The announcement of the three nominees of the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders 2012 will take place on Tuesday 24 April 2012, from 11h00 to 11h30 in Geneva (that is 09h00 – 09h30 GMT). For the first time this short event is being ‘broadcast’ live on the internet (www.martinennalsaward.org). There will be brief film images shown of the 3 nominees. The event also includes the announcement of the new Chairperson of the Martin Ennals Foundation.
Posts Tagged ‘human rights’
Announcement of nominees MEA 2012 streamed on internet: 24 April
April 21, 2012New UN rapporteur for truth, justice and reparation important for HRDs
April 6, 2012The Mail & Guardian Online carried an interesting piece that may have gone unnoticed. It is about the appointment of the first ever Rapporteur ‘on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence’. On March 23, the United Nations Human Rights Council appointed Pablo de Greiff, a Colombian national, who is currently the New York-based director of research at the International Centre for Transitional Justice. His tenure as special rapporteur begins on May 1.
The article refers to a recent meeting entitled “African Perspectives on the Appointment and Mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Guarantees of Non-Recurrence”, of which a comprehensive report is forthcoming.
The article also gives a useful background to the what “Special procedures” are and underlines rightly that civil society (i.e. HRDs) should play a vital role in relation to the special rapporteur. Feeding the special rapporteur with succinct, reliable and accurate information on urgent matters relating to the mandate is one important function civil society can take on. Raising awareness about the special rapporteur and the relevant mandate as well as how it translates into reality is equally important in order to ensure increased participation in the broader process.
UN appoints rapporteur for justice – Opinion – Mail & Guardian Online.
Turkmenistan and the UN: a rare comprehensive review of human rights shortcomings
April 3, 2012On 30 March Human Rights Watch (HRW) together with the International Partnership for Human Rights, and Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights made public a report that on the result of the Turkmen government’s hearing at the UN Human Rights Committee. Both the hearing and the original NGO submission show its abysmal human rights record. “The UN review leaves no doubt about the urgent need for human rights reform in Turkmenistan. What’s key now is to make sure the Turkmen government does what it takes to rectify abuses” stated Veronika Szente Goldston, Europe and Central Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. Given Turkmenistan’s exceptionally poor record of cooperation with the UN’s human rights bodies, sustained external pressure is essential to enforce compliance, the organizations said.
The Turkmen government’s clampdown on freedom of expression and repression of civil society activism, torture and ill-treatment in places of detention, and the lack of an independent judiciary topped the committee’s concerns. It directed the Turkmen government to report back within one year on measures taken to address them. The committee also highlighted other important areas of concern, such as: Incommunicado detention and imprisonment and restrictions on “the exit and entry into [the country] by certain individuals. Other concerns raised by the committee include: The Law on Public Associations, which “severely restricts freedom of association; reports of the use of child labor in cotton harvesting; criminalization of homosexuality; and the “alleged use of a forced assimilation policy of ‘Turkmenisation,’ for ethnic minorities.
For the full report go to: http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/03/30/turkmenistan-damning-un-report-shows-need-urgent-action
RELATED MATERIALS:
A balanced post on how the US should balance its human rights record
March 23, 2012Under the title “A Diminished Force for Good” Tom Parker of USA AI posted on 21 March 2012 a piece that – in a frank way – argues that the US should act with regard to its own human rights problems in order to regain international influence. It takes the lead role of the US in getting a resolution on Sri Lanka (successfully) passed in the Human Rights Council in Geneva this week and contrasts it with how the US has dealt with human rights abuses in its own ambit.
As Amnesty’s recent report Locked Away: Sri Lanka’s security detainees makes clear, human rights abuses still continue to this day in Sri Lanka. Instances of arbitrary and illegal detention have been widely reported, as have acts of torture and extrajudicial execution. Tom Parker says “I know from my own personal experience of working with Sri Lankan human rights defenders that the climate of fear in which opponents of the Rajapaksa regime operate is all-pervasive. The situation in Sri Lanka is grave and the intervention of the United Nations is much needed. .However, welcome though the US-sponsored resolution is, it is greatly undermined by the embarrassing gap that exists between US rhetoric and US behavior. Critics have not been slow in pointing this out.”…”The complete failure of the United States to address the deliberate use of torture as an integral part of the War on Terror hugely diminishes its ability to put pressure on other states to adhere to human rights standards that it itself has ignored. And we are all the poorer for it.”
“The alacrity with which the US Army has responded to the tragic deaths of sixteen Afghan villagers in Zangabad, Afghanistan, earlier this month demonstrates that accountability is nothing to be afraid of. Indeed it can be a powerful force for good….. The US is one of the [governments that actively promote human rights] but its influence has been greatly diminished over the past decade because of its reluctance to meaningfully address its own, very public, failings in this regard….We need a strong US voice speaking out for human rights in the world, but that can’t happen without real accountability at home.”
for the full text see: A Diminished Force for Good.
Law Students Participate in Hearing of human Rights Committee on violations in Cape Verde
March 23, 2012This is just one good example of how students can get practically involved in work as human rights defenders. Four law students from the Indiana Purdue University Indianapolis will go to New York this week to participate in the United Nations Human Rights Committee hearing on allegations of the corporal punishment and sexual abuse of elementary school children in Cape Verde.
The four are part of a group of Robert H. McKinney School of Law students who, in partnership with Delta Cultura Cabo Verde, a Cape Verdean nongovernmental organization, researched and wrote a shadow report to a United Nations committee discussing how the government of Cape Verde has failed to combat corporal punishment and sexual abuse of school children (Articles 2, 7 & 24 of the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights).
“Writing the shadow report has been a rewarding experience. Not only do we get the practical experience of legal writing, but we learn a little more about the world and help prevent human rights violations globally,” said one of the students. Unlike periodic reports submitted by states parties, a shadow report provides U.N. human rights treaty bodies with various forms of information — including victims’ personal accounts, data and statistics —independently prepared by NGOs and details violations by states parties of a specific treaty. “Shadow reporting enables grass-roots human rights defenders to engage in United Nations human rights monitoring and enforcement mechanisms,” Program in Human Rights Law manager Perfecto Caparas said.
for more information: Diane Brown IU Communications habrown@iupui.edu
Love it or hate it, the online phenomenon that is KONY 2012 offers valuable lessons to development communicators.
March 16, 2012The Kony 2012 campaign is not focused on Human Rights Defenders, but this blog has always taken a fierce interest in the link between videos and human rights and that is now the real issue at hand. There have been many views expressed by experts or those who think they are experts, but the reflections by Riona McCormack in her post “Lessons learned from the KONY 2012 campaign” REPSSI website, I find the most complete and forward-looking until now. I will quote her literally:
Never has a video – and certainly not one created by an NGO – generated such heated and conflicting responses, or achieved such global reach. Fast approaching the 100-million-viewer mark, in the week since the campaign’s launch, coverage of “KONY 2012” has infiltrated every major news outlet and online forum, and ignited a storm of commentary among Facebookers and Tweeters of all ages. However, there is a side to this public debate that has been relatively under-explored: and that is the lessons for media and communications professionals, and specifically those of us working in the development sector.
Here are five important lessons that we can draw from this campaign:
1) Emotion sells: Empathy, sorrow, joy, anger – these are the things that make us human, and motivate us to act, learn, or care. The KONY2012 campaign provides emotional resonance in abundance, and the success of this approach is evident. If we are honest, many of us probably felt at least a niggling worm of jealousy watching that YouTube counter climb into the millions. How many excellent, worthy causes have we been pushing for years, wishing for a response just like this? We can learn from this, in terms of how we present our work. At the same time, these tactics, familiar from the film industry, have the dangerous potential to become a form of emotional pornography. We must be careful in how we employ this approach, so that we do not compromise our mission, or our ethics, in order to provoke a reaction. An example of a feel-good video that doesn’t ignore the agency of the people involved is Mama Hope’s glorious celebration of connectivity, their “Stop the Pity. Unlock the Potential” Campaign.
2) Urgency equals action: Another key to the success of the campaign was the inherent sense of urgency woven into it. The video emphasises the “window of opportunity” that will soon close, the terrible suffering of children which must not continue. For the same reason, efforts to fundraise for earthquake relief funds and other sudden disasters or famines are radically more successful than for ongoing issues of malnutrition. How can we use this in our own campaigns? How can we make long-standing issues with no easy answer into a cause of immediate concern? The Girl Effect is one very slick example of how to introduce a sense of urgency into a long-term problem – education for girls.
3) People want to act (1): Once people care about something, they usually ask “so what can I do?” If there is no answer to this question, your audience may be left more cynical and apathetic than before. The KONY2012 campaign’s infectiously viral success is due to the clear, simple action it provided for ordinary people to take. Whilst the simplistic nature of this action (especially in the context of a highly complex, distant conflict) has been the subject of much of the criticism facing the campaign, there are many cases in which liking, tweeting or forwarding on a message would be a perfectly appropriate action to encourage. There have also been great examples of creative actions that go beyond simply clicking a button – such as the inspired Movember moustache drive. Bear this in mind the next time you create your own campaign: don’t just inform, ask. Let’s transform viewers into activists. We might be surprised by the response.
4) People want to act (2): … because it’s worth repeating. We need to recognise that however dubious the message or methodology of the campaign, the millions of people who watched the video, forwarded it on, and bought “action packs” from Invisible Children were motivated by a genuine desire to make a difference. Yet how many of us have at one time or another bemoaned the apathy and ignorance of the vast, amorphous “general public”? Is this is an opportunity for all of us as development communicators to recognise that if we are failing to engage the public, perhaps we need to look at ourselves and how we are communicating?
5) We need debate, not derision: Many supporters of the KONY2012 campaign have said “at least it has started people talking.” And this is certainly true; some truly excellent pieces of investigation, analysis, satireand reflection have been published, including a gratifyingly large number of responses from Ugandans. However, much of the debate taking place last week was bitter, simplistic, and divisive – the detractors classifying supporters as ignorant and uninformed, the supporters calling the detractors pompous and cynical. Both ‘sides” in this debate were to blame for the lack of a balanced discussion. If you disagree with aspects of the KONY2012 campaign, alienating those who support it will not change their viewpoint, nor will it encourage them to read more, learn more and engage more critically with complex issues. How can we find a way to transform the desire to be of service, so evident in the KONY2012 campaign, into sustainable, well-thought out actions?
I share her conclusion that we should not do as if there is only one choice: hate or love the campaign: “Rather, we can take from it what is useful – and discard the rest.”
You can contribute to this debate via The Drum Beat Network: http://www.comminit.com/policy-blogs/content/lessons-learned-kony-2012-campaign-0
Related articles
- Kony 2012 screening in Uganda results in anger, rocks thrown at screen (boingboing.net)
- Useful reads on Kony 2012 (ethanzuckerman.com)
- Ugandans Aren’t Thrilled About the ‘Kony 2012′ Video Either – Global – The Atlantic Wire (coffeereads.wordpress.com)
Human rights defender of the month: Svetlana Lukic
February 28, 2012For 2012 Civil Rights Defenders, a NGO based in Stockholm, has started an interesting campaign: the Human Rights Defenders of the Month. Amnesty International has long done this for the ‘prisoner of the month’ and we should welcome the effort to focus similarly on HRDs. Whether the organisation will manage to keep a good international spread in view its current strong emphasis on Eastern Europe (understandable as it is the successor of the Helsinki committee) is another matter. The case of Svetlana Lukic is certainly a very deserving one which reminds me of the work done by Natasha Kandic, the 1999 MEA laureate.
During the Balkan wars in the 1990s the Serbian journalist Svetlana Lukic was suspended twice from her post at Radio Belgrade because of the way she chose to report. Even after the fall of Milosevic’s regime in year 2000, the pressure continued. Today most media outlets in Serbia are heavily controlled by political and business elites. One exception is the radio program Pescanik (in English: The Hourglass), which has gone from 100.000 listeners per week to 475.000 in the past five years. The Pescanik web portal has around 7.000 visitors a day. Several media houses, among them the national Public Broadcasting Service, have described Pescanik as ‘anti-Serbian’ or ‘treacherous’; an opinion also shared by right wing and fascist groups.
“Whenever I feel afraid for my safety, I am ashamed because I remember all those people I saw during the wars in the 90s who suffered and had real reasons to be afraid. Some of them are not alive any more.”
Ten years after the fall of Slobodan Milosevic’s regime, Serbia is still dealing with the political, economic and cultural burden inherited from the conflicts that lasted for more than 10 years in the 1990-s. The country is deeply affected by issues like dealing with the past, the inability to secure continuity in the reform processes, a deep division between pro-European and right wing blocks and a lack of awareness on basic human rights and accountability of duty holders. Governments are ultimately responsible for human rights and democratic reforms. In transitional societies, however, like Serbia, the civil society is the driving force for the observance of human rights. They play a key role by continually monitoring the machinery of power, providing independent information and space for debate, as well as working to ensure that the state and its representatives take responsibility when mistakes are made. The majority of media outlets in Serbia are heavily controlled by political and business elites. There is a tendency to support policies of the current government uncritically, and to avoid coverage of issues that could politically damage the current holders of political power.
According to Reporters without Borders’ Press Freedom Index for 2011-2012, Serbia is ranked 80 out of 179: “In a new and regular phenomenon since national independence, journalists have been the victims of reprisals for investigating the country’s criminal underworld and its growing influence in political and financial circles.”
For the full story see: http://www.civilrightsdefenders.org/campaigns/human-rights-defender-of-the-month/svenska-manadens-manniskorattsforsvarare-svetlana-lukic/
Is Tanzania’s police restricting the freedom of assembly of HRDs?
February 23, 2012Earlier this month, 16 prominent human rights activists were arrested in Dar es Salaam on the grounds of unlawful assembly. The human rights defenders were arrested at the Muhimbili National Hospital, where the police allege they had gathered illegally and were intending to hold an illegal demonstration, although the group maintained that they were merely going to observe the dialogue between the government and health officials.
Article 20 of the Constitution of Tanzania enshrines the right for people; “to freely and peaceably assemble, associate and cooperate with other persons”. However, as expressed in the constitution, this right can be limited by other national legislation for certain purposes, including ensuring public order or where it is in the public interest. The Police Force and Auxiliary Services Act forms part of the national legislation, which regulates public assemblies. This Act states that notification must be provided to the police 48 hours in advance of a planned public assembly. The police are given broad powers to prohibit the assembly if they believe it “is likely to cause a breach of the peace, or to prejudice public safety or the maintenance of public order”.
Africa Review who reports on this rightly asks the question : did the 16 activists cause a breach of the peace, or prejudice public safety and the maintenance of public order? Were the police, by prohibiting the alleged assembly and subsequently arresting the activists, using their discretion appropriately? Arguably a “breach of the peace” could be interpreted very broadly by police, allowing them to use their discretion to prohibit all public assemblies. Without further explanation by the Tanzanian police this is bound to be considered an unnecessary restriction in international law.
Somalia, Child Soldiers Video by HRW on YouTube
February 23, 2012Human Rights Watch (HRW) uploaded on 18 February 2012 a short, crisp video about the recruitment of child soldiers in Somalia by Al-Shabaab.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 