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  • UN human rights branch under liquidity crunch

    Michelle Langrand for Geneva Solutions of 20 March 2024 has an exclusive report on the liquidity crunch and its effect on the UN human rights branch. Here her report in full:

    UN secretary general António Guterres and UN human rights high commissioner Volker Türk at the opening of the Human Rights Council 55th session in Geneva, 26 February 2024. (UN Photo/Elma Okic)

    UN secretary general António Guterres and UN human rights high commissioner Volker Türk at the opening of the Human Rights Council 55th session in Geneva, 26 February 2024. (UN Photo/Elma Okic)

    As the United Nations faces its worst liquidity crisis in recent history, experts, staff and observers worry about the ramifications on human rights work. Correspondence seen by Geneva Solutions reveals concerns at the highest levels of the UN human rights branch in Geneva as they are forced to scale back their operations.

    A patchwork of cost-saving measures taken over the winter holidays at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, from keeping the heat down and closing the premises for two weeks, revealed how serious the UN’s cash troubles were after states failed to fully pay their bills in 2023. The new year didn’t brighten prospects either. In January, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres in New York announced that “aggressive cash conservation measures” would be taken across the organisation to avoid running out of cash by August as year-end arrears reached a record $859 million.

    It couldn’t have come at a worse time for a cash-strapped UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) as worsening human rights crises worldwide add to its workload. The Geneva-based office acts as a secretariat for dozens of independent experts, investigative bodies and human rights committees that rely for the most part on the UN’s regular budget and few voluntary contributions from states. Between vacancies and travel restrictions, both insiders and outsiders worry that planned cuts could severely impair the UN’s crucial human rights work.

    Understaffed and overwhelmed

    On 12 February, just as the UN’s Geneva headquarters prepared for one of its busiest months hosting the Human Rights Council’s first session of the year, bad news came from New York. Countries had only paid one-third of the UN’s $3.59bn regular budget for 2024, and instructions from the higher-ups were that the hiring freeze imposed in July 2023 would be extended throughout 2024 across UN operations. The organisation said that $350 million would need to be shaved off through spending restrictions on travel, conference services and others.

    Human rights bodies, where vacancies had been piling up in the last months, would have to continue to run with reduced staff. In a letter from 23 December, UN high commissioner for human rights Volker Türk had already warned Council president Omar Zniber that 63 posts in over 10 investigative mandates were waiting to be filled while recruitments had been placed on hold. Currently, there are active investigations on serious human rights abuses in Ukraine, Iran, Syria, South Sudan and Nicaragua among others.

    “While no compromise has been made in terms of methodology, some of the investigative bodies have had to narrow the scope of both their investigations and their upcoming reports,” the letter reads.

    The fact-finding mission on Sudan was one of the bodies immediately affected. Created in October to collect evidence on atrocities committed during the last year of bloody conflict in which thousands of civilians have been killed and millions displaced, the probe body has struggled to begin work. The independent experts composing it, who aren’t paid, have been appointed since December, but as of late February, the Human Rights Office hadn’t been able to hire a support team due to insufficient cash flow, according to a Human Rights Council spokesperson. The experts, who have been mandated for one year, are due to present their findings in September, with observers wondering whether the western-led proposal will garner the political backing it needs to be renewed.

    That isn’t the only initiative struggling to get off the ground. “We have met with some new mandates, and we realised that they barely have a team, if any, to support them,” said one NGO member who collaborates with the human rights mechanisms and asked to remain anonymous. Observers say most investigative bodies, even older ones, are impacted at some level.

    Kaoru Okoizumi, deputy head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism on Myanmar (IIMM) – the largest human rights probe team  – said six out of 57 staff positions funded through the UN’s regular budget were vacant, significantly affecting their work. The IIMM, which also relies on a trust fund made up of voluntary donations and doesn’t depend on the OHCHR’s budget, is coping better than most.

    Expert committees that oversee states’ compliance with international human rights law, such as on children’s rights and on torture, are also stretched thin. One staffer said they were required to take on more work than normally expected, for example, having to conduct research and compile information about several countries at the same time for one session. “It’s just too much!” they said, adding that their team was short of more than 10 people.

    Another worker from the OHCHR’s special procedures branch, who said was covering for several vacant spots, conceded that the quality of work is affected in such conditions. “Of course, you won’t work as well after pulling all-nighters,” they said. Türk’s letter to Zniber acknowledges that the secretariat was having trouble supporting some 60 special procedures, which are UN-backed independent experts or groups of experts assigned to report to the council on a specific theme or country.

    While the problem of understaffing isn’t new, and many also point to cumbersome months-long recruitment processes that are often incompatible with brief mandates, the situation has worsened. To compensate for the hiring freeze, the UN has also increasingly resorted to temporary contracts that last for a few months and can be exceptionally renewed for up to two years. The two workers, who have living on contract to contract for more than a year, said that there is fear that temporary staff may be among the first to go, along with consultants. “In the food chain of contracts, we’re at the bottom,” one of them said.

    A slim year for the Human Rights Council

    The UN’s human rights branch, which receives as little as four per cent of the UN’s total budget – around $142 million – just enough to cover one third of its activities, has been scrambling to cut back on spending. On Friday, in another letter seen by Geneva Solutions, Türk informed Zniber that his office would be forced to axe certain activities this year.

    OHCHR spokesperson Marta Hurtado confirmed the information to Geneva Solutions by writing: “The office has developed an internal contingency plan, which provides for adjustment pending the complete availability of regular budget resources become available.”

    Among the measures it proposes is postponing some activities to 2025 altogether while as many consultations and meetings as possible would be moved online without interpretation, according to Hurtado, since the UN in New York hasn’t authorised it for virtual meetings. For those that will be held in person, resources to fly in experts and civil society will also be reduced.

    The UN’s recent decision that it would no longer provide online services for meetings has drawn outcry from rights campaigners who argue it curtails the possibility of civil society groups and states with little resources to participate. While the move has been attributed to matters of rules, observers can’t help but wonder if it isn’t, in the end, about the money. Echoing the concerns in the letter, Türks described the impact of these measures on participation from experts and other stakeholders as “deeply regrettable”.

    Another issue raised by the UN rights chief is the difficulty that his office has been facing in providing technical assistance to national authorities. He gave the example of the Marshall Islands, which requested help in 2022 to assess the human rights impact of US nuclear testing in its territory in the 1940s and 50s. A source said that although a first visit finally took place this year, work has been delayed.

    Marc Limon, director of the human rights think tank Universal Rights Group, remarked that work by the Council to help states improve their rights record through capacity-building support was unfortunately “almost inexistent” and regretted that resources couldn’t be spared for what he calls the “hard end of human rights diplomacy”. “While UN investigations must be protected, there is little threat to key commissions of inquiry due to the huge budgets allocated to them in the first place,” he said. Most probe bodies have between 17 to 27 staff while special procedures usually have one or two assistants.

    The Moroccan ambassador forwarded Türk’s letter to fellow states on Monday and said a draft decision regarding the measures would be tabled for the council to consider at the end of the session at the beginning of April.

    Human rights credibility at stake

    One that has raised eyebrows but isn’t explicitly mentioned by the UN rights chief is limiting country visits by UN experts to one visit instead of two. Hurtado acknowledged that special procedures and other expert mechanisms, including probe bodies, would see their country visits “reduced” while not commenting on the number of authorised visits.

    One UN expert, speaking under the condition of anonymity, voiced concern over the restriction. “Country visits are extremely important because they give us a real intimate understanding of a place and the state gets direct feedback on what they’re doing well and what they can do to improve, while also energising civil society,” they said, point out that experts were already barely able to conduct visits during the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Limon commented that while it was a wise choice to cut back on some of the “superfluous” debates and activities, reducing special rapporteur trips to countries to one per year, an idea that he said has been floated around before, showed the office “had its priorities wrong”.

    Travel restrictions could also have significant implications for criminal cases. Okoizumi said her Myanmar team only had 65 per cent of its usual travel budget, which is key for the Geneva-based group to reach victims and witnesses. “We do our witness interviews in person because we think it’s important in a criminal investigation to make sure that interviews are being conducted in a way that preserves the integrity of the testimony,” she said.

    The body, set up in 2018 by the Human Rights Council, is currently working to support a case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar for violating the Genocide Convention at the International Court of Justice, as well as investigations on crimes against the Rohingya at the International Criminal Court and Argentina.

    “These are very concrete proceedings and our ability to support them will be impacted by the number of interviews that we’re able to conduct or the analysis that we’re able to produce and share with these jurisdictions,” Okoizumi said, noting that the ICJ case is particularly time-sensitive as both parties were expected to make submissions this year.

    The international lawyer said this has meant shifting resources to meet shorter-term deadlines at the risk of putting aside other objectives. “The whole point of having an investigative mechanism is to make sure that we can collect the evidence very soon after a crime happens, even if there isn’t an investigation or prosecution until many years or even decades later. So, shifting our resources in that way, overall will have a negative impact,” she explained.

    Top experts within the human rights branch have also rang alarm bells about the wider repercussions of the funding crisis. In a letter seen by Geneva Solutions addressed to the president of the General Assembly, Dennis Francis, dated 23 February, 10 chairs of human rights committees warned that the liquidity crisis “severely threatens the credibility and efficiency of the United Nations human rights system”.

    The experts said the treaty bodies were “being denied even the minimum staff and operational resources required to deliver their critical mandates to advance human rights” at a time of “such a severe existential crisis of multilateralism and of non compliance with international law”.

    Referring to some of the measures being considered, the signatories also argue that suspending sessions “for the first time in their over six decades of history for financial reasons, together with visits to prevent torture and other human rights violations” would lead to “concrete and irreversible” harm.

    “When the collective security system has failed to honour the ‘never again’ pledge of 1945, the least to do is to strengthen human rights monitoring mechanisms, so that human rights violations are documented, even when justice seems extremely challenging to serve. We note with deep regret that the opposite is being done,” the custodians of human rights law wrote.

    Human Rights CouncilOHCHR

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Liberties’ Rule of Law in the EU Report 2024: weakening

    On 18 March 2024, the Liberties Rule of Law Report 2024 was published on the rule of law across Europe

    Democracy and rule of law continued to weaken across Europe in 2023, and restrictions on the right to peaceful protest have increased significantly. That is what is shown by a new report on rule and law and human rights produced by 37 European human rights organisations. Older democracies, for example Sweden and Italy, also show signs of the gradual erosion of rule of law. 

    The Liberties Rule of Law Report 2024 is the most extensive independent report submitted to the EU. A group of civil liberties groups dedicated to strengthening freedoms and rights reviewed 19 EU countries and their adherence to rule of law and human rights in 2023. The report provides this information to the EU Commission, which annually assesses how EU member states uphold their commitments to rule of law.   

    According to this year’s report, the rule of law in the EU continued to deteriorate in 2023, as governments further weakened legal and democratic checks and balances. Balazs Denes, Executive Director of the Civil Liberties Union for Europe (Liberties), comments:  

    “Liberties Rule of Law Report 2024 shows that intentional harm or neglect to fix breaches to the rule of law by governments, if left unaddressed, can evolve into systemic issues over time. The growing far right, building on these abuses, will very quickly dismantle European democracy if the European Commission does not use the tools at its disposal, including infringement proceedings or conditional freezing of EU funds, in a much more assertive way. There is no need to wait until a captive state like Hungary’s emerges with an irremovable anti-democratic regime”.   

    In 2023, many of us worry that society is becoming more divided and less equal, and we have strong opinions about the choices government makes on our behalf, such as how to treat migrants and refugees, tackle climate crisis, or respond to global conflicts. As elected representatives, we rely on politicians to use the power and resources of their office to address our concerns.

    The strength of democracy is determined not by the outcome of governments’ decisions, but the democratic environment in which decisions are made. Liberties’ fifth annual rule of law report evaluates whether governments respect the rule of law structures, such as independent media, free courts, and citizen rights groups, that hold them accountable. The most in-depth ‘shadow reporting’ exercise by an independent civil liberties network covering 19 Member States, our report identifies Europe-wide trends and provides the EU with recommendations to reverse democracy’s downward trajectory.

    There was a strong uptick in restrictions on peaceful protest increased in 2023 (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Hungary and Sweden), often selectively applied to pro-Palestine and climate protests. The use of surveillance technology at protests persisted (Belgium, France, and the Netherlands) and civil society organisations and human rights defenders were still subject to attacks in almost all countries observed.

    Governments continued to pass laws in an accelerated fashion (Bulgaria, Greece and Sweden, Slovakia), largely bypassing input put from citizens groups and resulting in poorer quality legislation. When public consultations with civil society did take place, our members reported that they were symbolic in nature (Bulgaria, Hungary, Ireland or Croatia) or faced deadlines too short to be meaningful (Germany, Slovakia and Slovenia).

    Recommendations to the EU

    Once authoritarian tendencies become entrenched, they are extremely difficult to reverse. The EU has a range of tools at its disposal and should use them more readily before rule of law violations take root. If violations are blatant and deliberate, infringement proceedings should be initiated without discussion, interim measures requested, and systemic infringement proceedings should follow multiple rule of law violations. Civil society should be given more support in its role fostering rule of law dialogue. The Commission’s annual report should include targeted and specific recommendations for Member States to address rule of law shortcomings, linked to enforcement measures, and we recommend evaluating civic space as a standalone topic and broadening the scope of human rights violations.

    This is the fifth annual report on the state of the rule of law, democracy and fundamental rights across the EU.

    See previous rule of law reports 2023 2022 2021 2020

    https://www.liberties.eu/en/stories/rolreport2024-main/45014

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Transnational repression: Human Rights Watch and other reports

    Illustration of a map being used to bind someone's mouth

    On 22 February 2024, Human Rights Watch came with a study on governments reaching outside their borders to silence or deter dissent by committing human rights abuses against their own nationals or former nationals. Governments have targeted human rights defenders, journalists, civil society activists, and political opponents, among others, deemed to be a security threat. Many are asylum seekers or recognized refugees in their place of exile. These governmental actions beyond borders leave individuals unable to find genuine safety for themselves and their families. This is transnational repression.

    See earlier posts:

    Warning: Human rights defenders in Ukraine and in exile will be danger
    Resisting in Exile: Voice of Human Rights Defenders – side event tomorrow, 5 March 2024
    HRDs from Hong Kong fear arrest warrants and bounty
    China goes after dissidents abroad

    Transnational repression looks different depending on the context. Recent cases include a Rwandan refugee who was killed in Uganda following threats from the Rwandan government; a Cambodian refugee in Thailand only to be extradited to Cambodia and summarily detained; and a Belarusian activist who was abducted while aboard a commercial airline flight. Transnational repression may mean that a person’s family members who remain at home become targets of collective punishment, such as the Tajik activist whose family in Tajikistan, including his 10-year-old daughter, was detained, interrogated, and threatened.

    Transnational repression is not new, but it is a phenomenon that has often been downplayed or ignored and warrants a call to action from a global, rights-centered perspective. Human Rights Watch’s general reporting includes over 100 cases of transnational repression. This report includes more than 75 of these cases from the past 15 years, committed by over two dozen governments across four regions. While the term “transnational repression” has at times become shorthand for naming authoritarian governments as perpetrators of rights violations, democratic administrations have assisted in cases of transnational repression.

    Methods of transnational repression include killings, unlawful removals (expulsions, extraditions, and deportations), abductions and enforced disappearances, targeting of relatives, abuse of consular services, and so-called digital transnational repression, which includes the use of technology to surveil or harass people. These tactics often facilitate further human rights violations, such as torture and ill-treatment.

    This report also highlights cases of governments misusing the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol)—an intergovernmental organization with 195 member countries—to target critics abroad.

    Victims of transnational repression have included government critics, actual or perceived dissidents, human rights defenders, civil society activists, journalists, and opposition party members and others. Governments have targeted individuals because of their identity, such as ethnicity, religion, or gender. Back home, families and friends of targeted people may also become victims, as governments detain, harass, or harm them as retribution or collective punishment. Transnational repression can have far-reaching consequences, including a chilling effect on the rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly among those who have been targeted or fear they could be next.

    This report is not an exhaustive examination of cases of transnational repression. Instead, it outlines cases that Human Rights Watch has documented in the course of researching global human rights issues that point to key methods and trends of transnational repression.

    Human Rights Watch hopes that by drawing attention to cases of transnational repression, international organizations and concerned governments will pursue actions to provide greater safety and security for those at risk. Governments responsible for transnational repression should be on notice that their efforts to silence critics, threaten human rights defenders, and target people based on their identity are no less problematic abroad than they are at home. This report provides governments seeking to tackle transnational repression with concrete recommendations, while raising caution against laws and policies that could restrict other human rights.

    Human Rights Watch calls on governments committing transnational repression to respect international human rights standards both within and beyond their territory. Governments combatting transnational repression should recognize such abuses as a threat to human rights generally and act to protect those at risk within their jurisdiction or control.

    https://www.hrw.org/report/2024/02/22/we-will-find-you/global-look-how-governments-repress-nationals-abroad

    https://www.commondreams.org/news/human-rights-watch-dissidents

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • ‘DINNER WITH THE FOUNDING FATHERS’

    Enjoy reading my book about how Edmund Barton and Alfred Deakin and other giants of Australian History created a nation of six States on New Years Day, 1901, the very first Australia Day. It was an extraordinary achievement that was attained within 12 years from when Henry Parkes made his powerful Federation Speech at Tenterfield. …

    Continue reading ‘DINNER WITH THE FOUNDING FATHERS’

    The post ‘DINNER WITH THE FOUNDING FATHERS’ appeared first on Everald Compton.

    This post was originally published on My Articles – Everald Compton.

  • 30 political prisoners’ oral histories collected in an unprecedented new book

    From Assata Shakur to Leonard Peltier, social movements have lifted up political prisoners as revolutionary examples and fought protracted, often decades-long campaigns to secure their release. Now, a new collection from AK Press, Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners, gathers the experience and wisdom of some 30 political prisoners in one place for the first time. Eric King and Josh Davidson, the editors of the project, join Rattling the Bars to discuss their new book and the urgency of the fight to free political prisoners.

    Josh Davidson is an abolitionist who is involved in numerous projects, including the Certain Days Collective, which publishes the annual Freedom for Political Prisoners calendar, and the Children’s Art Project with political prisoner Oso Blanco. Josh also works in communications with the Zinn Education Project.

    Eric King is a father, poet, author, and activist. He is a political prisoner serving a 10-year federal sentence for an act of protest over the police murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. He is scheduled to be released in 2024. He has been held in solitary confinement for years on end and has been assaulted by both guards and white supremacists. King has published three zines: Battle Tested, Antifa in Prison, and Pacing in My Cell.

    Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

    Transcript

    Mansa Musa:  Welcome to this edition of Rattling The Bars, a show that amplifies the voices of people who are disenfranchised, marginalized, and subjugated, while offering solutions. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. The powers that be say we don’t have political prisoners in America; They say this isn’t a country where people are imprisoned for their political beliefs, but I can tell you from firsthand experience, that the reality is very different. Recently, I spoke with Josh Davidson and Eric King about a book they have co-edited entitled Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners. This book brings together the experiences and wisdom of over 30 political prisoners in North America.

    Josh Davidson is an abolitionist who is involved in numerous projects including the Certain Days Collective, which publishes the annual Freedom for Political Prisoners calendar, and the Children’s Art Project with political prisoner Oso Blanco. Josh also works in communication with the Zinn Education Project. Eric King is a father, poet, author, and activist. He’s a former political prisoner who was incarcerated for an act of protest over the police murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. He was held in solitary confinement for years on end and was assaulted by both guards and white supremacists. King has published three zines: Battle Tested (2015), Antifa in Prison (2019), and Pacing in My Cell (2019).

    All right. Thank y’all for joining me on this edition of Rattling The Bars, Josh Davidson and Eric King. Let’s start by talking about the book. The name of the book is Rattling the Cages: Oral History of Political Prison. That’s right. Why? Why this book? And you might have an audience saying, well, there are hundreds of books, hundreds of memoirs, hundreds of narratives dealing with people that are locked up – Why this particular book at this particular time? Let’s start with you, Josh.

    Josh Davidson:  That’s a great question and thank you, Mansa. This is a story that needs to be told. It’s a collection of almost 40 interviews with people who are in prison or have spent time in prison for political reasons. As with all people in prison, they don’t tend to have a voice, and it’s hard to get your voice out when you’re in prison. The interviews that we included not only show love and compassion and a depth of humanity but also non-stop resistance to the system, which is always inspirational and always needed. It was an idea that Eric came up with from the very belly of the beasts, from the inside of some of the worst prisons in the country. He saw that humanity was still there and he wanted to capture it. Eric, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

    Mansa Musa:  Right. Both of us have been in this space. Eric, I did 48 years before getting out, and we interviewed you and we recognized that because of your commitment to freedom and justice and struggle, you were ultimately locked up for being involved in the resistance movement. Then after getting locked up, once they got you in the system, they really tried to kill you; Their goal was to kill you. The fact that you’re here on this camera is a miracle. From your experience when you were in the system, why did you see the need and the necessity to try to get this information out to society?

    Eric King:  My brother. Thank you, thanks so much for having me on as well. When I was inside, I was reading a lot of books about political prisoners and about prisoners in general and those books lifted me up. They gave me strength, knowing that other people have been through certain things and that I’m not alone in this struggle, and I also wanted to learn more. I thought it could be beneficial for the next generation to know that their elders went through similar things but that also the prison system didn’t crush us inside.

    That we were able to grow as people, that we were able to grow as organizers, that we were able to have friendships and learn things; Not because the prison system gave it to us but because we took it from them. We insisted upon it. That we’re not going to become these puddles of mud to be stepped on; We’re going to become these tall oaks. Thomas Manning died and I remember thinking to myself, he had so much knowledge and wisdom and it’s gone now. I wanted to make sure that we could get that knowledge and wisdom from as many of our elders and peers as possible to share with the next generation.

    Mansa Musa:  Tell our audience who Thomas Manning was so we don’t take for granted that our audience nationally knows who he is.

    Eric King:  Thomas Manning was a political prisoner, he did approximately 30 years or so. He was a member of the UFF and he was at ADX and the Supermax for a couple of years, and he got brutalized by the police for fighting against the apartheid system in South Africa. He fought against that inside America with Ray Luke and a few others. His body was destroyed by the police and he ultimately died of a heart attack at USP-Hazelton in 2018 or 2019, I believe.

    Mansa Musa:  Okay. We want to send our regards out to his family even now. I see y’all had Angela Davis write an intro to the book. When they locked her up back in the 70s, they wrote a book called If They Come In the Morning, by Angela Davis and other political prisoners. To resonate with the point you made, Eric, in the book she made the observation of the comradery that grows out of the prison system when it comes to – Prisoners in general but – Political prisoners being in that environment. Josh, when you were interviewing, did you get that sense? I see the way you set the book up, you identified a political prison, and then you set up prison life, politics, the prison dynamics, and looking forward. In your interview, did you get that sense of how people related to each other in terms of the comradery that grew out of that wretched decadent environment that we found ourselves in?

    Josh Davidson:  Yes, absolutely. Great question. Great, great question. Angela Davis published that book, that collection of political prisoners, 50 years ago. Now we’re publishing this one with a foreword by her, and the struggle is still the same. And I think that we see that in all the interviews. Everyone talks about not only the comradery that comes with doing time with fellow political prisoners and politicized prisoners but also once they get out, working together through the bars, across the bars to make changes happen and to make a better world. That comes across clearly throughout most of the interviews.

    Mansa Musa:  Right. Eric, you’ve been to ADX, you’ve been everywhere they could put you other than in the ground. I’m not saying that lightly because anybody who knows your story knows that and knows that this was because of civil disobedience. It wasn’t because you went down there, stormed the Capitol, and killed everybody. You weren’t with that crowd. You weren’t with the crowd with the person who assaulted five police in the Capitol and was given five years for that attempt to take over the country. But you sought to… As a matter of fact, I’m going to let you tell your story about why you wound up in prison.

    Eric King:  So when I first got locked up, I was locked up after the uprising in Ferguson when the pigs killed Michael Brown. In my city, I was an anarchist – I’m still an anarchist – And I participated in that sort of activism. Activism that I thought would build a unified community. I saw a lack of concern or care when this happened; No one took to the streets and no one confronted the police. So I went to Ferguson for a couple of days and I saw what was happening down there. I saw the military presence, I saw the white power militias backing the police like they were one family, and I saw the genuine hurt and rage in that community. And that affected me.

    I went back to Kansas City and I thought, I need to bring awareness of what’s happening to people in other communities because it’s happening in our community too, it’s just not getting to the news. Police kill poor and Black people everywhere. So I thought the best way to get attention for that was to cause a stir. I took two Molotov cocktails and threw them into the congressional building of our local congressman. I let it be known this is a solidarity act with those that are fighting down the road in Ferguson and I ended up getting 10 years in federal prison for throwing those bottles.

    Mansa Musa:  Right. Recently, I read where Dr. King said that we’re obligated to respect just laws but we also have a right to protest against unjust laws by any means that we deem necessary. So we recognized at that point, that it was an all-out war, as it is now, it’s an all-out war on poor, Indigenous, Black, and oppressed people. And your act merited 10 years as far as they thought, but if you went down to the nation’s capital with Molotov cocktails – Because remember, they found Molotov cocktails down in the nation’s capital – You’d have gotten five years or you’d have got a congressional medal of honor for being a part of that attempt to overthrow this country.

    Let’s unpack some of the political prisoners and some of the stories. I recall that I was in constant correspondence with Jalil Muntaqim and Sundiata Acoli back in the 70s. We used to organize and take the problem with the prisons to the United Nations. They were organizing all the prisons throughout the US. Our collective, the collective that we had in the Maryland penitentiary, took on the mantle to organize a protest with everybody around the country and the world, simultaneously. We had a designated date. I was responsible for corresponding with Jalil and Sundiata. After that was over, back in the 80s, they were bringing a law withhold; They were transporting it from one point of the country to another point. And Jalil had written me and told me that a comrade was coming to Baltimore, that she might need some help because they sent her to the woman’s detention center.

    So I did what I was supposed to do: I had somebody reach out to her and let her know if she needed something. To fast-forward the story, when me and Eddie were locked up in the institution he said, I’m going on a visit and I’m going to see… I said, who are you going to see? He said I’m going to see Laura Whitehorn. I said, I know her. He said, well, how do you know her? Now I’m telling him about the story I just told y’all. And so we went down there and he told us, oh yeah, I know that comrade. Fast-forward, all of us were out and had the ability to be out. Eddie had a thing called Eddie’s Front Porch where we used to come together with Laura, and different comrades. When you interviewed Laura – Now she’s out doing some remarkable work up in New York – What was your takeaway, Josh?

    Eric King:  Josh, real quick. What you just said, that story is the exact reason why I wanted to make this book. That history, that’s priceless and it’s so empowering. Josh, go ahead. Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. My bad.

    Mansa Musa:  No, you’re good. You’re good.

    Josh Davidson:  Yeah, no, no, you’re good. Laura Whitehorn is an amazing person. She did, I don’t know, 20 years related to the resistance conspiracy case starting in the 1980s. And she helped co-found RAPP, Release Aging People in Prison. I had met Laura a few times before, especially working to get a lot of the elder political prisoners in New York out, like Jalil Muntaqim – Who you mentioned – David Gilbert, Herman Bell, Seth Hayes, so many of them that RAPP helped to get out. And also running into Laura and Susie at Red Emma’s with Paul Coates and then Eddie Conway over the years.

    Laura’s a great one to bring up as an example because she’s so vibrant, so full of stories of radical history, and she’s such a tiny, small person, but she’s so full of love and anger at a system that is endlessly horrible to people across the world. She also does a great job of bringing humanity into the prison system. She talks about protesting on the Baltimore jail roof and communicating with people out on the street. She talks about doing AIDS work with other political prisoners around the country in the 80s. And she hasn’t stopped doing that work. She was involved while they were underground –

    Mansa Musa:  Yeah, that’s the good thing. Eric, you are working in the law office right now. And that’s the thing about this book, the impact that political prisons have. Huey Newton – And we were talking about this off camera – Wrote an essay called To Die for the People. In his essay, he talks about how when people are in prison, you have two types of prisoners. He identified two types of prisoners: Prisoners that become politicized or are already political when they go in. But they all become politicized while they’re in. Then he talked about prison, he identified it as illegitimate capitalists that hold on to the idea of getting money or having some prominence under the capitalist ideal.

    At any rate, he’s saying that the goal of prison is to change a person’s thinking. It’s not effective in any of that. Eric, talk about your experience and how some of the people that you ran across in the system were politicizing other prisons and how the presence of you and other prisoners had an impact on that environment. Talk about that.

    Eric King:  So real talk, most of the time I did, I didn’t have the privilege of running across other consciously-minded people. It was difficult because we want to make a difference and we want to fight against this system inside. You do have to put in a lot of patient work. You have to have a lot of hard discussions to get people to understand that sometimes what they’re doing inside is furthering the system. It’s empowering the system, it’s not empowering ourselves. We’re giving them bullets to shoot us with when we do some of this shit as opposed to trying to tear down these walls.

    So I did have the chance to help radicalize a few people. I saw solidarity inside a lot of times where we were able to build relationships and then ride with each other against the system; Whether it be hunger strikes, barricades, or taking the team over something. I also got to meet a lot of people from different backgrounds that in the free world I probably wouldn’t have met: A lot of people from Baltimore, DC, and then a lot of Jihadi folks.

    Getting to know other people’s stories, getting to know their lives, their passions, and hopes and dreams, helps me be a better activist. Now we can ride together as people, as opposed to I’m a political prisoner and you’re a drug dealer. Now we can ride together on a common cause. We’re just two men inside fighting for our freedom. So I didn’t get a chance to meet as many… I don’t think there are as many inside anymore as there were in the 70s and 80s. But I got to meet a lot of great people, have a lot of great discussions, and hopefully uplift their consciousness and help people move forward.

    Mansa Musa:  And that’s what I was talking about is –

    Eric King:  Oh, here we go.

    Mansa Musa:  – Your impact on… Because that’s the narrative of the book. The narrative of the book is you lock people up. Fred Hampton said you can kill a revolutionary but you can’t kill a revolution. You can’t kill the spirit of the revolution but you can kill a revolutionary. But that’s what you had talked about: Your impact on people. When you come in contact with people, that it’s your consciousness, your ideology, and your perspective of what the system is.

    And educating people on understanding that you have the prison-industrial complex and you’ve got slave labor. Why are we not getting living wages? Living in prison doesn’t mean that we’re not entitled to living wages. Then that got people to start looking in prison to start identifying and looking at the conditions through a different lens. But they started looking at it from a different lens because of us and the people that were in [prison]. Back to you, Josh. What do you want the people to take away from these stories and this work?

    Josh Davidson:  That’s a great question, Mansa Musa. If nothing else, I hope that this book arms the spirit. I hope that activists, organizers, and people in prison read this book.

    Eric King:  Arms the spirit.

    Josh Davidson:  Yes. And that’s another throwback to the 70s and the 80s –

    Eric King:  The book.

    Josh Davidson:  – Movement thing. But yeah, I hope that people read this book and learn that there aren’t monsters behind the walls. There are people fighting back against an unjust system that, not only do they not deserve to be there, but we can learn from them, with them, and we can grow together and we can make our movements stronger together. You brought up the structure of the book and how it talks about prison life and politics and prison dynamics and then looking forward, and I did that in a way to make it easier to maneuver and to read through the book. But I also based it on prison visits, visiting all of these elders throughout the years, learning from them, learning the history that they have, and how involved they can be in current movements too.

    Mansa Musa:  Right. That’s a good way to articulate that. Making the observation that when you talk about revolutionaries and political prisoners, we have humanity like everybody else and oftentimes it’s not expressed, it’s not being written about. We are in an artist-type situation, we’re in a struggle. Eric, you found yourself in ADX and isolated in the cell when they brought these three racists in there and they tried to do some unconscionable thing to your body. And you don’t have a choice of being able to say, what am I going to do? Fight and die? Like Claude McKay said, back pressed against the wall, dying, but fighting back. But your book shows the humanity of political prisoners and revolutionaries and that’s something that we need to emphasize more. Eric, what do you want our audience to know about you and the people that you left behind?

    Eric King:  So when you say the people that I left behind, I’m going to talk about the men at ADX.

    Mansa Musa:  Okay, come on.

    Eric King:  I feel as if the abolition community has forgotten about the Supermax folks. There are people locked down right now who have been locked down for 10, 15, and 20 years at ADX, and a lot of them will never touch their family members again; A lot of them will never touch their wives or hold their kids. Some of them aren’t allowed phone calls, they’re not allowed visits, they’re not allowed mail. That restriction is so brutal that it can rip your heart out. But what I saw meeting these men is that resistance, that fire, is still there. There’s a bro I left, his name is Shaheed, and he’s from DC. He was one of Silk’s homies out there, Wayne Perry. And Wayne Perry also, honestly. But this dude’s been at ADX for 16 years – He’s only 39, so that’s almost half his life. He’s in 24-hour lockdown. And the reason he is locked down is because he refused to bend a knee to these pigs.

    So the resistance, the revolutionary spirit doesn’t go away. He still reads Free Minds every day: That organization from DC that sends in magazines. These people still care, still have hearts, still have passions, still have hobbies, and still have joys. We need to see that the prison system tries to take that away; Prison tries to crush these people. And it’s on us, it’s on the abolition movement, to say we’re not going to give the government that power. We’re not going to let you bury our brothers and sisters for decades. And we need to rise up and try to stand with these people, stand with everybody that’s resisting the system.

    Mansa Musa:  Thank you. Yeah, there you have it. The Real News and Rattling the Bars. Eric King and Josh Davidson, thank you for joining me. We encourage our viewers and our listeners to reach out to the political prisoners throughout the country and try to get a better understanding of what’s going on with people who are in prison only because of their ideas. We found ourselves in this country in a time where what you thought would get you locked up. This is taking place today. We thank y’all for coming. Continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars because guess what? We really are the news. Thank you.

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

  • Indicators on how to track businesses’ respect for human rights defenders

    According to the Business and Human Rights Resource Center (BHRRC), since January 2015, there have been nearly 5,000 attacks on human rights defenders working on business and human rights issues. Defenders and UN experts have long worked to hold businesses accountable for meeting their responsibilities to defend civic freedoms and protect human rights defenders. Part of this work has included articulating what these responsibilities are and practical steps to meet them.

    Inspired by and building from the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the BHRRC and ISHR 2018 report, ‘Shared Space Under Pressure: Business Support for Civic Freedoms and Human Rights Defenders, Guidance for Companies,’ lays out the normative framework that clarifies the corporate responsibility to act and to do no harm against HRDs. The UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights reaffirmed this in their 2021 Guidance on ensuring respect for human rights defenders. This guidance develops the implications of the Guiding Principles for engaging with and safeguarding the rights of human rights defenders– providing both States and businesses with a set of recommendations to follow.

    Over the last few years, there has been an increasing articulation of the responsibility of businesses to respect and promote civic freedoms and the rights of Human Rights Defenders.  Some recent examples of these efforts include the 2023 Unilever human rights policy and implementation guide and the BHRRC Human Rights Defender Policy Tracker.

    In this same spirit, ISHR is launching a set of Indicators on Business and Human Rights that cover the following areas:

    • Zero tolerance on intimidation, attacks and threats against HRDs
    • Human rights due diligence
    • Transparency and accountability
    • Access to remedy/grievance mechanisms
    • Support for civic freedoms
    • Requirements for business partners and suppliers to have similar commitments

    The indicators come in list and poster form. ISHR has also produced a ‘snapshot’ of the UN Working Group’s Guidance on ensuring respect for human rights defenders, in the form of an explainer, available in multiple languages. 

    We created a wonderful “Responsibility of businesses” roadmap poster for you. It shows the important steps to take on the journey to a responsible business, respecting the rights of human rights defenders amongst all people. You can download it in poster size print quality in the download section and print it yourself to go on your office wall, to remind everyone about the little steps and big responsibility to take everyday.

    https://ishr.ch/defenders-toolbox/resources/business-and-human-rights-indicators

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Large Public Human Rights Archive at University of Minnesota

    On 3 March 2024 Gary Price from the University of Minnesota Libraries reports that the University of Minnesota now has one of the largest human rights archives at a public university, and it’s already helping researchers, educators, and human rights advocates across the globe.

    “With everything that’s happening in the world, if we can highlight aspects of the history of human rights, maybe that provides us an opportunity to learn what not to do in the future,” said Kris Kiesling, director of  the U of M’s Archives and Special Collections (ASC).

    Unlike other collections in ASC, the Minnesota Human Rights Archive (MHRA) is an umbrella archive composed of new human rights materials donated to the Libraries, as well as existing materials housed in other collections.

    From the Givens Collection of African American Literature to the Immigration History Research Center Archives, there’s a trove of materials about civil rights, LGBTQ rights, child labor, domestic violence, public health, and more. ASC archivists and curators are already investigating how their materials relate to human rights, and how their collections are positioned under the MHRA umbrella.

    Planning for MHRA began around eight years ago when Barbara Frey — the former director of the U of M Human Rights Program and a founder and previous director of the advocates for human rights — began contacting The Advocates, CVT, and other organizations across the state.

    Kiesling — alongside University Archivist Erik Moore and Social Welfare History Archivist Linnea Anderson — met with Frey, Weissbrodt, and Meyer Weinshel, former collections and outreach lead for UMN’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, to build the MHRA.

    The team transferred some materials from HRC in 2016, and later on, Patrick Finnegan, former assistant director of HRC and administrative associate for The Advocates, surveyed and listed Weissbrodt’s personal papers and research materials.

    Pooling new and existing materials under the human rights umbrella not only helps researchers by condensing the initial hunt-and-gather phase of their projects, but it also helps potential donors. It’s easier for them to articulate their goals for their material, Moore explained, and it’s easier to connect their work to the broad framework of human rights, than a more granular collection like the University Archives.

    University of Minnesota Libraries Unveils One of the Largest Public Human Rights Archives

    Learn More, Read the Complete Article,  View Videos

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

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    This post was originally published on My Articles – Everald Compton.

  • Mary Lawlor’s new report focusses on Youth Human Rights Defenders

    UN Report Unveils Strategies to Shield Child, Youth Human Rights Defenders
    UN Report Unveils Strategies to Shield Child, Youth Human Rights Defenders

    Emmanuel Abara Benson, on 6 March 2024, unveils in BNN a new UN report which highlights the challenges faced by young activists, advocating for global support and legal frameworks to safeguard their rights and efforts:

    Amnesty International heralds a new UN report as a significant advancement for young activists worldwide, set to be introduced by UN Special Rapporteur Mary Lawlor during the 55th Session of the Human Rights Council on 12 March 2024. The document, titled “We are not just the future”: challenges faced by child and youth human rights defenders”, highlights the unique challenges faced by young activists, including oppression, age-based discrimination, and barriers to resources and legal aid.

    The report by Mary Lawlor sheds light on the considerable obstacles child and youth defenders encounter, such as intimidation, threats, and attacks, both in physical and digital realms. Amnesty International’s Sara Vida Coumans emphasizes the overdue recognition of the distinct experiences and adversities young defenders face compared to their adult counterparts. The report also addresses the issue of “gatekeeping” by adult-led groups, which hampers the ability of young activists to access necessary resources and participate in decision-making processes.

    Amnesty International has documented numerous instances of abuses against young human rights defenders. Examples include Fatima Movlamli from Azerbaijan and Mahmoud Hussein from Egypt, who faced intimidation and arbitrary detention, respectively, due to their activism. Moreover, the report mentions the plight of child climate defender Leonela Moncayo in Ecuador, who was intimidated with an explosive device outside her home, highlighting the risks young activists face. The organization calls for governments worldwide to heed the Special Rapporteur’s recommendations, particularly in providing legal aid and support for young defenders. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2023/11/13/hrw-submission-to-special-rapporteur-focuses-on-child-and-youth-human-rights-defenders/

    The document not only brings to the forefront the specific challenges faced by child and young human rights defenders but also underscores the importance of global support and legal frameworks to safeguard these individuals. By spotlighting the adverse impact of social media, the right to peaceful assembly, and the effects of climate change on young people, the report advocates for a more inclusive and supportive environment for young activists. Governments are urged to adopt the recommendations, recognizing the vital role of young defenders in advocating for human rights and democratic reforms.

    This groundbreaking report marks a pivotal moment in the recognition and support of child and young human rights defenders. By highlighting the unique challenges they face and offering targeted strategies for protection, the UN and Amnesty International are paving the way for a more inclusive and equitable future for young activists. The global community’s response to these recommendations will be instrumental in ensuring that young voices are not only heard, but also protected in their brave efforts to defend human rights.

    https://bnnbreaking.com/breaking-news/human/un-report-unveils-strategies-to-shield-child-youth-human-rights-defenders

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

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  • Report of a UN consultation on law enforcement’s role in peaceful protests

    On 16 February, 2024 Sandra Epal Ratjen & Nicolas Agostini in Global Rights reported on a UN consultation on law enforcement’s role in peaceful protests which brought together practitioners and human rights defenders.

    Over two days in Geneva, the UN special rapporteur on freedoms of peaceful assembly and association, Clément Voule, the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR), and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) convened a consultation on the facilitation of peaceful protests by law enforcement. The event followed several regional workshops, organized in accordance with Human Rights Council resolution 50/21, which requested that the special rapporteur develop “technical and practical tools . . . to assist law enforcement officials in promoting and protecting human rights in the context of peaceful protests.” There was nothing unusual in this format—or in the event’s title. But despite its attractive feel (at least for human rights geeks), it ran the risk of turning into yet another academic discussion replete with theorizing but offering little in the way of practical solutions. 

    It turned out to be one of the most refreshing, engaging, and action-oriented human rights dialogues we’ve attended.

    It’s about the makeup

    What made the event rather unusual was its makeup. In addition to civil society members (public assembly, law enforcement, torture, and rule of law specialists attended), the consultation brought together practitioners from all over the world. By “practitioners,” we mean not just police watchdogs (oversight bodies and disciplinary authorities) but police officers and commanders, all on active duty. 

    While some activists would draw back with a wince, those human rights defenders and organizations who were present engaged with an open mind, as did law enforcement personnel. Participants weren’t going to talk amongst themselves or only preach to the converted. They were going to try to bring about an actionable outcome. After all, their aim was to devise how law enforcement can facilitate peaceful assemblies and protect rights in such contexts.

    Peer pressure was minimal. On all sides, there was nothing to “prove”: no need to adopt an intransigent position, no need to show you’re smart, no need to cajole anyone—there were only incentives to share expertise and experience. 

    Sure, there were precedents. Recent workshops brought together practitioners and outlined best practices. For instance, the “Istanbul Process” meeting on promoting religious tolerance held in Singapore was practitioner-centric. Since then, however, the Istanbul Process has collapsed as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) revived the “defamation of religions” agenda.

    Without naïveté but considering the “real-world” nature of the outputs of this process, we’re confident that the work done under the auspices of Clément Voule, OHCHR, and UNODC will, to some extent, enhance human rights compliance in police practice and benefit both peaceful protesters and law enforcement officials. Notably, the outcome documents are less technical than most human rights documents. 

    It’s also about the substance

    The consultation was also innovative because of its hands-on approach. In addition to the main working document, a “Model Protocol” for the law enforcement facilitation of peaceful protests, the project led by Clément Voule and his team, OHCHR, and UNODC will produce a “Handbook” and a “Checklist” for law enforcement professionals. The latter two will be practical documents guiding police practice. 

    The magnitude and diversity of experiences in the room meant that discussions were light-years away from sterile sloganeering or divisive debates—the kind we see on social media. On civil society’s side, no one advocated “defunding the police.” On the police side, no one advocated for qualified immunity. All participants created a fertile ground for dialogue on how to ensure human rights-compliant, competent, and respected law enforcement that is able to facilitate, not hinder, public assemblies. 

    Civil society participants recognized the need for well-funded, well-trained police. We kept in mind (and were reminded of) the realities of the job—what the average law enforcement officer faces daily. The challenges include understaffing, lack of adequate training, and, quite simply, fear (facing a crowd, even peaceful, will never feel like sitting on your sofa sipping a Whiskey Sour). Law enforcement participants, for their part, recognized the need for accountable police behavior and to confront discrimination and abuses of power. They kept in mind (and were reminded) that to be respectful is a sine qua non to be respected.

    Also reviewed were “prior to protest,” “during protest,” and “after protest” issues, plus the situation of specific groups and accountability for violations. One section addressed police well-being, which is essential to human rights compliance, as strained police officers are much more likely to engage in misconduct. We didn’t shy away from addressing sensitive issues—police brutality, accountability, or budgeting. 

    It wasn’t an echo chamber, but participants agreed on key points. Among others: the role of police vs. the role of prosecution; the need for effective communication between protesters and police, de-escalation, and adequate training for police officers; or the fact that a clear distinction must always be made between peaceful and non-peaceful elements of an assembly. 

    It was a far cry from the way these conversations unfold online, and once again, one can see the toxicity of social media. Instead of fostering healthy discussions (differences aren’t that wide between most people), social media algorithms artificially promote simplistic views, entrench positions, and elevate the most divisive topics. This process distracts those seeking solutions from problem-solving. No one benefits from this situation—certainly not rights-holders. 

    Don’t forget political will 

    Assuredly, the outcomes of this consultation will go unheeded in many countries, where protests are rare or police have total impunity. Elsewhere, not much will happen without political will. 

    But the beauty of this consultation is that political will to facilitate assemblies won’t need to come from the highest level. Once publicly available, the outcome documents—particularly the Handbook and Checklist, with their guidelines on communication, de-escalation, and risk assessment regarding protests—will be available for law enforcement agencies and officers at all levels to use. The ideal scenario, of course, will be governments publicly committing to using the outcome documents.

    The final documents will stem from a dialogue that brought together people with hands-on experience who tried to build bridges and maximize their chances of having an impact on the ground. This model should inform future human rights dialogues.

    The Protocol, Handbook, and Checklist will be presented at the next session of the UN Human Rights Council, February 26–April 5, 2024. Clément Voule will make his last appearance as special rapporteur. For his successor—and for all people of goodwill who want to see peaceful protests proceed without hindrance, as well as rights-compliant law enforcement, joint work will be needed to popularize, operationalize, and implement the documents. 

    https://www.openglobalrights.org/sandra-Epal-Ratjen/Human-rights-dialogue-we-need

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • CIVICUS annual report 2023; PEOPLE POWER UNDER ATTACK: the good, the bad and the ugly:

    Almost a third of the world’s population now lives in countries with closed civic space. This is the highest percentage since 2018, when CIVICUS began systematically tracking civic space conditions around the world. This startling decline – from 26 per cent living in closed countries in 2018 to 30.6 per cent today – points to a major civic space crisis that requires immediate, global efforts to reverse. This year we also recorded the lowest percentage of humanity living in open countries, where civic space is both free and protected. Today, just two per cent of the world’s population enjoys the freedom to associate, demonstrate and express dissent without significant constraints, down from almost four per cent just five years ago.

    Since the previous edition of this report, which covered 2022, civic space ratings have changed for 12 countries over the last year, worsening in seven countries and improving in five.

    The latest CIVICUS Monitor country ratings update in December 2023 indicates that civil society faces an increasingly hostile environment. There are now 28 countries or territories with closed civic space, 50 with repressed civic space and 40 with obstructed civic space, meaning that 118 of 198 countries and territories are experiencing severe restrictions in fundamental freedoms. In comparison, 43 countries have narrowed civic space and just 37 have an open rating.

    The severity of the civic space deterioration is exemplified by the number of countries moving to the repressed or closed category. Of the seven countries being downgraded, five moved to the two worst categories. Bangladesh and Venezuela are now rated as closed and Kyrgyzstan, Senegal and Sri Lanka are downgraded to the repressed rating as conditions for civil society continue to worsen.

    Europe continues to add to the list of downgraded countries, with Bosnia and Herzegovina now placed in the obstructed category and Germany moving from an open to a narrowed rating. Over the past six years, 12 European countries have seen their ratings downgraded due to deteriorating civic space conditions.

    Five countries have upgraded ratings in 2023, although, as in previous years, the situation for civil society in these countries continues to be challenging. Libya moved from the closed to the repressed category. Benin, Lesotho and Madagascar have moved from the repressed to the obstructed category. Notably, Timor-Leste has joined the narrowed category. Regional sections describe the conditions that led to ratings changes.

    Compare last year: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/06/29/civicus-state-of-civil-society-report-2022/

    https://monitor.civicus.org/globalfindings_2023

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Generation Eco: 7 of the Best Climate Change Books for Kids

    climate change books for kids
    6 Mins Read

    With Gen Alpha deemed to be the eco-warrior demographic growing up in an increasingly volatile climate (literally), it’s never a bad thing to teach children about the real world – here are seven of the best climate change books for kids.

    Generation Alpha faces a bigger climate threat than the rest of us – 2020-born children could experience seven times more extreme weather events (especially heatwaves) than those born in 1960 – and the cohort has already begun seeing some of its effects.

    So perhaps it’s unsurprising that, if you believe one survey from 2021, 67% of kids aged six to nine say saving the planet will be the central mission of their future careers. And their perspectives are touching their parents too, 80% of whom have been influenced to change their consumption behaviours or actions to be more eco-conscious.

    It feels like we could learn a thing or two from our children. But if you’re looking to support this generation’s knowledge-building, there are a host of resources out there that can help. Some of them are in the form of climate change books – here are some of the best ones you can get for your kids.

    The Lorax

    By Dr Seuss

    the lorax

    One of the OG climate change books for young ones, Dr Seuss’s 1971 classic stands the test of time even today. The Lorax explores the dangers of taking the Earth for granted through the lens of Once-ler and the Lorax, a creature who speaks on behalf of the trees. There are rhymes and playful illustrations, which help readers better grasp the ideas of greed, deforestation, and short-term profits – all linked to climate change. What’s even better is that the book is printed on recycled paper, which is a great way to introduce the concept of recycling to kids. (There’s also an animated film adaptation of The Lorax from 2012.)

    You can find The Lorax by Dr Seuss (recommended for ages four to eight) online and at various bookstores for $16.99.

    Moth: An Evolution Story

    By Isabel Thomas (illustrations by Daniel Egnéus)

    climate change books

    Isabel Thomas’s 2019 book, Moth: An Evolution Story, explains climate change through the evolution story of moths. With powerful visuals, the critically acclaimed title shows how living creatures need the environment to survive, but how human evolution and the changing climate have affected their natural selection. Moths, for example, evolved to have darker wings so they could camouflage themselves better on trees covered with soot, telling a striking tale of climate adaptation and industrial pollution.

    You can find Moth: An Evolution Story by Isabel Thomas and Daniel Egnéus (recommended for ages six to 10) online and at various bookstores for $18.99.

    Sofia Valdez, Future Prez

    By Andrea Beaty (illustrations by David Roberts)

    sofia valdez future prez

    Sofia Valdez, Future Prez is a great book for budding climate activists. It centres around a second-grader whose grandfather hurts his ankle on a local landfill (Mount Trashmore) and can no longer walk her to school every day. Sofia goes to the city hall to get permission to build a park on the site, but is denied permission. With a catchy rhyming scheme, the book tells the story of youthful persistence, as Sofia garners support and finally gets the mayor’s attention. The message is simple and effective: you’re never too young to change the world.

    You can find Sofia Valdez, Future Prez by Andrea Beaty and David Roberts (recommended for ages five to seven) online and at various bookstores for $18.99.

    Our House is on Fire

    By Jeanette Winter

    our house is on fire

    The poster child of Gen Z climate activism, Greta Thunberg’s iconic World Economic Forum speech in 2019 serves as inspiration for Jeanette Winter’s Our House is on Fire: Greta Thunberg’s Call to Save the Planet. The book charts Thunberg’s journey through illustrations and descriptions, including where she learned about climate change, what actions she’s taken (like skipping school every Friday to spark what is now a global climate protest), and how she shows that youngsters can bring about change.

    You can buy Our House is on Fire by Jeanette Winter (recommended for ages three to eight) online and at various bookstores for $17.99.

    Princess Olivia Investigates: The Wrong Weather

    By Lucy Hawkins (illustrations by Zoe Persico)

    climate change books for children

    The first edition of her latest series, Lucy Hawkins’s Princess Olivia Investigates: The Wrong Weather follows Princess Olivia of the Kingdom of Alez, which decided it didn’t want a royal family anymore, leading to the girl losing her home. But she’s excited: she can quit her boring royal lessons and explore nature. However, she’s horrified when she learns what’s happening to the Earth, sparking her mission to help reverse climate change. The book is dotted with facts from scientists, and serves as a driver for children who want to become activists.

    You can find Princess Olivia Investigates: The Wrong Weather by Lucy Hawkins and Zoe Persico (recommended for ages six to 10) online and at various bookstores for £7.99.

    The Magic School Bus and the Climate Challenge

    By Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen

    magic school bus climate challenge

    Ms. Frizzle and the Magic School Bus, the celebrated book series that began in 1986, is known for taking readers along the ride for Ms Frizzle’s educational school trips. In The Magic School Bus and the Climate Challenge, the students are taken around the world and shown all the places experiencing the impact of climate change – think melting ice glaciers and rising sea levels. The comic-style book explores greenhouse gas emissions, with students seeing ‘invisible’ CO2 through special glasses and turning into UV rays at one point, and offers solutions to the crisis in the series’ trademark simplicity.

    You can find The Magic School Bus and the Climate Challenge by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen (recommended for ages seven to 10) on Amazon for $23.99.

    Climate Change, the Choice is Ours

    By David Miles (illustrations by Albert Pinilla)

    climate books for kids

    David Miles’ 2020 interactive reference book Climate Change, the Choice is Ours: The Facts, Our Future, and Why There’s Hope! revels in the binary. Every left-side page covers climate change topics like deforestation, greenhouse gases, rising sea levels, extreme weather, agriculture and more, while every right-side page has a spin wheel that offers readers a choice: leave climate change to do its thing, or address the issue and do something about it. It’s a more advanced book and doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable realities – but it does offer recommendations and hope.

    You can find Climate Change, the Choice is Ours by David Miles and Albert Pinilla (recommended for ages seven to 10) on Amazon and various bookstores for $24.99.

    The post Generation Eco: 7 of the Best Climate Change Books for Kids appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Harvard Carr’s Center on the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

    Harvard Kennedy School

    ‘Making a movement: The history and future of human rights“. To mark the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy asked 90 Harvard faculty and affiliates to offer thoughts on a document that changed the world.

    Universal Declaration of Human Rights 75 year anniversary logo.“THE CREATION OF SUCH A DOCUMENT— its mere existence—must count among the greatest achievements in human history.” That is how Mathias Risse, the Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights, Global Affairs and Philosophy, and faculty director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at HKS, describes the impact of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which turns 75 this year. Yet Risse and other human rights defenders say the UDHR has done much more than exist—it paved the way for more than 70 enforceable human rights treaties around the globe and marked the first time the world had a documental agreement that all humans were equal and free. That global standard is vital even if the world community continues to fall short of achieving the UDHR’s promise, Risse says.  “The human rights movement will always register shortfalls much more than achievements and would miss its purpose otherwise,” he says. “Regardless, the change that these decades of developments have brought is very real.”

    To honor the UDHR, the Carr Center commissioned short essays from 90 scholars, fellows, and affiliates across HKS, Harvard, and beyond to explore the past, present, and future of the human rights movement it inspired. A selection of excerpts follows below. The complete collection of essays in their entirety can be found on the Carr Center website.

    https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policy-topics/human-rights/making-movement-history-and-future-human-rights

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Summary of 2024 Human Rights Watch Report

    On 27 January 2024, Olivia Biliuna and Madison Whittemore in the Davis Vanguard produced a useful summary of the 2024 Human Rights Watch Report

    After reflecting on the formidable human rights challenges of 2023, it has become evident that changes in how human rights are approached will be needed in 2024 to prevent the atrocious suppression and human rights crises that have been prominent in the past year, according to Human’s Rights Watch’s “World Report 2024: Our annual review of human rights around the globe.” [see: https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024]

    However, despite the human rights atrocities seen in 2023, the group added that there appears to be some hope for upholding human rights in 2024 through enforcing principles of international human rights law.

    Looking back on 2023, the 2024 World Report reflects on renewed conflicts between Israel and Hamas that resulted in the abuse of many and a tragic loss of life, and other countries such as Ukraine and Myanmar that continue to struggle with their own intense conflicts. 

    Human Rights Watch notes that in accordance with the aforementioned conflicts, “Economic inequality rose around the world, as did anger about the policy decisions that have left many people struggling to survive.”

    However, while many are quick to blame the government for being complicit in these human rights crises, the report maintains action is needed outside of just government action alone to help diminish these threats, since they “often transcend borders and cannot be solved by governments acting alone.” 

    In fact, the report notes the often forgotten importance of universal principles of international human rights and the rule of law which are more critical now than ever. 

    The 2024 World Report argues governments have the ability to help improve human rights and that they have double standards in “applying the human rights framework,” as stated in the 2024 World Report, and “chips away at trust in the institutions responsible for enforcing and protecting rights.” 

    The legitimate laws and universality of human rights are weakened when governments that are vocal about denouncing the Israeli government war crimes against Gaza citizens do not speak up about the crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, China, according to the 2024 World Report.

    Governments have found it is easier to disregard international human rights matters because internationally there is no challenge to human rights nationally, writes Tirana Hassan, the executive director.

    Hassan also noted that autocrats across regions have taken away both the independence of key institutions to protect human rights and the freedom of dissent, as stated by the 2024 World Report, “with the same endgame in mind: to exercise power without constraint.”

    Hassan explains that with campaigning of civil rights groups and years of diplomatic negotiations, 83 countries were able to protect their citizens by adopting a political declaration that provided protection from explosive weapons in populated areas.

    The international pledge to recognize the “long-standing practice of warring parties to use aerial bombing, artillery, rockets, and missiles in villages, towns, and cities” is the first to address this issue as the 2024 World Report states.

    Some countries are addressing long-marginalized communities. With years of pressure, the Japanese government parliament has passed its first law to protect LGBT people from “unfair discrimination,”  the 2024 World Report states.

    With the humanitarian crises there has been questioning on the effectiveness of the human rights framework in the realm of protection, notes the 2024 World Report, adding, “especially in the face of selective government outrage, transactional diplomacy seeking short-term gain, growing transnational repression, and the willingness of autocratic leaders to sacrifice rights to consolidate their power.”

    With that, the 2024 World Report also suggests the human rights framework will continue to be the plan to build “thriving, inclusive societies” and governments need to be persistent and, with urgency, defend human rights to handle the global and existential threats to humanity.

    As also highlighted by Hassan in the report, the assault on Israel by Hamas-led fighters on Oct. 7 that deliberately killed hundreds of vulnerable civilians led to swift condemnation from many countries around the world.

    In retaliation to the Oct. 7 attack, the Israeli government ceased all running water and electricity in the Gaza strip, “blocking the entry of all but a trickle of fuel, food, and humanitarian aid – a form of collective punishment that is a war crime,” the 2024 World Report noted.

    The Israeli government and military continue frequently bombing the Gaza strip. Following these attacks, countries were outraged after they found out that Israel used a chemical called white phosphorus during the indiscriminate attacks on Gaza, with many countries even highlighting the attacks as “apparent war crimes,” stated by Human Rights Watch.

    However, despite world-wide outrage after Israel’s war crimes on Gaza, countries have failed to publicly call the Israeli government out on its war crimes resulting in severe human rights abuses, the report detailed, noting even the U.S. and the European Union have acknowledged Israel’s human rights abuses on Gaza citizens, yet have continued to be complicit in the “ongoing crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians.”

    The report asserted the repercussions of governments failing to intervene undermine the legitimacy of the rules system designed 75 years ago to safeguard all citizen’s rights. In response to the inconsistencies, Hassan cites that governments like Russia and China aim to take advantage of the shaky legitimacy by attempting to infringe on human rights and take advantage of the system that is supposed to punish both countries.

    Another example used by the 2024 World Report that displays these inconsistencies is the power battle between two influential generals in Sudan, Gen. Abdelfattah al-Burhan and Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

    This conflict resulted in civilians facing deadly abuses and human rights infringements in the Darfur region—with numerous countries listed in the 2024 world report allegedly ignoring the horrendous abuses and abstaining from intervening.

    Despite nations such as Gabon, Ghana, and Mozambique being on the Security Council, “the UN, under pressure from the Sudanese government, shuttered its political mission in Sudan.” the 2024 World Report stated, also concluding that “This marked the conclusion of the UN’s limited capacity in the country to safeguard civilians and openly address the human rights situation.”

    Regardless of African governments refusing to hold the Sudanese government accountable, the report highlights that many have been strong advocates for resolving the human rights issues in other places like Palestine, even leading a full-fledged effort to investigate its human rights abuses last November and recently asserting that “Israel violated its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention in its military operations in Gaza.”

    Domestic policies and foreign policies should hold value in human rights and their rules of laws at the forefront of governments, charged the 2024 World Report.

    Even rights-respecting governments hold these principles as “optional, seeking short-term, politically expedient “solutions” at the expense of building the institutions that would be beneficial for security, trade, energy, and migration in the long term,” according to the 2024 World Report, adding transactional diplomacy carries a human cost that extends past borders, the group adds.

    The 2024 Report writes that without awareness while making transactional diplomacy, risks are created. Removing human rights and the rule of law from a sensible direction creates leverage for right-violating governments too, the 2024 World Report adds, arguing, “It can also contribute to further human rights violations, including transnational repression,” which governments do when they commit human rights abuses against their nationals abroad or to those families living at home, the report continues.

    According to the World Report of 2024, India, a democracy, under its Prime Minister Narenda Modi has moved toward an autocracy “with authorities targeting minorities, tightening repression, and dismantling independent institutions, including federal investigative agencies.”

    Additionally, as cited in The Report, the US, Australia, the UK, and France chose trade and security over raising human rights concerns.

    As reported by Executive Director Hassan, the Modi government’s repressive tactics went past borders and were empowered to do so from the Indian government’s “silence on the Indian government’s worsening rights record…including to intimidate diaspora activists and academics or restrict their entry into India.”

    Rwandan’s government has had three decades of no punishment for their repression of civil and political rights at home, the 2024 World Report states, writing “to stifle dissent beyond its borders,” and noting, Rwanda, despite having risen on the international stage, has failed to recognize its problematic human rights violations.

    Similarly, Chinese government abuses in Beijing escalate its repression against both Chinese and non-Chinese with failure of resistance from other countries, according to the 2024 World Report, explaining a Laos lawyer and human rights defender, Lu Siwei, received pressure from the Chinese government to return and authorities pushed out warrants.

    The 2024 World Report claims nowhere is safe if repressive governments can get away with “strong approaches to silence human rights defenders, exiled politicians, journalists, and critics beyond their borders.”

    As reported by the Human Rights 2024 World Report, with almost half of the global population being eligible to vote in 2024, both citizens and independent institutions need to participate in order to effectively have leaders who defend human rights, regardless of society and many institutions having “become renewed battlegrounds for autocratic leaders around the world looking to eliminate scrutiny of their decisions and actions.”

    According to Hassan, the nations of Guatemala and Nicaragua are two stories of autocratic leaders consolidating power and failing to prioritize civil society.

    For example,  after Guatemala’s President-elect Bernardo Arévalo ran on an anti-corruption platform, a corrupt judiciary attempted to overturn Arévalo’s election triumph.

    Similarly, the report refers to Nicaragua, where corrupt and authoritarian President Daniel Ortega uses “abusive legislation to shut down over 3,500 nongovernmental organizations” in order to dominate the political landscape and wield unchecked power.

    The Human Rights report insists these “vital” checks and balances continue to be eroded, it poses great harm to human rights.

    Judicial independence has also been drastically sabotaged in Poland, the report alleges, with the Polish government suppressing civil society groups through law enforcement and incarceration. Polish freedom and independence are extremely threatened, with the Law and Justice party most notably encroaching on women’s reproductive rights and essentially banning abortion, Hassan suggested in the report.

    “In May 2023, an abortion rights activist was convicted of helping a woman to get abortion pills and was sentenced to eight months of community service – the first known prosecution of its kind in the EU,” the 2024 World Report noted.

    On an environmental note, with the impending issue of global warming, the 2024 report highlights activists being shot by governments across the globe who want to “deter the climate movement.”

    In another example, the report cites how one of the largest oil producers, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), continues to expand its production of fossil fuels; however, people are discouraged from exposing the UAE unless they are willing to face grave punishment.

    Apart from punishing dissent, governments are using technology and social media platforms to “silence critics and censor dissent,” the 2024 World Report notes, citing a 54-year-old retired Saudi Arabian teacher named Muhammad al-Ghamdi, who received the death penalty after he expressed his opinions on X and Youtube and allegedly went against the country’s counterterrorism law.

    Despite everything that occurred in 2023, there were also positive moments for human rights where institutions and movements succeeded, the 2024 World Report states, arguing, “Indeed, these successes illustrate why self-serving politicians and repressive governments work so hard to curtail them – and why all governments should recognize and support these fragile successes.”

    Additionally, according to the Executive Director Hassan, the ICC issued warrants for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and his children’s rights commissioner for war crimes related to deporting and transferring children and a court ruled that South Africa had a commitment to arrest Putin. 

    According to the 2024 World Report, the Xokleng Indigenous people succeeded when the Brazil Supreme Court, as noted by the 2024 World Report, “upheld all Indigenous peoples’ rights to their traditional lands,” despite efforts by the Santa Catarina state. 

    The 2024 World Report said, “These victories highlight the tremendous power of independent, rights-respecting, and inclusive institutions and of civil society to challenge those who wield political power to serve the public interest and chart a rights-respecting path forward” and that “all governments, in their bilateral relations and at the multilateral level, should redouble efforts to uplift key institutions and protect civic space wherever it is under threat.”

    The human rights crisis highlights the importance for “mutually agreed principles of international human rights law everywhere,” the 2024 World Report notes. 

    It also points out that through governments centering their human rights obligations through moral governing, it will provide a diligent change to those affected. 

    The 2024 World Report concludes that consistently upholding human rights, “across the board, no matter who the victims are or where the rights violations are being committed, is the only way to build the world we want to live in.”

    https://www.davisvanguard.org/2024/01/2024-human-rights-watch-report-observes-safeguarding-human-rights-system-worldwide-demands-urgent-action/

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Cool Food: Robert Downey Jr Says New Book Shows You How Your Diet Can Fix the Climate

    robert downey jr book
    8 Mins Read

    In Cool Food, Robert Downey Jr and climate author Thomas Kostigen unveil a new category of food: one that’s better for you and the planet. There’s talk about ancient grains, future foods, meal kits, shopping lists, recipes, and the Iron Man actor’s diet (which isn’t vegan).

    Robert Downey Jr is the quintessential cool guy. He always has been. And it’s a persona that was projected to the world through his 11-year-long stint in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Iron Man – Downey Jr was an Avenger, or was the Avenger Downey Jr?

    Now, five years on from telling Thanos he’s Iron Man, Downey Jr is expanding his cool-guy routine with a debut book that focuses on climate change and food, aptly named Cool Food. Co-written alongside Thomas Kostigen, a New York Times-bestselling author of 10 climate books prior to this one, the title is said to refer to a “game-changing, new food category” and thought of school that can help fix the climate crisis.

    It’s not a full cookbook (though it does have around two dozen self-described climate-friendly recipes) – instead, Cool Food covers a broader range of solutions. There are insights from “top chefs, food scientists, farmers, foodies, celebrities, politicians, and more”, centring on revolutionary farming techniques, future foods and alternative proteins, seasonal grocery shopping, and planet-friendly eating.

    What is Cool Food?

    But wait, what really is Cool Food? I’ll let RDJ spell it out for you. “Cool food is a new category in the food space. It’s a different way to eat to save the planet. It isn’t a diet or a meal plan. It isn’t even so much about food itself,” he writes in the book. “Cool food is really about lifestyle – transformational shifts from little actions, experiences, and different choices. It’s a holistic approach to making the world a whole lot better by simply making more informed decisions about something that each and every one of us does anyway – eat.”

    He adds that this book is much more than just a list of which cool foods are best for the climate”. There are commentaries, anecdotes, factoids, and hard science that add up to something we think is worth your time to read from beginning to end,” notes the Iron Man actor.

    “Think of cool foods as the equivalent of alternative power sources – food’s solar or wind power. Our book, Cool Food, is about learning and getting in on the future of food now,” adds Kostigen.

    The book’s publishers say more than two billion ‘cool food’ meals are already served each year, and that’s a number expected to grow massively. They add that supermarkets, restaurants, fast-food chains, and student cafeterias globally are increasingly designating menu items as ‘cool food’, with some using carbon labels like calorie amounts alongside ingredients and meals.

    It’s really a term for low-carbon foods – akin to the World Resouces Institute’s Coolfood initiative – which can help bring the Earth’s temperatures down and mitigate the impact of climate change. This means foodstuffs like “certain nuts, fruits and vegetables, ancient grains, seaweeds, and less-processed foods that keep more carbon dioxide in the ground, or in the ocean”.

    What’s in the Cool Food book?

    So what does Downey Jr and Kostigen’s book offer? “We look at food as the entry point for stories, like how my wife, Susan, and I fell in love in Montreal and the role maple syrup played in that,” writes the MCU star. “Or like the lightbulb moment I had over a meal in 2019 to start FootPrint Coalition, the company I founded to discover, partner, and invest in climate technologies.”

    The book contains data and information, actionable items and recipes to help people tread a more sustainable dietary path, based on the authors’ conversations with global experts. This includes facts like switching a burger for a salad once a week in the US would save pollution from 12 million cars, or sea lettuce is 20 times more efficient at sweeping carbon than land-grown. Donwy Jr and Kostigen also touch upon the power of ancient grains, which are “not old, and definitely not spoiled”, explaining how this is a marketing term that seeks to describe grains that haven’t been altered much by modern farming.

    There’s discourse about transformative farming techniques for eco-friendlier food production (such as future foods made from thin air), the pros and cons of plant-based meat, and misleading labels. The latter includes little factoids like how ‘pasture-raised’ only means that animals were outside for some time, but doesn’t detail how much time, and what type of environment the ‘pasture’ really is; or how ‘natural’ labels really just explain if there are artificial colours, flavours or preservatives added, not if antibiotics or hormones were injected into the food.

    robert downey jr climate change
    Courtesy: Blackstone Publishing

    This kind of myth-busting is a theme throughout the book. The authors do the same for perceptions about food miles, deliveries, virtual shopping, meal kits, food waste, spoilage, expiration dates, organic labels, and more.

    “You can just flip open and go: ‘Hey, this is great. Almonds, pretty good. Cashews, better. Mangoes are great,’” Downey Jr told Good Morning America (GMA), alluding to the shopping lists and meal prep tips in Cool Food. “And then when I’m at the supermarket or when I’m making choices on set, or just grabbing a snack for the kids, I’m just kind of inserting this kinda data into our meal plans.”

    Kostigen added that we need three things to survive: water, air and food. “Only one of those things has a variety that you can make a choice on, and that’s food. So why not make it better for the planet?” he posited. “For the average person, just being able to go to the grocery store and pick something up that is good for themselves, good for the planet, it’s empowering.”

    But is Robert Downey Jr vegan himself?

    That said, there are still some curious, contradictory things written in the book. For all the Marvel star’s musings about a planet-friendly diet, he isn’t actually vegan himself. And while that’s fine – a reduction in carbon-intensive food consumption can be viewed as more pragmatic compared to downright elimination – it’s the reasons he gives that perpetuate existing misconceptions, and need some myth-busting of their own.

    “I tried going all-in vegetarian – even vegan – but it just doesn’t work for me. Without some animal protein, I find myself with low levels of vitamin B12, calcium, iodine and iron. These are common deficiencies that can result from vegan diets,” writes Downey Jr. “The rumours are true: I’m a pescatarian. That means I eat fish every now and again,” he adds. “Yes, in case you are wondering, I do actually need the iron that animal protein provides.”

    This is a common criticism levied at plant-based diets. But it’s been proven that vegans can get just as much of these nutrients as meat-, dairy- and seafood-eaters do. Many plant-based foods – including seed, bean and nut milks, animal meat alternatives, cereals, nutritional yeast, and fruits and vegetables – are good sources of B vitamins, zinc, iron and calcium, among others. These are either found naturally, or through fortification.

    New-age meat alternatives using mycelium contain nutrients usually associated with animal protein too. Plus, there are multiple supplements available for vegans as well, ensuring that they’re not deficient in any of these important nutrients. So while everybody is different and should consult medical professionals for tailored advice, Downey Jr could do better than rehashing stereotypes about the planet-friendly diets his book is promoting.

    He could just listen to his wife Susan, who is a vegan. “Before that time, we used to love calamari,” he told GMA. “So, we came up with hearts of calipalmy [an analogue made from hearts of palm] because my kids don’t really know the difference.”

    robert downey jr vegan
    Courtesy: Blackstone Publishing

    The recipes in Cool Food skew similar lines, ranging from a Moroccan okra stew with sweet potatoes and fruit and nut salad with chilli-lime dressing, to a vanilla butter cake made with Kernza and a crispy jellyfish dish. The sentiment is also evident in the section discussing the pros and cons of meat alternatives, which Downey Jr says are “as much as 90% better for the planet than animal meat”, but aren’t necessarily “healthier for you”. “You may be depriving your body of important nutrients such as vitamin B, certain fats, and calcium,” he writes.

    This is a rhetoric plant-based meat companies have been fighting against for years, and it’s why giants like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods (both of whose products are fortified with essential nutrients such as iron, calcium, and vitamins B and D12) have doubled down on the nutritional benefits of their products over the last few months, with products certified as heart-healthy by the American Heart Association.

    You could just look at brands backed by Downey Jr himself. His climate tech VC fund the FootPrint Coalition backs New York-based Chunk Foods, which makes whole-cut meat analogues. Its flagship Chunk Steak is fortified with iron and B12. The fund has invested in mycelium meat maker MyForest Foods and cultivated seafood producer Wildtype too, though new investment action has been quiet of late.

    So as the Oppenheimer actor sweeps the awards shows and stays the favourite for the Oscar, maybe he can ponder upon his own investment activity and narrative around planet-friendly cool food, and really put his money where his mouth is. As he explains in the book, it can be “cheaper and faster” to make vegan meals than anything made from traditional animal meat, if enough supply can be had to drive down costs. Could he drive that demand?

    “Spread meat replacement efforts across the more than two hundred thousand fast-food spots in the US alone,” he writes, “and there is a seriously formidable agent of change that could turn things climate positive quickly.”

    Cool Food by Robert Downey Jr and Thomas Kostigen is out now at bookshops and online stores internationally at $29.99.

    The post Cool Food: Robert Downey Jr Says New Book Shows You How Your Diet Can Fix the Climate appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • ‘Farmed Animals Don’t Have Cheat Days’: Q&A with Cat White, Author of The Imperfect Vegan

    cat white
    7 Mins Read

    Should veganism be so binary? In her new book, The Imperfect Vegan, author and TedX speaker Cat White argues against that outlook. Speaking to Green Queen, she explains why we tend to associate absolutes with our diets, the need to do something, and revelling in the grey.

    “The world doesn’t need 100 perfect vegans; the world needs billions of people doing the best they can.”

    This was the line that changed how Cat White saw her diet and lifestyle. The author was complaining to a friend about the presence of animal-sourced foods in everything, and having cravings for the food she used to eat before going vegan.

    But her friend’s statement eased the pressure, made her see through and celebrate the grey, and planted the seed that led to her new book, The Imperfect Vegan. Published in October, the title has received critical acclaim, and was a Gold Winner at the Literary Titan Awards and a finalist in three categories at the American Writing Awards 2023 with one reviewer Emma Megan stating: “Everyone—vegan and non-vegan alike—who cares about our fate and the planet should read this book” 

    As Veganuary – a campaign of absolutes – begins, we spoke to White about her book, the idea of an imperfect vegan, and how you can make a difference on a ‘mostly plant-based diet’.

    This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.

    Green Queen: How would you describe an imperfect vegan?

    imperfect vegan
    Courtesy: Cat White/Canva

    Cat White: An imperfect vegan is someone is does their best to choose the vegan option when they can, but they don’t give themselves a hard time if they slip up. An imperfect vegan also understands that we’re humans (not robots) and we’re not perfect in any area of our lives.

    I chose to use ‘imperfect vegan’ because ‘vegan’ is the term that is most often used when we’re talking about not eating animals, as opposed to other terms such as ‘climatarian’ or ‘flexitarian’, which would require too much explanation each time someone asks you about your diet. It’s more about the mindset (of allowing imperfection) rather than the rules about what’s allowed or not allowed in the diet/lifestyle.

    GQ: Why do you think perfectionism is associated with a vegan diet?

    CW: Perfectionism is a common goal to strive for in veganism, and rightly so – it’s a worthy cause and it’s a point of moral consideration. When we’re talking about how we treat another individual, there really is no question that complete elimination of exploitation (or perfection in the vegan way) is the goal. Farmed animals don’t get to have “cheat days”.

    In an ideal world, there would be no animal products anywhere and it would be obvious and easy to avoid them, but we don’t live in an ideal world. As much as we would love to be perfect all the time, we have to understand that sustainability is a more realistic goal, and it helps us to maintain the vegan journey for the long run if we don’t beat ourselves up for not being “perfect”.

    GQ: Do you believe reduction is a more practical approach than elimination?

    Reduction is definitely a more practical approach than elimination, at least on the grand scale. Some individuals might find it easier for themselves to eliminate animal products from their household entirely, but most people struggle to go “cold turkey” (pardon the pun).

    As a global society, the more we reduce our demand for animal products, the less there will be, and the easier it will be for everyone to choose the plant-based option. A billion people reducing their consumption of animal products by even a third (one meal a day) is going to do so much more than a handful of vegans who completely eliminate all animal products.

    Also, the reduction approach makes it seem less scary for people to “give it a go” – they’re not put off by this unachievable standard of perfection. I believe the reason that many people try vegan but give it up is because they feel they can’t be perfect at it – and when they revert, they go back to their full meat diet. If we allowed people to be ‘mostly’ vegan, they’re more likely to continue doing their best most of the time. We’ll eventually get to the tipping point where this becomes the default.

    GQ: How would you respond to people saying you can’t be mostly vegan – that you either are or you aren’t?

    People who say you can’t be mostly vegan are saying this from the moral standpoint. And they’re right! You really can’t decide to be against something one day, and then okay with it the next day. They don’t like the idea of using the word ‘vegan’ to promote any reduction/part-time solution, because they say it waters down the original intent of the meaning of the word.

    However, even a cursory understanding of language shows that words morph and change over time – I still remember my mum being confused when I would say that something good is ‘wicked’ – and I believe it’s time for the word vegan to become more inclusive. People come into this lifestyle for all different reasons now – animal, the environment, health, etc. – and if we want to achieve the ultimate goal of eliminating animal exploitation, we need to allow a lot more people into the club, and appreciate all the efforts they’re doing, even if they’re only ‘mostly’ vegan.

    GQ: How do you dispel that black-and-white thinking?

    By comparing it to how we’re not perfect in any area of our lives. We’re not perfect employees because I’m sure we’ve all checked Facebook at work, or taken personal calls, or booked holidays while we’re supposed to be analysing spreadsheets.

    We’re certainly not perfect parents – we may have the best of intentions and great expectations when we start out, but then we realise how hard it actually is, and how life is messy. Just because we sometimes stick the kids in front of the iPad, or give in to their demands for ice cream for dinner, doesn’t mean we’re suddenly not a parent.

    We’re just doing the best we can and dealing with competing priorities in the moment. If we have compassion for ourselves, we can continue on, and make better choices next time.

    GQ: Could you describe some of the tips in the book that wouldn’t deter people the way ‘absolute’ veganism could?

    cat white tedx
    Courtesy: Cat White/Canva

    I reference trying existing concepts like Meatless Mondays or ‘vegan before 6pm’, which are movements that other people have started. It’s a way to get into the lifestyle and try it on before committing to completely changing your whole life around. I also provide a list of simple food swaps such as switching minced meat for lentils, or using hummus as a salad dressing instead of mayo.

    I remind people that every little thing they do is helpful for the big picture. As a way to demonstrate my own imperfections, I also share a list of ways that I’m still imperfect, as well as stories from other ‘imperfect vegans’, to show people they’re not alone if they’re struggling to commit in some areas. There’s a whole chapter called ‘Allow the Transition’, which covers how to do it at your own pace.

    GQ: You mention a “need to do something” in your book – what are the most impactful actions people can take?

    In terms of environmental impact, the biggest impact is cutting out beef and lamb. Those two types of meat use 20 to 40 times the amount of land needed for plant-based proteins like grains and beans. They also use at least three times as much water. In fact, just one cheeseburger uses the same amount of water as three months of letting the tap run while you brush your teeth (twice a day!). Also, when it comes to water content, any of the plant-based milks are better for the environment than dairy.

    But really, the best impact someone can take is just to choose a plant-based option for their next meal. It’s only one meal at a time. It’s empowering to make that choice. When I realised that I could actually enjoy food without the meat, I felt free. A whole world of new foods opened up to me, and now I’m excited to try whatever new creation is available at the next restaurant I go to.

    The Imperfect Vegan by Cat White ($12.99) is available at major retailers in paperback and as an ebook.

    The post ‘Farmed Animals Don’t Have Cheat Days’: Q&A with Cat White, Author of The Imperfect Vegan appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Eco-Conscious Gen Alpha: 6 Vegan-Friendly Cookbooks for Kids Ideal for Veganuary

    vegan cookbooks for kids
    6 Mins Read

    Veganuary is on the horizon – and if you’re looking for ways to incorporate more plant-based food into your kids’ diet, all the while honing their culinary interests and skills, here are six of the best vegan-friendly cookbooks for children.

    Gen Z is well-known as the demographic that cares about the planet more than any other generation – and they’re passing this on to Generation Alpha, who are set to be the largest age demographic group in history.

    We speak of safeguarding the planet for future generations – irrespective of the fact that we need to do it for ourselves now too, today’s kids are part of those demographics that will see the worst of climate change. But they’re already taking action – a survey conducted by McCrindle revealed that 80% of parents have been influenced by their Gen Alpha children to change their consumption behaviours or actions to be more eco-conscious.

    Among the best things you can do as an individual to help the planet is change your eating habits – this means less meat, less dairy and more plants, more alternative sources of protein. With Veganuary fast approaching, it’s a good time to gift your kids a plant-based cookbook to develop their culinary skills in a way that doesn’t hurt the planet. Plus, it’s a great way to get children to diversify their protein intake, and get them involved in your own Veganuary journey too (or help them along theirs).

    Here are some of the best vegan cookbooks for kids.

    The Vegan Cookbook for Kids

    By Barb Musick

    vegan kids cookbook

    Pretty self-explanatory when it comes to the name, The Vegan Cookbook for Kids: Easy Plant-Based Recipes for Young Chefs is a recipe book perfect for children aged eight to 12. It features 50 easy-to-follow recipes with easy-to-find ingredients, alongside information about plant-based ingredients, essential kitchen tools, and safety guidelines.

    The recipes traverse multiple cuisines and flavours, all replete with colourful imagery that would inspire kids to show off their culinary chops (pun unintended). These include a meatless shepherd’s pie (using beans), Korean BBQ bowls, spicy peanut noodles, cinnamon swirl pancakes and veggie-forward pizza.

    You can buy The Vegan Cookbook for Kids by Barb Musick online via Amazon, or through various bookstores.

    The Help Yourself Cookbook for Kids

    By Ruby Roth

    help yourself cookbook

    Published in 2016, Ruby Roth’s The Help Yourself Cookbook for Kids has a long tagline that explains it all: 60 Easy Plant-Based Recipes Kids Can Make to Stay Healthy and Save the Earth. This is a very fun cookbook, with 60 vegan recipes complemented with photo collage illustrations, animal characters, and did-you-know facts.

    Facilitated by playful imagery and fonts, kids aged six to 12 can begin using this cookbook this Veganuary with recipes like Tiger Stripes seaweed salad, Tomato Tornado soup, Blaze a Trail nut mixes, Puff Love mochi two ways, and Quinoa ‘Round the World.

    You can buy The Help Yourself Cookbook for Kids by Ruby Roth online via Amazon, or through various bookstores internationally.

    Kid Chef Vegan

    By Barb Musick

    kid chef vegan

    A follow-up to Musick’s 2020 cookbook, Kid Chef Vegan is billed as The Foodie Kid’s Vegan Cookbook. Also for children aged eight to 12, this book offers a culinary crash course – like measuring accurately, mixing properly, slicing like a pro and setting up the workspace – and helps incorporate more fruits and vegetables in their repertoire.

    The cookbook contains substitutions to cater to allergies too, imparting a crucial piece of knowledge to be ingrained from a young age. As for the recipes, they range from breaded no-chicken nuggets and a sloppy joe casserole to a Great Big Tofu Salad and peanut butter-coconut cookies.

    You can buy Kid Chef Vegan by Barb Musick online via Amazon, or through various bookstores.

    Plant-Based Cooking for Kids

    By Faith Ralphs

    vegan recipes for kids

    Published last year, Plant-Based Cooking for Kids: A Plant-Based Family Cookbook with Over 70 Whole-Food, Plant-Based Recipes for Kids contains something for people on all dietary spectrums: whether you’re already fully vegan, have just started out, or are a flexitarian looking to eat less meat and dairy (or perhaps partaking in Veganuary).

    The book is filled with colourful photos that help visualise the end dish for kids, alongside an initial section with tips on plant-based eating, substitutions, conversions, and even ideas to get children to cook more. Recipes include creative toasts, homemade boxed mac and cheese mix, carrot cake breakfast cookies and chickpea nuggets.

    You can buy Plant-Based Cooking for Kids by Faith Ralphs online via Amazon or Bushel & Peck.

    Plant-Powered Families

    By Dreena Burton

    best vegan cookbooks for kids

    Another cookbook adopting the whole-foods plant-based approach, Plant-Powered Families: Over 100 Kid-Tested, Whole-Foods Vegan Recipes by veteran cookbook author Dreena Burton features dishes that promote healthful eating and family-friendly cooking. With more than 100 recipes spanning from breakfast and lunch to desserts and snacks, it acts as a reference for parents raising vegan children, or families looking to transition towards a plant-based diet, making it ideal for Veganuary.

    Meant for “every age and stage – from toddler to teen years” – the Plant-Powered Families features tips to please picky eaters, make DIY staples, deal with challenging social solutions, and pack school lunches, with recipes tested by Burton’s three children alongside nutritionist-approved references to allay dietary concerns. There’s a broad range of dishes for kids to try making here, including vegan cinnamon french toast, sneaky chickpea burgers, soy-free vegan feta, vanilla bean chocolate chip cookies and creamy fettuccine.

    You can buy Plant-Powered Families: Over 100 Kid-Tested, Whole-Foods Vegan Recipes by Dreena Burton online via Amazon.

    Bonus: Green Kids Cook

    By Jenny Chandler

    best vegan cookbooks for kids

    We’ve listed this as a bonus because this isn’t a fully vegan cookbook – more a vegetarian one – but it is a book that aims to do better by the climate with planet-friendly recipes as well as techniques to cut food waste. Green Kids Cook: Simple, Delicious Recipes & Top Tips: Good for You, Good for the Planet spotlights over 60 classic family recipes with a focus on healthy eating.

    The premise is: the best way for kids to eat more vegetables is by letting them cook with them, and have fun while doing so. Apart from a more eco-friendly diet, the book presents ways to ditch plastic and cut waste – for example, there are guides like the one for beeswax wraps, as well as recipes such as vegetarian black bean quesadillas, homemade granola, vegetable peel crisps, and green pea and coconut recipes. All come with photographs showing children making the dishes, instilling a sense of confidence in the reader.

    You can buy Green Kids Cook by Jenny Chandler online via Amazon, or through various bookstores.

    The post Eco-Conscious Gen Alpha: 6 Vegan-Friendly Cookbooks for Kids Ideal for Veganuary appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Germany’s fear of being seen as antisemitic goes over the top

    On 20 December 2023 Jakob Guhl posted in Index on Censorship a piece stating that German authorities are increasingly silencing pro-Palestine activism in an effort to stamp out anything they fear could be seen as antisemitic. He makes some excellent points (which apply also outside Germany):

    ..The seemingly isolated incidents highlighted in this article are piling up and the curtailing of civic space is starting to be noticed internationally: Civicus, which ranks countries by freedom of expression rights, recently downgraded Germany in a review from “open” to “restricted” due to repression of pro-Palestinian voices, as well as of climate activists…

    There are long-standing disagreements around where to draw the line between legitimate criticism of Israel and attacks on Israel that single it out because it is a Jewish state, are expressed in antisemitic ways or are motivated by antisemitic views. For example, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism acknowledges that “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic” but identifies seven examples of when attacks on Israel may be antisemitic (taking into account the overall context). For example, it could be antisemitic to reference classic antisemitic tropes such as the blood libel conspiracy myth to describe Israel, deny the Jewish people’s right to self-determination or blame Jews collectively for the actions of Israel, according to IHRA.

    While Germany has adopted IHRA, much looser standards seem to be applied by authorities and commentators committed to tackling Israel-related antisemitism. Calls for a binational state, advocacy for the Palestinian refugees’ right of return, support for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) or accusations that Israel is committing Apartheid are regularly identified as antisemitic. There is a strong sense that given its historical responsibility, it is not Germany’s place to judge, or let anyone else judge, Israel even as its offensive in Gaza has resulted in one of the highest rates of death in armed conflict since the beginning of the 21st century, and disproportionately affects civilians. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/01/18/israel-and-apartheid-israeli-human-rights-group-stirs-debate/]..

    The debates since 7 October have created an atmosphere in which pro-Palestinian voices are more and more stigmatised. Pro-Palestinian protests have repeatedly been banned by local authorities. Their dystopian rationale for these bans revolves around the idea that, based on assessments of previous marches, crimes are likely to be committed by protesters. The practice is not new: in the past, German police have even banned protests commemorating the ”Nakba” (Arabic for “catastrophe”), the collective mass expulsion and displacement of around 700,000 Palestinians from their homes during the 1947-49 wars following the adoption of the Partition Plan for Palestine by the United Nations. In reaction to pro-Palestine protests since 7 October, the antisemitism commissioner of North Rhine Westphalia and former federal justice minister even suggested the police should pay closer attention to the nationality of pro-Palestine protest organisers as protests organised by non-Germans could be banned more easily.

    Furthermore, pro-Palestinian political symbols are being falsely associated with Hamas or other pro-terrorist organisations. In early November, the Federal Interior Ministry banned the chant “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” as a symbol of both Hamas and Samidoun, a support network for the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine which has been designated as a terrorist organisation by the European Union.

    While one plausible interpretation of the “From the River to the Sea” slogan is that it is a call for the destruction of Israel, it is equally plausible to understand it as a call for a binational state with full equality of all citizens. Without context, the slogan cannot automatically be identified as antisemitic, though it is of course entirely legitimate to criticise this ambivalence. As has been extensively documented, the slogan does not originate with nor is exclusively used by Hamas.

    Apart from being based on misinformation, banning “From the River to the Sea” has also created the ludicrous situation that the German police force is asked to make assessments on whether holding a “From the River we do see nothing like equality” placard is an expression of support for terrorism. A former advisor to Angela Merkel even called for the German citizenship of a previously stateless Palestinian woman to be revoked who posted a similar slogan (“From the River to the Sea #FreePalestine”) on her Instagram.

    In some cases, these dynamics venture into the absurd. On 14 October, the activist Iris Hefets was temporarily detained in Berlin for holding a placard that read: “As a Jew & an Israeli Stop the Genocide in Gaza.”

    These illiberal and ill-conceived measures are not limited to protests. In response to the 7 October attacks, authorities in Berlin allowed schools to ban students from wearing keffiyeh scarves to not “endanger school peace”.

    Curtailing civic spaces

    While these trends have been accelerated since 7 October, they predate it. In 2019, the German Bundestag passed a resolution that condemned the BDS movement as antisemitic. It referenced the aforementioned IHRA definition of antisemitism (which does not comment on boycotts), compared the BDS campaign to the Nazi boycotts of Jewish business and called on authorities to no longer fund groups or individuals that support BDS.

    BDS calls for the boycott of Israeli goods, divestment from companies involved in the occupation of Arab territories and sanctions to force the Israeli government to comply with international law and respect the rights of Palestinians, including the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Inspired by the boycott campaign against Apartheid South Africa, BDS has attracted many supporters, but critics have claimed that BDS singles out Israel and delegitimises its existence. Accusations of antisemitism within the movement should of course be taken seriously: BDS supporters have previously been accused of employing antisemitic rhetoric about malign Jewish influence and intimidating Jewish students on campus. However, many of BDS’ core demands are clearly not antisemitic. Since the BDS lacks a central leadership that would issue official stances, it is difficult to make blanket statements about the movement in its entirety.

    The 2019 resolution is now being cited to shut down cultural events. A planned exhibition in Essen on Afrofuturism was cancelled over social media posts that, according to the museum, “do not acknowledge the terroristic attack of the Hamas and consider the Israeli military operation in Gaza a genocide” and expressed support for BDS. The Frankfurt book fair “indefinitely postponed” a literary prize for the Palestinian author Adania Shibli, after one member of the jury resigned due to supposed anti-Israel and antisemitic themes in her book. Shibli has since been accused by the left-wing Taz newspaper of being an “engaged BDS supporter” for having signed one BDS letter in 2007 and a 2019 letter that criticised the city of Dortmund for revoking another literary price for an author that supports BDS. A presentation by the award-winning Forensic Architecture research group at Goldsmiths (University of London), which has analysed human rights abuses in Syria, Venezuela and Palestine as well as Neo-Nazi murders in Germany, was likewise cancelled by the University of Aachen which cited the group’s founder Eyal Weizman’s support for BDS.

    The curtailing of civic space increasingly affects voices that have stood up for human rights at great personal risk. The Syrian opposition activist Wafa Ali Mustafa was detained by Berlin police near a pro-Palestine protest, reportedly for wearing a keffiyeh scarf. Similarly, the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, which is associated with the centre-left Green Party, pulled out of the Hannah Arendt prize ceremony, which was due to be awarded to the renowned Russian dissident, philosopher and human rights advocate Masha Gessen. Despite acknowledging differences between the two, Gessen had compared Gaza to the Jewish ghettoes in Nazi-occupied Europe in an article about the politics of memory in Germany, the Soviet Union, Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Hungary and Israel.

    Conversation stoppers

    Alarm bells should ring as one of Europe’s major liberal democracies has taken an authoritarian turn in the aftermath of 7 October. Germany’s noble commitment to its historical responsibility in the face of rising antisemitism is morphing into a suppression of voices advocating for Palestinian political self-determination and human rights.

    In this distorted reality, civic spaces are eroded, cultural symbols banned, political symbols falsely conflated with support for terrorism and events are shut down. So far, there has been little pushback or critical debate about these worrying developments. To the contrary: politicians, foundations, cultural institutions and media outlets seem to be closing ranks under the shadow of the 2019 BDS resolution and a skewed interpretation of the IHRA definition.

    Following the appalling violence committed by Hamas on 7 October, and the scale of civilian suffering in Gaza due to the subsequent Israeli military offensive, polarisation and tension between communities have been on the rise. In this context, it is crucial to be able to have passionate, empathetic, controversial and nuanced discussions about the conflict, its history, the present impasse, potential ways forward and its impact on Jewish, Muslim and Arab communities abroad. With the voices of activists, authors and even internationally renowned human rights advocates being increasingly isolated, these vital exchanges are prevented from taking place.

    https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2023/12/from-the-danube-to-the-baltic-sea-germany-takes-an-authoritarian-turn/

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • THE BOY FROM LINVILLE WISHES YOU A HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND A PEACEFUL YEAR OF ACHIEVEMENT IN 2024.

    My friend Noela Lowien who lives at Kilcoy in the Brisbane River Valley (not far from Linville) is a talented artist who paints splendid portraits. I retained her services to create the front cover of my book CATCHING THE LINVILLE TRAIN. It now hangs in my home office so I decided to use it as …

    Continue reading THE BOY FROM LINVILLE WISHES YOU A HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND A PEACEFUL YEAR OF ACHIEVEMENT IN 2024.

    The post THE BOY FROM LINVILLE WISHES YOU A HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND A PEACEFUL YEAR OF ACHIEVEMENT IN 2024. appeared first on Everald Compton.

    This post was originally published on My Articles – Everald Compton.

  • UDHR@75: how UNDP sees itself ensuring rights for all

    Children smiling
    Photo: UNDP Zimbabwe

    On 8 December, 2023 the United Nations lead agency on international development, UNDP, posted its commitment to human rights:

    ..Protecting our rights to do so was enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 75 years ago, and it has been our North Star for human rights ever since.  The past three years have been defined by crises on a global scale. Conflict is at its highest since the Second World War. From Gaza to Ukraine, Sudan and Myanmar, people’s right to live without fear is being undermined. Climate change, brought about by humanity’s own actions, is stripping away the right of our children to a healthy and prosperous future. The COVID-19 pandemic brought to stark light the value of the right to health for all.  

    Three-quarters of a century on, we are at an important inflection point, where we must recalibrate and reconnect with the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights if we want to shape a future that lives up to its vision.  Doing so will not be easy. It will require action across many different spheres of life. Recognizing this, UNDP is prioritizing seven key areas where it is working to strengthen human rights. 

    Dignity and equality of rights is needed for all people and the rights of people living in crisis and conflict must be assured 

    If we don’t invest in human rights, we won’t achieve the Sustainable Development Goals 

    Ninety percent of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets align with the obligations outlined in international human rights frameworks.  However, halfway to the 2030 deadline, development progress and the realization of Agenda 2030 is under threat due to the combined impacts of climate change, conflict, overlapping energy, food and economic shocks, and lingering COVID-19 effects. Human rights can be part of proactive solutions helping to address contemporary development challenges and pushing progress towards Agenda 2030.  By adopting a human rights-based approach, UNDP is working to ensure that no one is left behind as we strive for sustainable development. For example, UNDP has worked to promote synergies between human rights and SDG systems in eight countries, including Sierra Leone, Uruguay and Pakistan, boosting both the efficiency and effectiveness of national efforts to advance human rights and sustainable development. 

    Human rights defenders must be able to speak out without fear 

    Human rights defenders face alarming threats, including intimidation and reprisals, in the pursuit of a goal that should be a shared aspiration for all – the creation of fair and peaceful societies.  In 2022, there was a 40 percent increase in the killings of human rights defenders, journalists, and trade unionists compared to 2021.  UNDP works with civil society, human rights defenders and national human rights institutions around the world to ensure those that want to speak out have the freedom to do so. In Thailand, UNDP conducted a study looking into the protection of human rights defenders at the request of the Ministry of Justice.  

    Young people must be included in efforts to protect the rights of future generations 

    There are 1.2 billion young people in the world today, and UNDP recognizes the important role they play as positive agents of change. 

    Private sector has an important role to play 

    Business can be a powerful driver of sustainable development, offering access to social and economic opportunities and a pathway to prosperity for many.  

    Human rights and the environment are interconnected 

    In the next 25 years, building resilience to biodiversity loss and climate change will be key to the realization of all human rights – including the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.  

    Digital technology must unite, not divide 

    Technology can be a great enabler of equality and development by improving connectivity, financial inclusion, and public services, positively impacting the realization of human rights.  But it can also have a dangerous downside, exacerbating existing inequalities and vulnerabilities. While over 80 percent of developed countries have access to the internet, only 36 percent of individuals in least-developed countries are online.  UNDP puts human rights at the centre of its Digital Strategy, and supports countries to harness digital technology as a means to advocate for, protect, access, report on, and exercise human rights…

    https://www.undp.org/stories/ensuring-rights-all-rapidly-changing-world

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Universal human rights drowning in geopolitical rivalry between US and China

    On 8 December, 2023 Jake Werner – Acting Director of the East Asia program at the wrote an interesting piece “Outrage Without Strategy Means Failure on China and Human Rights”. It makes in my view some very valid points, see for yourself:

    The deplorable human rights record of the Chinese government has long featured in U.S. political discourse as an example of that venerable trope, the heroic individual demanding freedom from the tyrannical state. U.S. leaders quite naturally align themselves with the advocates of freedom, coming to their aid by repudiating and punishing their tormentors.

    The antagonism between civil society and the state highlighted in this view is undeniably true, but this truth is only partial. Its seeming clarity threatens to obscure the complexities of Chinese politics and U.S.–China relations in ways that may produce counterproductive responses.

    The political journey of a friend of mine in recent years illustrates dynamics excluded from the conventional human rights framing. I first met Zhao (a pseudonym) a decade ago while doing research in Shanghai, when both of us were grad students interested in leftist politics. I joined a reading group he was running with other Chinese grad students and we discussed ideas that posed a deep challenge to Chinese social and political inequalities.

    In the years since, his critical energies have increasingly flowed away from inequalities within China to focus instead on the inequality between what he sees as a domineering United States and a victimized China. Increasingly he deems the Chinese government as the champion of the beleaguered Chinese people, whose opportunity to rise in wealth and status is being harshly circumscribed by jealous American leaders. To him, “human rights” is a fig leaf for the defense of naked U.S. power and a feature of western culture foisted on countries like China, whose level of development makes it inappropriate.

    It was not state propaganda that moved Zhao in this direction — when we first connected he was already perfectly capable of seeing through official Communist Party narratives. Instead, it was heavy–handed U.S. behavior, tendentious U.S. narratives that refuse to give any credit to the Chinese system, and the glaring hypocrisy of American leaders harshly condemning Chinese abuses while remaining silent on the abuses of countries U.S. leaders are cultivating to counter China.

    From Zhao’s experience, we can discern additional truths: that U.S. human rights rhetoric is not impartial but is a feature of geopolitical rivalry; that this fact threatens to discredit the whole idea of human rights in the eyes of many Chinese; that the Chinese government strategy of casting human rights defenders as agents of U.S. power rather than advocates of universal values may in the process find considerable success among Chinese citizens.

    Yet Zhao’s truths are also selective. Other friends of mine bear witness to the reality not only of Chinese government repression but the dramatic expansion of that repression in both quantitative and qualitative terms over the last decade. The labor activist forced to move to Hong Kong to continue his work after the crackdown on worker rights, only to be hounded from Hong Kong when the mainland government crushed its democracy movement. The Uyghur scholar detained under atrocious conditions, forced to recite loyalty oaths that only poisoned him against the regime. The feminist activists studying overseas, wracked with fear that even outside the country they will suffer terrible consequences for criticizing officials’ increasingly open misogynistic policies.

    The vision of human freedom and dignity expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides a standard against which to judge the Chinese political system. Many of those same principles are enshrined in the Chinese constitution, making the argument that they are alien to Chinese culture untenable. By both measures, the Chinese government falls far short.

    Yet neither document provides a strategy to achieve human freedom and dignity. In formulating such a strategy, moral truths are necessary but inadequate. The truths of power politics and psychological dynamics must be incorporated as well.

    We in America need to reflect on some uncomfortable truths. As much as we might wish to see ourselves as an agent of global justice, other countries and their citizens do not always share this view. The conflict with China is not only an ethical dispute but is also a power struggle over which country will dominate East Asia militarily and the world economically. The United States is not just criticizing Chinese repression, but is actively seeking to limit China’s global influence.

    Where does this leave U.S. policy on China? First, deploying human rights as a resource in geopolitical conflict is more likely to inspire cynicism around the idea of human rights than it is to vindicate the claim to higher values.

    Second, because geopolitics makes national rivalry the most salient axis of political conflict, it is singularly ill–suited to advancing the human rights project. A geopolitics focused on U.S. global primacy encourages an alignment between China’s government and the Chinese people against threatening foreign forces. Under such circumstances, Chinese leaders are more likely to see those within China who defend human rights as the agents of alien ideas and alien interests, and can more convincingly portray them as such. Linking human rights efforts to geopolitical conflict strengthens those forces in China and the United States that are most hostile to human rights — forces such as nationalism, xenophobia, and militarism.

    A U.S. strategy on human rights in China should begin by reducing the prominence of geopolitical division in U.S.–China relations. This would help to shape a domestic environment in China (and the United States) that would open space for human rights advocacy. America’s longstanding punitive and coercive approach to human rights promotion has failed everywhere it has been tried. The danger of such an approach is magnified in a moment when great power tension threatens to spin out of control.

    It is more urgent than ever to formulate a more strategic approach. By stepping away from the commitment to global primacy as the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy, a foreign policy of restraint offers new ways to approach human rights that avoid the pitfalls of associating universal rights with the power machinations of specific countries.

    See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2011/03/08/ngos-in-china-and-europe-just-published-contains-fascinating-information/

    https://quincyinst.org/2023/12/08/addressing/

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • A sombre reminder: homicide a bigger killer than armed conflict and terrorism combined

    Globally, homicide is a bigger killer than armed conflict and terrorism combined.

    © Unsplash/David von Diemar

    On Friday 8 December 2023 the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said that more people were killed due to homicide than armed conflict and terrorism combined in 2021, with an average of 52 lives lost per hour worldwide. The Global Study on Homicide analyzes the complex dynamics behind these violent deaths and includes a special section on how organized crime is driving death rates up in Latin America and the Caribbean. 

    The report examines homicides related to criminal activities and interpersonal conflict, as well as “socio-politically motivated homicides” such as the deliberate killing of human rights defenders, humanitarian workers and journalists.

    UNODC chief Ghada Waly said the loss of thousands of lives each year to homicide is “a sombre reminder” of the collective failure of the international community to reduce all forms of violence by 2030, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The report revealed that during the period from 2019 to 2021, an average of roughly 440,000 deaths worldwide were due to homicide – more than conflict-related or terrorist killings combined. 

    UNODC said 2021 “was an exceptionally lethal year”, marked by 458,000 homicides.  The spike was in part linked to economic repercussions from the COVID-19 pandemic and to a rise in organized crime and gang-related and socio-political violence in several countries.

    Organized crime accounted for 22 per cent of homicides globally, and 50 per cent in the Americas, where competition among organized crime groups and gangs can spark a sudden and sharp rise in “intentional homicides”, as has happened in Ecuador and Haiti.

    The Americas also lead the world in highest regional homicide rate per capita, with 15 per 100,000 population in 2021, or 154,000 people.

    Africa had the highest absolute number of homicides at 176,000, or 12.7 per 100,000 population, “and available data suggests that the homicide rate is not falling, even as decreases have been registered in other regions,” the report said.  Meanwhile rates in Asia, Europe and Oceania were far below the global per capita average of 5.8 per 100,000 population in 2021.

    Firearms were used in most killings in the Americas in 2021, or roughly 75 per cent, whereas in Europe and Asia they were involved in 17 and 18 per cent of homicides, respectively. 

    Men accounted for 81 per cent of homicide victims and 90 per cent of suspects, but women are more likely to be killed by family members or intimate partners. “Although they represent 19 per cent of homicide victims in total, they account for 54 per cent of all killings in the home and 66 per cent of all victims of intimate partner killings,” UNODC said. 

    Aid workers under attack 

    The data also showed that the deliberate killings of human rights defenders, environmental defenders, community leaders, journalists, and aid workers represented nine per cent of global homicides. “The threat has increased for humanitarian aid workers, who witnessed a higher average number of fatalities over the period 2017-2022 than 2010-2016,” the authors said. 

    https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1144392

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • UDHR@75: how to do better in the future – a view from the Open Society Foundations

    On 5 December 2023, Natalie Samarasinghe – global director for advocacy at the Open Society Foundations. – wrote about strengthening human rights based on David Griffiths’ paper, Barometer in Context: Strengthening the Human Rights System.

    ….But this is not the whole story. The Open Society Barometer, a poll of over 36,000 people in a representative group of countries, found that most people believe in the value of human rights. Over 70 percent said that human rights “reflect the values I believe in” and are “a force for good” in the world.

    Actors such as human rights lawyers, NGOs, and international organizations continue to provide hope, support, and redress to those seeking justice and protection. And they are joined by a growing cohort of others, from rural communities to indigenous peoples, political and social movements. They may not use the language of rights but their work is grounded in them. They cannot afford to have theoretical debates about the relevance of the UDHR. They need support and solutions.

    To mark the UDHR’s anniversary, Open Society commissioned a paper on what those solutions might look like, written by David Griffiths, an advocate and policy expert with more than two decades of diverse experience across the human rights movement. His paper, Barometer in Context: Strengthening the Human Rights System, sets out a series of proposals for how to make this moment count, including prioritizing economic inequality and climate change, exposing the failure of authoritarians to deliver, defending civic space, rethinking migration, widening accountability, and strengthening the human rights system.

    Drawing on 18 months of research and material from at least 65 interviews with people from all parts of the world, as well as the Open Society Barometer, these proposals provide inspiration for those of us approaching this anniversary with a heavy heart. It is vital that we avoid paralysis and gloom, which only plays into the hands of abusers and authoritarians.

    We must become more creative in how we support those defending rights, whether they are in the courtroom or community center, or on the streets marching for debt relief and climate justice. We must invest in the leaders and tools of tomorrow, instead of playing catch-up with authoritarians, while doubling down on our backing for traditional actors and approaches that continue to deliver results.

    And now more than ever, we must nurture a global movement—of the sort that was not possible in 1948—to reaffirm the simple truth that lies at the heart of the Declaration: that all human beings are equal, that every life has value.

    https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/75-years-of-the-universal-declaration-of-human-rights

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • CIVICUS 2023: almost one third of humanity now lives in countries with ‘closed’ civic space

    The CIVICUS Monitor, which tracks freedom of association, peaceful assembly and expression in 198 countries and territories, announced in a new report – “People Power Under Attack 2023” – that almost one third of humanity now lives in countries with ‘closed’ civic space.

    This is the highest percentage –30.6% of the world’s population– living in the most restrictive possible environment since CIVICUS Monitor’s first report in 2018. Meanwhile, just 2.1% of people live in ‘open’ countries, where civic space is both free and protected, the lowest percentage yet and almost half the rate of six years ago.

    “We are witnessing an unprecedented global crackdown on civic space,” said CIVICUS Monitor lead researcher Marianna Belalba Barreto. “The world is nearing a tipping point where repression, already widespread, becomes dominant. Governments and world leaders must work urgently to reverse this downward path before it is too late.”

    The CIVICUS Monitor rates each country’s civic space conditions based on data collected throughout the year from country-focused civil society activists, regionally-based research teams, international human rights indices and the Monitor’s own in-house experts. The data from these four separate sources are then combined to assign each country a rating as either ‘open,’ ‘narrowed,’ ‘obstructed,’ ‘repressed’ or ‘closed.’

    Seven countries saw their ratings drop this year. These include Venezuela and Bangladesh, each now rated ‘closed’ due to intensifications of existing crackdowns on activists, journalists and civil society.

    Democratic countries slipped too. Europe’s largest democracy, Germany, fell from ‘open’ to ‘narrowed’ amid protest bans and targeting of environmental activists. Bosnia & Herzegovina also declined to ‘obstructed,’ the twelfth European country downgraded since 2018.

    One of 2023’s most dramatic slides occurred in Senegal, once considered among West Africa’s most stable democracies. Senegal entered the ‘repressed’ category amid sustained government persecution of protesters, journalists and opposition ahead of February elections.

    “The range of countries where authorities restricted citizen participation in 2023 shows clampdowns are not isolated incidents but are part of a global pattern,” said Belalba. “A global backslide requires a global response. If citizens are not able to freely gather, organise and speak out, the world will not be able to solve inequality, confront the climate crisis and bring an end to war and conflict.”

    CIVICUS Monitor data shows that worldwide, authorities target people’s freedom of expression above all else. Half of all documented violations in 2023 targeted free speech, with incidents ranging from a bombing outside a journalist’s house in Indonesia, the arrest of the head of a radio station in Tunisia and police pepper-spraying a reporter covering a protest in the United States.

    Our research also reveals that intimidation is the number one tactic to restrict citizen freedoms. Human rights defenders, activists and media experienced intimidation in at least 107 countries. Media in particular bear the brunt, with 64% of incidents targeting journalists.

    Despite these alarming trends, People Power Under Attack 2023 highlights areas of progress too. Timor-Leste’s civic space moved up to the second best rating ‘narrowed’ from ‘obstructed,’ reflecting the country’s commitment to fundamental freedoms. Four other countries saw ratings improve, though they remain in ‘repressed’ or ‘obstructed’ zones.

    The report also details bright spots where countries made steps toward opening societies. Among these, Fiji repealed a restrictive media law. The Kenyan courts recognised the right of LGBTQI+ people to associate. Even Tajikistan, rated ‘closed,’ created a national human rights strategy with civil society input. Still, these and other improvements remain halting and often disconnected compared to widespread repression.

    “These small steps show that even amid unprecedented restrictions, civil society is pushing back,” said Belalba. “These courageous acts of resistance by active citizens and civil society organisations give us hope that the downward trend is not permanent and can be reversed.”

    See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/01/18/2021-global-data-report-from-the-civicus-monitor/

    To access the full CIVICUS Monitor report, please visit monitor.civicus.org

    https://www.rfa.org/english/news/vietnam/vietnam-civicus-report-12072023001010.html

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • ENJOY AN INSPIRATIONAL HOLIDAY SEASON IN COMPANY WITH AUSTRALIA’S GREATEST NATION BUILDER.

    John Flynn is THE MAN ON THE TWENTY DOLLAR NOTES. We were able this year to celebrate 90 years of superb service to our nation by the ROYAL FLYING DOCTOR SERVICE solely because of the vision, commitment and determination of its magnificent pioneer, JOHN FLYNN, whom we know fondly as FLYNN OF THE INLAND. I …

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    The post ENJOY AN INSPIRATIONAL HOLIDAY SEASON IN COMPANY WITH AUSTRALIA’S GREATEST NATION BUILDER. appeared first on Everald Compton.

    This post was originally published on My Articles – Everald Compton.

  • Why no concern at prisoners being paid just 50p an hour to work? | Brief letters

    Jails in China and Britain | Katherine Rundell | Gentleman and the Garrick | Dear pandas | Low hum | No FA Cup levelling up

    Reading another article about Chinese prisoners possibly making products for sale in the UK (Chinese prisoner’s ID card apparently found in lining of Regatta coat, 1 December), I wonder why there is no concern that British prisoners are forced to work for UK companies for about 50p an hour? This work provides no training for release and serves only to enrich private prison contractors.
    David Adams
    Darlington, County Durham

    • How appropriate that on the day you note that Katherine Rundell, the author of The Golden Mole, has won the Waterstones book award with Impossible Creatures (Report, 30 November), we also learn of a golden mole reappearing after being feared extinct (Report, 30 November).
    Jim Golcher
    Greens Norton, Northamptonshire

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS WITH THE FOUNDING FATHERS OF AUSTRALIA.

    You can do this by reading my book. DINNER WITH THE FOUNDING FATHERS Discover why there were no FOUNDING MOTHERS, why ABORIGINES were ignored and why NEW ZEALAND walked out of FEDERATION negotiations. Enjoy my depiction of the main characters, Henry Parkes, Edmund Barton, Alfred Deakin, Samuel Griffith, George Reid, John Forrest, Charles Kingston and …

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    The post CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS WITH THE FOUNDING FATHERS OF AUSTRALIA. appeared first on Everald Compton.

    This post was originally published on My Articles – Everald Compton.

  • ENJOY ‘A BEAUTIFUL SUNSET’ THIS CHRISTMAS.

    I have written an novel called A BEAUTIFUL SUNSET. Its growing number of readers tell me it is inspirational. Based on final three months of life of a terminally ill man who decides to make them the most creative, meaningful and productive of all his days before he peacefully departs by Voluntary Assisted Dying. You …

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    This post was originally published on My Articles – Everald Compton.

  • MAY I HUMBLY SUGGEST THAT MY 4 BOOKS ARE THE FINEST CHRISTMAS GIFTS YOU CAN GIVE TO YOUR VERY BEST FRIENDS. ORDER NOW.

    I warmly invite you to buy all 4 of my books for a friend at my special price of 100 dollars which includes postage and packaging. I will write your friend’s name in each one, sign and date them all, and mention that it is a gift from you. You are welcome to go to …

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    The post MAY I HUMBLY SUGGEST THAT MY 4 BOOKS ARE THE FINEST CHRISTMAS GIFTS YOU CAN GIVE TO YOUR VERY BEST FRIENDS. ORDER NOW. appeared first on Everald Compton.

    This post was originally published on My Articles – Everald Compton.