Posts Tagged ‘conflict’
October 1, 2017
“’Caesar’ and his colleagues were driven by a desire to ensure that the documented crimes against humanity would not go unpunished. To this end they took great risks upon themselves”, explains the jury statement. “In bestowing the International Nuremberg Human Rights Award on the ‘Caesar’ group, the jury also wishes to highlight the history of Nuremberg as the cradle of modern international criminal law.”
When the civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, it was “Caesar’s” job to photograph the corpses of Syrian soldiers and opposition forces and to systematically archive the images. He found the work increasingly difficult to bear. “I had never seen anything like it”, he later said in an interview with the French journalist Garance Le Caisne, whose persistence played a major part in ensuring that “Caesar’s” images found their way into the public domain.
“Caesar” decided to act rather than continue documenting in silence: over a period of roughly two years, he secretly copied his photographs onto USB sticks and smuggled them out of the country with the help of friends. His life was constantly at risk as a result.
In January 2014, “Caesar’s” photographs were published on the Internet and found to be “reliable” by an investigative commission of former chief prosecutors of international criminal courts. “Caesar” fled from Syria and by his own account is now living in Europe.
Because his life is still in danger, the photographer was not able to attend the award ceremony at Nuremberg Opera House. Garance Le Caisne accepted the award on his behalf.
Source: International Nuremberg Human Rights Award for “Caesar”
Posted in awards, human rights, Human Rights Defenders | Leave a Comment »
Tags: Ceasar, conflict, digest of human rights awards, documenting, Garance Le Caisne, human rights awards, killings, Nuremberg Human Rights Award, photography, Syria
February 29, 2016
The Statement of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, at the 31st session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, on 29 February 2016 is worth reading (as usual). Some of the highlights are: 
Today we meet against a backdrop of accumulating departures from that body of institutions and laws which States built to codify their behaviour. Gross violations of international human rights law – which clearly will lead to disastrous outcomes – are being greeted with indifference. More and more States appear to believe that the legal architecture of the international system is a menu from which they can pick and choose – trashing what appears to be inconvenient in the short term.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in human rights, Human Rights Council, Human Rights Defenders | Leave a Comment »
Tags: conflict, Human Rights Up Front, humanitarian law, migration, nationalism, racism, refugees, statement, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid, UN Human Rights Council, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein
February 12, 2015
In the context of the current conflict in Ukraine, the following notice, dated 11 February 2015, from the Ukrainian Helsinki Union is interesting:
“Human Rights Defenders: Introduction of Certificate from Military Registration and Enlistment Office for Trips Abroad can Prejudice National Interests of Ukraine“
The initiative of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, demanding persons liable for call-up to have the certificate from military registration and enlistment office to travel abroad and even to leave region is contrary to the Constitution of Ukraine and valid legislation, perpetrates human rights and can prejudice national interests of Ukraine.
The representatives of Ukrainian Helsinki Union assert: “The implementation of forced mobilization in no way will strengthen the defensive capacity of our country and will not make better anything in our Armed Forces, except the call-up statistics of military registration and enlistment offices. Yet, Ukraine is extremely interested in free movement of people, wares and capital. Panic about mobilization breakdown is more the product of information war than the result of real processes in the society. The President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin was the first one to state the forced mobilization in Ukraine. The contempt of freedom of movement policy must be ceased immediately. Provoked by Russian propaganda, this policy is apparently harmful for the national interests of Ukraine”.
via Human Rights Defenders: Introduction of Certificate from Military Registration and Enlistment Office for Trips Abroad can Prejudice National Interests of Ukraine :: helsinki.org.ua.
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Tags: Armed Forces of Ukraine, conflict, conscription, forced mobilisation, freedom of movement, Human Rights Defenders, international human rights and humanitarian law, Ukraine, Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union
September 26, 2014
The United Nations human rights High Commissioner for human rights today condemned the recent brutal, cold-blooded slaying by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) of Iraqi human rights defender Sameera Salih Ali Al-Nuaimy, as well as the continuing detention, sexual exploitation and sale of hundreds of women and girls in areas captured by the militant group. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: arbitrary execution, conflict, High Commissioner for Human Rights, Human Rights Defenders, human rights of women, Iraq, ISIL, killing, Middle East, Mosul, repression, Sameera Salih Ali Al-Nuaimy, UN, WNN, woman human rights defender, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein
September 16, 2014
just published two recent reports on kidnappings in DRC. The first is that on 13 September 2014, the corpse of human rights defender Mr Mutebwa Kaboko was found in a forest, eight days after he was kidnapped by an armed group. Mutebwa Kaboko was a training facilitator for the organisation Aide Rapide aux Victimes des Catastrophes – ARVC, created in 2008 to help disaster victims, especially women and vulnerable children. Now operating in the territories of Uvira and Fizi Walungu, the association has led a campaign against the phenomenon of forced marriage. He was abducted by men suspected of belonging to an armed group known as Mayi Mayi Yakutumba. [On 20 June 2014, Mutebwa Kaboko was abducted in a similar way by elements of Mayi Mayi Yakutumba. He had apparently denounced their presence in the locality of Katete. They had held Mutebwa Kaboko in the open forest for five days before releasing him.]
On 14 September two other human rights defenders, Ms Neema Bitu and Mr Jacques Muganga, were found back after being kidnapped and held for two days by members of a rebel group. The two defenders are investigators of l’Action des Femmes Contre la Torture – AFCT (Action for Women Against Torture), an organisation defending the rights of women based in the village of Mwaba Kangando/Kiliba, tens of kilometers from the town of Uvira near the border between Burundi and the DRC. The perpetrators are this time suspected of belonging to Forces Nationales de Libération du Burundi, a rebel group composed mostly of Burundian combatants and operating in parts of South Kivu in the DRC. On the night of 13 September 2014, the two defenders were able to escape from their captors while they were firing on the government army. Their colleagues found them at dawn on 14 September 2014 at approximately. During their captivity, they reportedly suffered terrible beatings and now require emergency medical treatment.
This follows the abduction and detention on 1 September 2014, of human rights defenders Mr Célestin Bambone, Ms Marie Amnazo and Ms Kongwa Tulinabo [from the Action Paysanne pour le Développement et la Promotion des Droits de l’Homme (Peasant Action for the Development and Promotion of Human Rights – APDPDH), a human rights organisation based in Mugutu, in the South Kivu province and specialising in the monitoring of human rights violations in Mugutu and surrounding villages].
Posted in Front Line, human rights, Human Rights Defenders | Leave a Comment »
Tags: abduction, conflict, congo drc, DRC, Front Line (NGO), Human Rights Defenders, human rights violations, intimidation, kidnapping, killing, Mayi Mayi Yakutumba, monitoring, murder, Mutebwa Kaboko, rights of women
May 27, 2014
(Picture taken May 25 shows the domestic and foreign passports of Russian rights defender Andrei Mironov, reportedly killed near Ukrainian town of Slavyansk. AFP POOL-/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
“It’s hard for me to believe that Andrei Mironov is dead” writes
Olivia Ward, Foreign Affairs Reporter of the Toronto Star on 25 May 2014. Indeed a terrible shock. I met him for the first time in 2004 when he accompanied the MEA Laureate
Lida Yusupova of
Memorial to the ceremony in Geneva. According to an
Agence France- Presse report from Slavyansk, Ukraine, the veteran
Russian human rights defender and sometime war zone fixer, used up the last of his nine lives on Sunday. He was acting as a translator for Italian photojournalist Andrea Rocchelli, who was also killed. According to a French photographer who escaped with leg wounds, the two men were hit by shrapnel from mortar shells as government troops and pro-Russian separatists continued to battle for territory in eastern Ukraine.
Olivia Ward describes Andrei as a “slight, self-effacing man of 60, with a puckish sense of humour, he belied his frail appearance with an iron will to do good in the world. In 1986, that got him a year in a Soviet labour camp as an “anti Soviet dissident” – a time he used to channel his talent for languages, including French and Italian. Nor did he let up on government abuses after the fall of the Soviet Union. As a human rights campaigner linked with the venerable rights organization Memorial , he snapped at the heels of Boris Yeltsin’s and Vladimir Putin’s governments, especially during the two bloody wars when Russian troops battled Chechen separatist fighters…..“You don’t understand,” he rasped. “I have to go and witness what is happening. If I don’t, who will?”
“Andrei dodged so many bullets in his decades of battling impunity that it is hard to believe he is gone. It would be harder still if the truth were buried along with him” concludes Olivia Ward, who covered the former Soviet Union as bureau chief and correspondent from 1992 to 2002. For the full story see: Death in Ukraine: bitter end for Russian human rights hero | Toronto Star.
Posted in human rights, Human Rights Defenders, MEA | Leave a Comment »
Tags: AFP, Andrei Mironov, conflict, death, dissidents, Human rights defender, in memoriam, killing, Lida Yusupova, MEA 2004, Memorial, monitoring, Olivia Ward, russian, Ukraine
May 18, 2014
In a 28-page report, Under Attack: Violence against health workers, patients and facilities, Human Rights Watch and the Coalition “Safeguarding Health in Conflict” highlight recent attacks in countries around the world. Major examples include the targeted killing of more than 70 polio vaccination workers in Pakistan and Nigeria; the arrests of health workers for providing care to protesters in Bahrain and Turkey; the bombing of hospitals and deaths of hundreds of patients and health workers in Syria; and attacks targeting health workers in South Sudan and Afghanistan. The report is released in advance of a meeting from 19-24 May 2014, of health ministers from around the world.
Posted in books, HRW, Human Rights Defenders | Leave a Comment »
Tags: Afghanistan, Bahrain, conflict, HRW, Human Rights Defenders, humanitarian workers, Nigeria, Pakistan, patients and facilities, polio vaccination, right to health, Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition, South Sudan, Syria, Turkey, UN, Under Attack: Violence against health workers, war
October 30, 2012
I am referring to this blog post by Dr Jocalyn Clark because it is so good to see that the medical community comes out to support a Human Rights Defender in DRC and considers the attack on him as “another wake-up call for us all”.
“Last Thursday evening, as many of you will have seen via media reports, a true hero of women and human rights Dr Denis Mukwege narrowly escaped death during an assassination attempt on his life that killed his security guard. Amnesty International is now rightly calling for a full investigation and asking whether his recent criticisms of the Congolese government played a role. Attacks against human rights defenders and humanitarian workers are said to be increasing in DRC, where conflict has raged for years. Denis Mukwege, winner of many international accolades including the UN Human Rights Award, has long championed the rights of women and highlighted to the world the extent and the brutality of systemic rape against women in the conflict zones of DRC…”
Threats against women’s rights advocate Denis Mukwege are another wake-up call for us all | Speaking of Medicine.
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Tags: AI, conflict, Democratic Republic of Congo, Denis Mukwege, DRC, human rights, Human Rights Defenders, Jocalyn Clark, medical, rape, Women Human Rights
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 