difficult for war widows, who are thought to number between 40,000 and 55,000, now tasked with providing single-handedly for their families.

For women like Jayakumari, poverty and unemployment combine with uncertainty over missing relatives to create a culture of fear, and stillborn grief.

Citing data from the United Nations as well as religious institutions on the ground in the Vanni – a vast swathe of land in the north and east – OI estimates the number of missing people to be between 70,000 and 140,000.

“So many mothers like me are wandering from place to place in search of their children,” Jayakumari said in a statement to the press this past Thursday.

“We need answers. The government should at least arrange a place where we can go and visit our children. I want my child,” she asserted.

Her demand strikes at the heart of what could well be the defining challenge for the present government: implementing a national reconciliation process centered on a credible investigation into wartime abuses.

In March last year, the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) agreed on a resolution that would have launched a war crimes inquiry, but the then-government barred independent researchers from entering the country.

Despite these roadblocks, the world body was set to release its findings earlier this year, but agreed to the fledgling government’s request to delay publication for six months – leading to criticisms over a perceived watering down of U.N. mandates to suit the whims of electoral politics.

“Given the past records of government inaction, international pressure is critical for any decisive action,” Mittal asserted. “Instead of pursuing their geostrategic interests, the U.S., India and other countries should demand the release of the U.N. inquiry.”

She clarified that urgent tone of the report is not an attack on the new government, but should rather serve as a reminder of the severity of the situation for ordinary Tamil people.

“We are just trying to remind the government that there are people, communities, hundreds of thousands of families, waiting for justice,” she noted.

The death toll during the war’s last stages remains a hotly contested figure, both within Sri Lanka and among the international community. U.N. data suggest that 40,000 people died, but the previous government insisted the number of dead did not exceed 8,000.

Meanwhile, a new book by the eminent research body University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) says the true death toll could be closer to 100,000.

This is one of just many unanswered questions that could be put to rest by a just reconciliation process.

Edited by Kitty Stapp