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Category: United Nations

  • IPCC report: ‘Last gasp’ warning on climate response for NZ, the world

    RNZ News

    The climate is changing, faster than we thought – and humans have caused it. Last night, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the most comprehensive report on climate change ever – with hundreds of scientists taking part.

    It says human activity is “unequivocally” driving the warming of atmosphere, ocean and land. The report projects that in the coming decades climate changes will increase in all regions.

    Lead author on the paper, Associate Professor Amanda Maycock of Leeds University, told RNZ Morning Report the study gave governments a range of scenarios on what the world would look like with action and without it.

    “The new scenarios that we present in the report today span a range of different possible futures, so they range all the way from making very rapid, immediate and large-scale cuts in greenhouse gas emissions all the way up to a very pessimistic scenario where we don’t make any efforts to mitigate emissions at all.

    “So we provide the government with a range of possible outcomes. Now in those five scenarios that we assess in each one of them, it’s expected that the 1.5 degree temperature threshold will either be reached or exceeded in the next 20-year period,” she said.

    “However, importantly, the very low emission scenario that we assess — the one where we would reach net zero emissions by the middle of this century — it reaches 1.5 degrees, it may overshoot by a very small amount, possibly about 0.1 of a degree Celsius, but later on in the century the temperature would come back down again and it would start to fall and it would stabilise below the 1.5 degree threshold.

    “So based on the scenarios that we present, there is still a route for us to achieve the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, to limit temperature (rises) to 1.5 degrees Celsius (on average).

    “The publication of today’s report is extremely timely ahead of the COP 26 [climate change conference in Glasgow] meeting because it really does set out in starker terms than ever before that climate change is not a problem of the future anymore. It is here today. The climate is already changing and its impacts are being experienced everywhere on on the planet already.

    ‘Climate change is not a problem of the future anymore. It is here today. The climate is already changing and its impacts are being experienced everywhere on on the planet already.’

    — Dr Amanda Maycock

    “So that serves, I think, as very good motivation for the negotiations that will happen at COP 26. We’ve seen in recent years several countries making commitments in law to reach net zero emissions by mid-century, including New Zealand, and so we will see in November when the meeting takes place, how the other countries react to what the is presented in the working group one report today.

    “It’s a fact that climate change is happening and it is affecting every region of the world already today. So we’re seeing, you know, every year in different parts of the world we see record breaking heatwaves taking place.

    “We see increasingly severe events that are connected to climate change. You know, high rainfall events and flooding, wildfire events, which are often associated and exacerbated by extreme heat and drought, and these are happening all around us all of the time now.

    “So this was what was predicted by the IPCC over many decades, the IPCC’s been saying for a long time now that climate change is happening but the impacts will become more severe as the warming continues to increase and that is what we are now seeing today.

    The New Zealand context
    Climate scientist and report co-author Professor James Renwick of Victoria University told Morning Report “the so-called real time attribution science — being able to use models to look at events pretty much as they happen and work out the fingerprint of climate change — has advanced so much in the last five to 10 years now, this information is incorporated into the report.

    “So yes, we know that a lot of these extreme events that have been happening lately have been made worse by the changing climate.

    “We’ve had just over a degree of warming so far, and you know, we see the consequences of that. Add another half a degree or another whole degree. It’s actually hard to imagine just how bad it could get it.

    “I think the message is we need to work as hard as we can to get the emissions to zero as quickly as we can.

    Effects of the flooding in Westport, two days later.
    Recent flooding in Westport … “There’s no hedging around that climate change is definitely happening. Human activity is definitely the cause is driving all of the change.” Image: RNZ/NZ Defence Force

    “This report is the most definite of any of the IPCC reports. There’s no hedging around that climate change is definitely happening. Human activity is definitely the cause is driving all of the change.

    “The messages in a way the same as we’ve had from the IPCC for 20 years, 30 years even and yet the action hasn’t come through at the political level – we really are at the sort of last gasp stage if we’re going to stop the warming at some kind of manageable level, we need the action now.

    The best technologies for avoiding the impact of climate change were still reducing emissions of greenhouse gases by switching to renewable energy and planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide, Dr Renwick said.

    “So the faster we can reduce our use of oil and coal, the better everyone is going to be and hopefully some of these new [geo-engineering] technologies will prove useful. But there’s nothing on the table right now that looks particularly promising.”

    IPCC
    The challenge … “The problem for New Zealand is that we are still using a climate target that was set two governments ago. It doesn’t meet the Paris Agreement.” Image: RNZ

    How we should respond
    University of Canterbury’s Professor Bronwyn Hayward, a member of the IPCC core writing team, told Morning Report there would be “huge pressure on large and developed countries” ahead of the Glasgow climate change conference in November.

    “I think the problem for New Zealand is that we are still using a climate target that was set two governments ago. It doesn’t meet the Paris Agreement,” she said.

    “If the rest of the world did what we were doing, we’d be well over 3 degrees warmer. So we really just need to not wait to November to make a nice speech in Glasgow. There’s nothing stopping the government.

    “They’ve had their Climate Commission report. We need the debate in Parliament. Now we need to commit to a realistic target and then we need some big action.

    “The Climate Commission has said that we should be saying at least 36 percent cuts or much more, actually if we can, on the amount of emissions we were making back in 2005.

    “But we also need a covid-like response. I think now we could really do with a popular public servant like Bloomfield to lead it, but we need a whole of government response where we are having regular reports where we’re bringing together what we’re doing on our emissions reduction and to protect people.

    “So we need to see some big cuts [in emissions]. For example in transport and to be bold about this, like what would stop the government from actually supporting Auckland to provide all free public buses and congestion charging?

    “I mean, make some big bold steps…

    “At the moment we’re kind of keeping on treating climate as if it’s something about reducing climate through carbon changes, but it’s social actions as well, so investing in new jobs.

    “So bring the thinking together, bring our Ministry of Social Development in with our Ministry for the Environment and really start thinking ‘what does a new lower carbon economy actually look like that works for people?’.

    “There’s always a place for an Emissions Trading Scheme, but we have relied on that only for 30 years and we actually have to also, at the same time make real and concrete and rapid changes where we can … we need to be really planning, not just changing our market systems, but actually planning for concrete infrastructure and housing and city changes that are real on the ground and actually doing them now.

    ‘A catastrophe unfolding’
    Minister for Climate Change and Green Party co-leader James Shaw said the key takeaway from the report was that the effects of climate change were happening now.

    “It’s not something that’s going to be happening in the future somewhere else to somebody else. It is happening to us, and there’s a catastrophe that’s unfolding here in Aotearoa as well as to our nearest neighbours in Australia. And we can see that in that kind of wildfires and so on that they have every year and in the Pacific, where the rate of sea level rise is higher than just about anywhere else in the world,” he said.

    “It just underscores the incredible urgency and the scale with which we need to act.

    Despite the need to reduce emissions, agriculture – which contributes almost 50 percent of the country’s greenhouse gases – will not be included in the Emissions Trading Scheme until 2025.

    Even then, it will be at a 95 percent discount – but Shaw said that was the “backup plan”.

    “So what we’re doing is we’re building a farm level measurement management and pricing scheme for agriculture, and we’re actually the first country in the world to put in place a way of pricing agricultural emissions… you know, just because the pricing isn’t kicking in until the 1st of January 2025, people need to be reducing their emissions now.”

    As for transport – which contributes 20 percent of Aotearoa’s greenhouse gas emissions – a shift to electric cars was important but so was mode shift, Shaw said.

    “We need people to be able to access opportunities for walking, cycling, public transport and so on as well. And we know that our existing fleet of internal combustion engine vehicles is going to still be used for quite a long time because we hold on to our cars for a long time.

    “That’s why we’re bring in a biofuels mandate to make sure that every litre of petrol sold has a biofuels component to it that will increase over time.

    “But transport is the one area in our economy that has just been growing relentlessly for decades and we have to turn it around.”

    “Our country has deferred action on climate change for the better part of 30 years. And what that means is that there is a much steeper curve that we are facing in front of us and [it is] much harder to do, given that we’ve waited so long to get started.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Medicare For All Movement To File Human Rights Violation Complaint

    The March for Medicare for All Movement released a statement today that the group is filing a human rights violation complaint with the United Nations and will hold a public UN panel discussion later this month. On July 24, thousands of people across the United States in 56 marches and vigils demanded the United States Federal Government to take immediate action on three (3) demands by August 6, 2021. The demands 1) Pass Improved & Expanded Medicare for All Immediately; 2) Recognize Healthcare as a Human Right for all people Regardless of sex, age, creed, race, religion, gender identity, citizenship, disability, geographic location, income, and employment status; and 3) Prioritize Healthcare First in the Federal budget. The failure of the United States to fully protect the health of its population during a pandemic is a violation of basic human rights and dignity.

    The post Medicare For All Movement To File Human Rights Violation Complaint appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • China Eradicates Absolute Poverty While Billionaires Go for a Joyride to Space

    Women who migrated to the Wangjia community participate in local activities at the community centre in Tongren City, Guizhou Province, April 2021.

    Confounding news comes from the flagship World Economic Outlook report of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The report highlights many of the pressing issues facing our planet: disruptions in the global supply chain, rising shipping costs, shortages of intermediate goods, rising commodity prices, and inflationary pressures in many economies. Global growth rates are expected to touch 6% in 2021 and 4.9% in 2022, driven by higher global government debt. According to the report, this debt ‘reached an unprecedented level of close to 100% of the global GDP in 2020 and is projected to remain around that level in 2021 and 2022’. Developing countries’ external debt will remain high, with little expectation of relief.

    Each year, IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath highlights the main themes of the report in her blog. This year, her blog has a clear headline: ‘Drawing Further Apart: Widening Gaps in the Global Recovery’. The rift runs along North-South lines, with the poorer nations unable to find an easy path out of the pandemic-induced global slowdown. A range of reasons cause this rift, such as the penalty of relying upon labour-intensive production, the overall poverty of the populations, and the long-standing problems of debt. But Gopinath focuses on one aspect: vaccine apartheid. ‘Close to 40 percent of the population in advanced economies has been fully vaccinated, compared with 11 percent in emerging market economies, and a tiny fraction in low-income developing countries’, she writes. The lack of vaccines, she argues, is the principal cause of the ‘widening gaps in the global recovery’.

    Peasant workers till the land in an organic bamboo fungus company, which was established to help lift Longmenao, a village that is officially registered as poor, out of poverty in Wanshan District, Guizhou Province, April 2021. Credit: Xiang Wang

    Peasant workers till the land in an organic bamboo fungus company, which was established to help lift Longmenao, a village that is officially registered as poor, out of poverty in Wanshan District, Guizhou Province, April 2021.

    These widening gaps have an immediate social impact. The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation’s 2021 report, The State of Food Insecurity and Nutrition in the World, notes that ‘nearly one in three people in the world (2.37 billion) did not have access to adequate food in 2020 – an increase of almost 320 million people in just one year’. Hunger is intolerable. Food riots are now in evidence, most dramatically in South Africa. ‘They are just killing us with hunger here’, said one Durban resident who was motivated to join the unrest. These protests, as well as the new data released by the IMF and UN, have put hunger back on the global agenda.

    In late July, the United Nations’ Economic and Social Council held a high-level political forum on sustainable development. The forum’s ministerial declaration recognised that ‘the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare and exacerbated our world’s vulnerabilities and inequalities within and among countries, accentuated systemic weaknesses, challenges, and risks and threatens to halt or damage progress made in realising the Sustainable Development Goals’. Seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by the UN member states in 2015. These goals include poverty alleviation, an end to hunger, good health, and gender equality. Before the pandemic, it was already clear that the world would not meet these goals by 2030 as projected, certainly not even the most basic goal of eradicating hunger.

    During this bleak period, in late February 2021, China’s president Xi Jinping announced that – counter to this general global downturn – China had eradicated extreme poverty. What does this announcement mean? As our team at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research reported last month, it means that 850 million people had climbed out of absolute poverty (the culmination of a seven-decade-long process that began with the Chinese Revolution of 1949), that their per capita income had increased to US$10,000 (a ten-fold increase in the last twenty years), and that life expectancy had increased to 77.3 years on average (compared to 35 years in 1949). Having met the poverty reduction SDGs ten years in advance, China contributed to more than 70% of the world’s total poverty reduction. In March 2021, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres celebrated this achievement as a ‘reason for hope and inspiration to the entire community of nations’.

    First Secretary Liu Yuanxue speaks with a local villager during routine home visits in the village of Danyang, Wanshan District, Guizhou Province, April 2021.

    Our July study, Serve the People: The Eradication of Extreme Poverty in China, inaugurated a new series called Studies on Socialist Construction, through which we aim to study experiments in the construction of socialist practices from Cuba to Kerala, Bolivia to China. Serve the People is based on ground-level studies of poverty eradication schemes in different parts of China and on interviews with experts who participated in this long-term project. For instance, Wang Sangui, dean of the National Poverty Alleviation Research Institute of Renmin University, told us how the concept of multidimensional poverty is central to the Chinese approach. The concept became a policy through the Communist Party of China’s programme of ‘three guarantees’ (safe housing, healthcare, and education) and ‘two assurances’ (being fed and being clothed). But even here, the essence of this policy is in the details. As Wang put it in terms of drinking water:

    How do you classify drinking water as safe? First, the basic requirement is that there must be no shortages in the water supply. Second, the source of water must not be too far, no more than twenty minutes round-trip for water retrieval. Last, the water quality must be safe, without any harmful substances. We require test reports that confirm the water quality is safe. Only then can we say that the standard is met.

    Once a policy is crafted, the real work of implementation begins. The Communist Party (CPC) sent out 800,000 cadre to help local authorities survey households to understand the depth of poverty in the countryside. Then, the CPC delegated 3 million cadre out of the Party’s 95.1 million members to be part of 255,000 teams that spent years living in poor villages working towards the eradication of poverty and the social conditions it created. One team was assigned to a village, one cadre to each family.

    The studies of poverty and the experience of the cadre resulted in five core methods for eradicating poverty: developing industry; relocating people; incentivising ecological compensation; guaranteeing free, quality, and compulsory education; and providing social assistance. The most powerful lever of these five methods was industrial development, which created capital-intensive agricultural production (including crop processing and animal breeding); restored farmlands; and grew forests as part of the ecological compensation schemes, reviving areas that had become prey to resource over-exploitation. In addition, an emphasis was placed on educating minority populations and women. As a result, by 2020, China ranked first in the world in the enrolment of women in tertiary education, according to the World Economic Forum.

    Less than 10% of the people who lifted themselves out of poverty did so because of relocation, which was often the most dramatic instance of the programme. One relocated resident, Mou’se, told us about Atule’er, a village on the edge of a mountain, where he lived before relocating. ‘It took me half a day to climb down the cliff to buy a packet of salt’, he recalled. He would go down the cliff on a rattan ‘sky ladder’, which dangled perilously from the edge of the cliff. His relocation – along with the eighty-three other families who lived there – has allowed him to access better facilities and live a less precarious life.

    The eradication of extreme poverty is significant, but it does not solve all problems. Social inequality in China remains a serious problem. These are not China’s problems alone but pressing problems facing humanity in our time. As we move to capital-intensive agriculture that requires fewer farmers, what kinds of habitations will we produce that are neither in rural nor urban areas? What kinds of employment can be generated for people who are no longer needed in the fields? Can we begin to think about a shorter work week, allowing more time to be civic and social?

    A local food vendor and user of the Yishizhifu short video platform showcases her cooking in the village of Danyang, Wanshan District, Guizhou Province, April 2021.

    Eradicating poverty is not a Chinese project. It is humanity’s goal. That is why movements and governments committed to this goal look carefully at the achievement of the Chinese people. Many of the projects in motion, however, take a dramatically different approach, seeking to address poverty by transferring income (as several South African research institutes advocate). But cash transfer schemes are not enough. Multidimensional poverty requires more than this. For example, Brazil’s Bolsa Familia programme, implemented by former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, made an enormous dent in hunger in that country, but it was not designed to eradicate poverty.

    Meanwhile, in the Indian state of Kerala, absolute poverty fell from 59.79% of the population in 1973-74 to 7.05% in 2011-2012 under the governance of the Left Democratic Front. The mechanisms that led to this dramatic decline were agrarian reform, establishing public health and education, creating a public distribution system for food, decentralising political authority to local self-governments, providing social security and welfare, and promoting public action (such as through the Kudumbashree cooperative projects). Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said recently that his government is committed to eradicating extreme poverty in the state. The next study in our series on socialist construction will concentrate on Kerala’s cooperative movement, focusing on its role in the eradication of poverty, hunger, and patriarchy.

    From the countryside to Tongren City, Guizhou Province, April 2021.

    In March, the UN Environment Programme released its Food Waste Index Report, which showed that an estimated 931 million tonnes of food went into waste bins across the world. The weight of this food roughly equals that of 23 million fully loaded 40-tonne trucks. If we let these trucks stand bumper-to-bumper at the earth’s circumference, they would make a ring long enough to circle the earth seven times, or to go deep into space, where billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson decided to go. The $5.5 billion Bezos spent on a four-minute trip into space could have fed 37.5 million people or fully funded the COVAX programme that would vaccinate two billion people.

    The ambitions of Bezos and Branson are not life. Life is the abolition of the harshness of necessity.

    The post China Eradicates Absolute Poverty While Billionaires Go for a Joyride to Space first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Australia may miss treaty deadline to establish torture protections for prisons, advocates warn

    January 2022 looms as the target date but Western Australia is the only state or territory to have established monitoring mechanism

    Australia could miss an international deadline to introduce new safeguards against torture and abuse in jails, human rights advocates have warned.

    The Australian government four years ago ratified a treaty to bring all its detention sites – including juvenile justice centres such as Don Dale and onshore immigration detention centres – under independent scrutiny to stop abuses.

    Related: UN inspectors primed for ‘unfettered access’ to Australian detention centres

    Related: Juvenile justice to face scrutiny after Australia ratifies torture treaty

    Continue reading…

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

  • Reminder: The U.S. Gov’t Lies, Manipulates, and Kills Without Remorse

    On July 25, 1990, Saddam Hussein entertained a guest at the Presidential Palace in Baghdad: U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie. She told the Iraqi president: “I have direct instructions from President (George H.W.) Bush to improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation with Kuwait.” Glaspie then asked, point-blank: “Why are your troops massed so very close to Kuwait’s borders?”

    “As you know, for years now I have made every effort to reach a settlement on our dispute with Kuwait,” replied Hussein, deploying his own rendition of wartime spin. “There is to be a meeting in two days; I am prepared to give negotiations only this one more brief chance.”

    Eight days later, Iraq invaded Kuwait and provided the Land of the Free™ with the pretext it needed to commence a relentless onslaught in the name of keeping the world safe for petroleum. This brings me to a forgotten anniversary. While August 6, 2021, of course, marks the 76th anniversary of the willful nuking of civilians in Hiroshima by the Home of the Brave™, it also marks 31 years since the U.S. war against Iraq was initially launched. 

    For most people — particularly willfully ignorant anti-war activists — the starting date for the war in Iraq is March 19, 2003. However, to accept that date is to put far too much blame on one party and one president. It also invalidates decades of intense suffering. A more accurate and useful starting date is August 6, 1990, when (at the behest of the U.S.) the United Nations Security Council imposed lethal sanctions upon the people of Iraq.

    It is widely accepted that these sanctions were responsible for the deaths of at least 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in the mid-90s was Madeleine Albright. In 1996, Leslie Stahl asked her on 60 Minutes if a half-million dead Iraqi children was a price worth paying to pursue American foreign policy. Albright famously replied: “We think the price is worth it.”

    Shortly afterward, Albright was named U.S. Secretary of State by noted liberal Democrat hero, Bill Clinton. Killing brown children by the hundreds of thousands, it seems, is a real boost for the resume in God’s Country™.

    In the words of the immortal I.F Stone: “Every government is run by liars. Nothing they say should be believed.”

    The post Reminder: The U.S. Gov’t Lies, Manipulates, and Kills Without Remorse first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Serious questions raised by solitary confinement in prisons | Letters

    Emma Ginn and Annie Viswanathan on the effect of solitary confinement on immigration detainees and Dean Kingham on prisoners abandoned to close supervision centres

    Prolonged solitary confinement is an extreme form of treatment, prohibited in all circumstances under international law. Your article (Fifty-two prisoners in close supervision units ‘that may amount to torture’, 26 July) exposed this practice in highly restrictive prisons.

    Prolonged solitary confinement has in fact become routine in all prisons during the pandemic, with many individuals being confined alone or with a cellmate for 22 to 24 hours each day since March 2020.

    Continue reading…

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

  • UN boss in Fiji explains evacuation of worker to NZ with covid-19

    RNZ News

    A UN official with covid-19 has been evacuated from Fiji on a mercy flight after an about-turn from New Zealand’s health authorities.

    RNZ Checkpoint understands the woman, who is seriously ill, will be treated at Auckland’s Middlemore Hospital despite New Zealand initially refusing to let her in because of “capacity” issues.

    In a statement, the Ministry of Health said Auckland’s Medical Officer of Health had approved a transfer plan for the patient, taking into account the safety of the UN worker and the crew transporting her — with strong protocols in place for the transfer.

    The hospital system in Fiji is overrun with 1000 new covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours and 12 deaths this week.

    There are 700 UN workers in Suva. The UN’s senior official in Fiji, Sanaka Samarasinha, told Checkpoint it was a critical situation for the worker.

    “We have a threshold in the UN system, it doesn’t matter which country you’re in, we do consider a certain threshold at which point we kickstart the medevac process,” he said.

    Samarasinha said it was preferable to treat the person in the country they were currently in, but doctors determined it was necessary to get the woman care that was currently not available in Fiji.

    ‘We’re very grateful’
    “As we do normally, we start looking for places where the patient can be medevaced too… New Zealand has excellent facilities and are able to provide care, we’re very grateful.”

    He said the decision was made purely on medical grounds and it was not one taken lightly. He said transporting a sick person came with a certain risk.

    “We are all very concerned. We are all rooting for her. We know her personally, she’s a fighter. We just have to keep our fingers crossed.

    “I’m really looking forward to a positive outcome.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The Little Talked About Covid-19 “Variants”: Vaccine Mismanagement Will Have Dire Repercussions 

    Do you remember the United Nations Millennium Development Goals? If not, you are not alone.

    These ambitious goals, which included the eradication of “extreme poverty and hunger”, to “combating lethal diseases” and “reducing child mortality worldwide”, proved to be yet another empty gesture which, unsurprisingly, amounted to little.

    Even if the architects of the project were well-intentioned as they labored to meet the 2015 deadline, the lack of true international solidarity made their commendable program simply impossible.

    Sadly, whatever positive difference that these objectives registered is now quickly vanishing, not because of the Covid-19 pandemic which continues to ravage the world, but because of the selfish and haphazard international response to it.

    Expectedly, the most vulnerable are the first to suffer. According to a July 15 World Health Organization (WHO) report, an estimated “23 million children missed out on basic vaccines through routine immunization services in 2020 – 3.7 million more than in 2019.”

    It should be no surprise that much of these ongoing health crises are occurring in the southern hemisphere. India, for example, which has experienced a devastatingly high number of Covid-19 deaths, lags behind in terms of immunization of other, equally deadly diseases. Over three million children in the world’s second most populous country did not receive the first dose of DTP-1, the combined vaccine for diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis.

    While the obvious culprit may seem to be Covid-19, in actuality it is not the pandemic, per se, that has accelerated this dangerous trend. “The Covid-19 pandemic and related disruptions cost us valuable ground we cannot afford to lose – and the consequences will be paid in the lives and well-being of the most vulnerable,” Henrietta Fore, the Executive Director of UNICEF, sounded the alarm.

    Practically, this means that, even when the current pandemic becomes a distant memory, millions of people in poor or relatively poor countries, will continue to pay a price for this unforgivable mismanagement of the global healthcare system.

    When WHO declared in March 2020 that Covid-19 was officially a “pandemic”, many global intellectuals romanticized the notion that Covid-19 has the potential to bring us closer together. A year and a half later, we realize that such high hopes were mere wishful thinking. If anything, the pandemic has deepened – and further highlighted – not only existing global inequalities, but the complete disregard of the poorer, readily exploited South by the wealthier, neocolonial North.

    In a thorough investigative report, entitled “Vaccine inequity: Inside the cutthroat race to secure doses,” the Associated Press revealed on July 18 the extent of the unfair international distribution of the Covid-19 vaccines. For example, while “Canada has procured more than 10 doses for every resident, Sierra Leone’s vaccination rate just cracked 1% on June 20,” AP reported.

    The same disquieting paradigm applies elsewhere. While the United Kingdom, the European Union and the US have produced or acquired multiple vaccines for every person, Oman, Honduras, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe are situated firmly at the bottom of the “vaccine procurement” list.

    The much-celebrated COVAX, an international project championed by WHO and others to deliver billions of Covid-19 vaccinations to poorer countries in 2021-22, has proven to be a much slower process than once anticipated. Wealthy nations that have pledged to supply the program with the needed dosages seem more consumed with piling up or selling vaccine surplus to the highest bidder.

    Then, there is the problem of existing income inequality and widespread corruption in much of the South, which makes access to the few available vaccines nearly impossible for the poorest communities.

    According to a 2019 report by the World Inequality Database, income inequality in Africa is the highest in the world, where the average income of the top 10% is nearly 30 times higher than the bottom 50%. One is almost certain that those in the high-income bracket will be the first to access whatever little available vaccines, while the bottom 50% is likely to wait for years to receive the life-saving serum.

    Health inequality around the world is nothing new, but the Covid-19 pandemic has offered us a rare, live scenario of what this inequality means. Now, we realize that the old UN’s millennium goals were never truly possible under the current political paradigm. Despite sincere – although, ultimately, unrealistic – good intentions, the project was a mixture of political propaganda and empty rhetoric.

    It is mind-boggling that, despite the fact that millions of people have perished as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and that, unprecedented in six decades, life expectancy rates have significantly dropped worldwide, the vaccines are still considered a commodity in an ever-competitive global economy. While the fate of millions of people rests on the availability of this cure, the vaccines remain beholden to the inhumane rules of supply and demand of the world’s market.

    While many are busy measuring the possible future repercussions of the pandemic in terms of economic output, life expectancy and such, it is critical that we consider other factors that are certain to result from this unbearable inequality: revolutions, mass migrations and famine. These are the other ‘variants’ that we must urgently address.

    The post The Little Talked About Covid-19 “Variants”: Vaccine Mismanagement Will Have Dire Repercussions  first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • UN Food Systems Summit: Here Is Why We Are Boycotting It

    Yet, the organised peasant and indigenous movements from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas that collectively represent most of the world’s small-scale food producers have called for a total boycott of this summit. In April this year, scores of scientists, researchers, faculty members, and educators who work in agriculture and food systems, also issued an open call to boycott the event. To understand why social movements and scientists are staying out of a UN-sponsored summit, it is important to know how the world’s food system works today.

    The post UN Food Systems Summit: Here Is Why We Are Boycotting It appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Fifty-two prisoners in close supervision units ‘that may amount to torture’

    FoI request reveals number of inmates in England and Wales kept in conditions criticised by UN expert

    Fifty-two people are being held in prison units in England and Wales in conditions that a UN human rights expert has said may amount to torture, the Guardian has learned.

    Close supervision centres (CSC) hold some of the most dangerous men in the prison system in small, highly supervised units within high-security jails in conditions previously described by the prisons inspector as “the most restrictive … with limited stimuli and human contact”.

    Continue reading…

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

  • Deposed Burmese Leaders Are Now Changing Their Tune on Human Rights of Rohingya

    Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi looks on as health workers receive a vaccine for the COVID-19 coronavirus at a hospital in Naypyidaw, Myanmar, on January 27, 2021.

    The United Nations (UN) has long characterized the Rohingya Muslims, a religious and ethnic minority population in Myanmar, as the world’s most persecuted community. Since achieving independence from British colonial rule in 1948, successive military and civilian governments have subjected the Rohingya to crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocidal campaigns. Most recently, in 2017, such mass atrocity crimes culminated in the exodus of nearly 1 million Rohingya from Myanmar (also known as Burma) to neighboring Bangladesh, where they have settled in refugee camps. Others have sought safe haven in the United States.

    On February 1, 2021, political events in Myanmar once again grabbed international headlines following a military coup that deposed democratically elected members of the nation’s ruling party. Significantly, the coup has not only inspired mass protests among the civilian population demanding democratic reform, but it has also culminated in some surprising developments. Specifically, a new series of public declarations from the National Unity Government of Burma (NUG), composed of the exiled parliamentarians elected in the November 2020 democratic elections whom the military subsequently ousted, prove historic. This is because they focus almost exclusively on advancing Rohingya human rights despite decades-long persecution. The declarations are not only important to the work of immigration attorneys and human rights advocates, but also those involved in rule-of-law initiatives in Myanmar and beyond.

    Repealing the 1982 Citizenship Law

    On May 26, 2021, the NUG called to repeal the 1982 Citizenship Law that rendered the Rohingya the world’s largest stateless population in violation of public international law. By way of background, many Burmese saw the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from South Asia allowed in by their former British colonizers. Myanmar’s authorities have denied them citizenship rights on this basis even though their presence predates colonial rule. In fact, the country’s Citizenship Law codified the Rohingya’s legal exclusion in 1982 by refusing to grant them citizenship while recognizing more than 100 other racial and ethnic groups. Today, the Rohingya are the world’s largest “stateless” community deprived of legal protection from the government.

    Significantly, Rohingya statelessness or lack of citizenship has exacerbated the population’s vulnerability because they are not entitled to any legal protection from their government. In fact, from restrictions to accessing health care and educational opportunities to arbitrary detention and extrajudicial violence, the group’s lack of citizenship has helped facilitate human rights abuses over the course of decades by both private and public actors. As such, the NUG’s call to repeal the discriminatory measure represents an initial and necessary step toward achieving formal equality.

    Recognizing Rohingya Muslims as a Distinctive Group

    Subsequently, on May 28, the NUG issued another public statement that not only demanded equal rights for the persecuted minority population but actually recognized the group as “Rohingya.” To understand the significance of this particular development, some social, political and legal context is necessary.

    Prior to the most recent military coup, Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s deposed leader who now serves as NUG’s State Counsellor, refused to recognize the Rohingya as an Indigenous group with a unique language, culture and history. To that end, like the military and many Burmese nationals, she alleged the term “Rohingya” was inflammatory. Rather, the group was consistently called “Bengali” (and instructed to return to Bangladesh). Ultimately, such social hostilities culminated in discriminatory legal measures such as the citizenship law noted above.

    As such, the NUG’s recognition of the Rohingya as a distinct racial and religious group carries social, political and legal significance. This is particularly so given pending international legal claims before the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court. In both contexts, attorneys allege that Burmese officials have engaged in a genocidal campaign and perpetrated mass atrocity crimes against the group. Prior to the NUG’s declaration, government officials refused to recognize the existence of the community in the first instance, let alone the human rights violations in question. Significantly, in public international law, establishing the Rohingyas’ distinctive identity as a religious and ethnic minority group is key to proving genocide.

    Cooperating With the International Court of Justice

    On May 30, the NUG released yet another public declaration claiming that (as the democratically elected government of Burma), it was fully cooperating with the International Court of Justice in the pending case The Gambia v. Myanmar, alleging an official genocidal campaign against the Rohingya. Some additional context is warranted to fully appreciate the significance of this public commitment.

    On November 11, 2019, on behalf of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the West African nation of The Gambia filed a case with the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN’s highest court, accusing Myanmar of genocide pursuant to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention). As noted, Burmese officials have long subjected members of the Rohingya Muslims population to a spectrum of human rights abuses, including the denial of citizenship rights, restrictions on religious freedom, forced displacement, gender-based violence and the arbitrary deprivation of life. The UN’s primary judicial body, the ICJ adjudicates international legal controversies between nations while also issuing advisory decisions to UN entities regarding international law. This case represents the first time the international community has attempted to hold officials accountable.

    The Gambia’s lawsuit seeks to enforce Myanmar’s obligation to protect the Rohingya from acts of genocide. Specifically, The Gambia relied on Article 9 of the Genocide Convention, allowing any party to the Convention to hold another state accountable for genocide since all member states have an affirmative duty to prevent and to punish genocide. The Gambia not only seeks to stop Myanmar’s genocidal acts against the Rohingya while also ensuring legal accountability, but also provides reparations, including the “safe and dignified return” of refugees abroad.

    Since the ICJ’s adjudication of these requests requires several years, The Gambia also requested provisional measures, akin to an injunction against a country, to ensure protection of the Rohingya remaining in Myanmar and its own rights to fair proceedings as the legal process unfolds. Specifically, on November 11, 2019, the Republic requested provisional measures that would require Myanmar to cease all genocidal acts; to stop non-state actors from engaging in such acts; to prohibit the official destruction of evidence; and mandate official cooperation with all UN experts and entities investigating the mass atrocity crimes alleged. The Gambia argued that such injunctive relief was justified given the urgent ongoing threat to the Rohingya population.

    On January 23, 2020, the ICJ granted The Gambia’s application for provisional measures to prevent irreparable harm to human rights. In doing so, the Court ordered Myanmar to: (a) ensure that non-state actors refrain from committing genocidal acts; (b) preserve all relevant evidence; (c) report on its compliance with the Court’s order; and (d) “take all measures within its power” to prevent the genocide of the Rohingya among other measures while describing the 600,000 Rohingya remaining in Myanmar as “extremely vulnerable” to state-sanctioned violence.

    In response, Human Rights Watch asserted, “This is the most important court in the world intervening in one of the worst mass atrocity situations of our time while the atrocities are still happening.” Significantly, the provisional measures order is legally binding on Myanmar and The Gambia. As such, the NUG has made clear that it intends to comply with the ICJ’s provisional ruling.

    While one hopes that the NUG’s calls for human rights reform come to fruition, it is difficult to ignore the broader context from which these public commitments emerge. To ensure strategic self-preservation prior to the military coup, Myanmar’s deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi oversaw the genocidal military campaign against the Rohingya that has since animated the litigation noted above.

    Indeed, during her reign of power, Aung San Suu Kyi, the human rights advocate who triumphed in the 2015 democratic elections, refused to pursue meaningful reforms to realize Rohingya human rights. In response to related criticism that she ignored flagrant human rights violations against the Rohingya Muslims, she characterized the 2017 humanitarian and human rights crisis as the unintended consequences of necessary counterterrorism measures rather than representative of decades-long persecution. She also accused international actors of “drumming up a cause for bigger fires of resentment.” In other words, the long-celebrated democracy icon provided political cover for official mass atrocity crimes that the military committed against the Rohingya as a matter of strategic self-interest only to be subsequently deposed by those very criminals.

    Now a government in exile, the NUG, which she helps lead with other lawmakers, has called for historic reforms to protect a once reviled group. While such changes are noteworthy, this is presumably intended to solidify support among a wider swath of compatriots and also more broadly in the international community. For better or worse, it underscores the role of politics in protecting, promoting and advancing human rights.

    After President Biden ordered sanctions against Myanmar’s generals in the coup’s immediate aftermath, critics pointed to atrocity crimes committed against the Rohingya while questioning the absence of such measures during the genocide. In tandem with late Harvard legal scholar Derrick Bell’s interest-convergence theory, NUG’s series of public statements demonstrate that reforms for individual rights may arise as a matter of strategic self-interest rather than an altruistic desire to assist an “otherized” population — even as a matter of public international law. This is a significant consideration for those working on rule of law initiatives in Myanmar and beyond.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • John Minto: Ben & Jerry does right thing – will Mahuta agree to UN call?

    COMMENT: By John Minto

    US ice cream manufacturer Ben and Jerry has announced it will no longer sell icecream in the occupied Palestinian Territories.

    This is a welcome development while Israel is continuing to flout international law with their new government approving the building of 31 more illegal Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank alongside the destruction of Palestinian homes and on-going ethnic cleansing of Palestinian families from occupied East Jerusalem to make way for Jewish settlers. 

    It appears this move may be linked to last week’s request from the UN Special Rapporteur, Michael Lynk, for countries to recognise Israel’s sponsoring of Israeli settlers on Palestinian land in the Occupied West Bank as “a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.”

    The Special Rapporteur calls these settlers (680,000 across almost 300 illegal settlements) “the engine of Israel’s 54-year-old occupation, the longest in the modern world”. 

    This UN report gives the government the opportunity to make public New Zealand’s abhorrence at these ongoing racist policies against Palestinians.  

    New Zealand has been silent since 2016 when the last National-led government co-sponsored United Nations Security Council resolution 2334 which declared Israel’s illegal settlements to have “no legal validity” and constitute a “flagrant violation of international law”.  

    The next step — as requested by the United Nations last week, is for New Zealand to declare this Israel settler policy as a “war crime”.

    Five years of silence is complicity with Israel’s war crimes. It is not acceptable.

    Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) has written this week to the Minister of Foreign Affairs about this. We are expecting the government to speak out.

    John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Mobilising Against the Corporate Hijack of Agriculture and the UN Food Systems Summit

    The UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), including a ‘pre-summit’, will take place in September 2021 in New York. The Italian government is hosting the pre-summit in Rome from 26–28 July. The UNFSS claims it aims to deliver the latest evidence-based, scientific approaches from around the world, launch a set of fresh commitments through coalitions of action and mobilise new financing and partnerships.

    Despite claims of being a ‘people’s summit’ and a ‘solutions’ summit, the UNFSS is facilitating greater corporate concentration, unsustainable globalised value chains and agribusiness leverage over public institutions. As a result, more than 300 global organisations of small-scale food producers, researchers and indigenous peoples will gather online from 25-28 July to mobilise against the pre-summit.

    The Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSM) for relations with the United Nations Committee on World Food Security is working to eradicate food insecurity and malnutrition. According to the CMS, the UNFSS – founded on a partnership between the UN and the World Economic Forum (WEF) – is disproportionately influenced by corporate actors, lacks transparency and accountability and diverts energy and financial resources away from the real solutions needed to tackle the multiple hunger, climate and health crises.

    The CMS argues that the UNFSS is not building on the legacy of past world food summits, which resulted in the creation of innovative, inclusive and participatory global food governance mechanisms anchored in human rights, such as the reformed UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS).

    Promoting industrial agriculture

    It seems the UNFSS is now dominated by corporate front groups and corporate-driven platforms, including the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), the International Agri-Food Network, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the EAT Forum as well as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Gates Foundation. The President of AGRA, Agnes Kalibata, was even appointed as UN Special Envoy for the summit.

    According to the CMS, those being granted a pivotal role at the UNFSS support industrial food systems that promote ultra-processed foods, deforestation, industrial livestock production, intensive pesticide use and commodity crop monocultures, all of which cause soil deterioration, water contamination and irreversible impacts on biodiversity and human health.

    The industrialised food system that these corporations fuel does not even feed the world, despite corporate claims to the contrary. For example, the 2021 UN Report on the State of Food Security and Nutrition indicates that the number of chronically undernourished people has risen to 811 million, while almost a third of the world’s population has no access to adequate food. Furthermore, the Global South is still reeling from Covid-19 related policies which have laid bare the inherent fragility and injustices of the prevailing food system.

    Those who contribute most to world food security, smallholder producers, are the most threatened and affected by the corporate concentration of land, seeds, natural and financial resources and the related privatisation of the commons and public goods.

    And these processes are accelerating: the high-tech/data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants in a quest to impose a one size fits all type of agriculture and food production on the world. Digitalisation, artificial intelligence and other technologies are serving to promote a new wave of resource grabbing and the restructuring of food systems towards a total concentration of power.

    The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also heavily involved, whether through buying up huge tracts of farmland, funding and promoting a much-heralded (but failed) ‘green revolution’ for Africa, pushing biosynthetic food and new genetic engineering technologies or more generally facilitating the aims of the mega agrifood corporations.

    Under the guise of saving the planet with ‘climate-friendly solutions’, helping farmers and feeding the world, what Gates and his corporate associates are really doing is desperately trying to repackage the dispossessive strategies of imperialism wrapped in the language of ‘sustainability’ and ‘inclusivity’.

    Through various aspects of data control pertaining to soil quality, consumer preferences, weather, and land use, for example, and e-commerce monopolies, corporate land ownership, seed biopiracy, patents, synthetic food and the undermining of the public sector’s role in ensuring food security and national food sovereignty, global agricapital seeks to gain full control over the world’s food system.

    Smallholder peasant farming is under threat as the big-tech giants and agribusiness impose lab-grown food, genetically engineered (GE) soil microbes, data harvesting tools and drones and other ‘disruptive’ technologies. The model being promoted desires farmerless industrial-scale farms being manned by driverless machines, monitored by drones and doused with chemicals to produce commodity crops from patented GE seeds for industrial ‘biomatter’ to be processed and constituted into something resembling food.

    The CMS notes that these are false ‘solutions’ that seek to bypass and undermine the peasant food web which currently produces up to 70% of the world’s food, working with only 25% of the resources. Moreover, these false solutions do not address structural injustices such as land and resource grabbing, corporate abuse of power and economic inequality. They merely reinforce them.

    Towards food sovereignty

    More than 380 million people belong to the movements protesting against the UNFSS. They are demanding a radical transformation of corporate food regimes towards a just and truly sustainable food system. They are also demanding increased participation in existing democratic food governance models, such as the UN Committee for World Food Security (CFS) and its High-Level Panel of Experts. The UNFSS threatens to undermine CFS, which is the foremost inclusive intergovernmental international policy-making arena.

    There is an intensifying fight for space between local markets and global markets. The former are the domain of independent producers and small-scale enterprises, whereas global markets are dominated by increasing monopolistic large-scale international retailers, traders and the rapidly growing influential e-commerce companies.

    It is therefore essential to protect and strengthen local markets and indigenous, independent small-scale producers and enterprises to ensure community control over food systems, economic independence and local food sovereignty. With this in mind, the CMS is calling for a radical agroecological transformation of food systems based on food sovereignty, gender justice and economic and social justice.

    Agroecology is practised throughout the world. As numerous high-level (UN) reports have argued over the years, this approach improves nutrition, reduces poverty, contributes to gender justice, combats climate change and enriches farmland. With no need to purchase proprietary inputs (chemicals, seeds, etc) and its outperforming of industrial agriculture, agroecology represents a shift towards genuine food sovereignty and thus a direct threat to corporate agribusiness.

    During the online mobilisation against the pre-summit, participants will share small-scale food producers and workers’ realities and their visions for a human rights-based and agroecological transformation of food systems. In doing so, they will highlight the importance of food sovereignty, small-scale sustainable agriculture, traditional knowledge, rights to natural resources and the rights of workers, indigenous peoples, women and future generations.

    More information about the online mobilisation from 25-28 July can be found on the FoodSystems4People website .

    The post Mobilising Against the Corporate Hijack of Agriculture and the UN Food Systems Summit first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • UN ranks Australia last on climate in sustainability goals

    The United Nations has designated Australia as having done the least out of 193 countries to combat climate change. Patrick McDonald reports.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • ‘We’ll be extinct,’ warns West Papuan churches, call for halt to ‘racist’ Otsus

    Tabloid Jubi in Jayapura

    The West Papuan Council of Churches (WPCC) has condemned the Indonesian government’s Special Autonomy (Otsus) law ratified by the Jakarta parliament last week, describing it as racist and warning that Papuans could “become extinct”.

    The WPCC was speaking in an online forum organised by the International Coalition for Papua (ICP) last Wednesday — the day before the draft bill was ratified.

    It appealed to the Pacific and international community to stop the Indonesian government’s racism toward the West Papuans which was being perpetuated by the Otsus Law, widely condemned by Papuans.

    The forum included representatives of the World Council of Churches (WCC), the Pacific Islands Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (PIANGO), the United Evangelical Mission (UEM), the West Papua Project, the Franciscans International, and the Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC).

    The Evangelical Church in Indonesia (GIDI) president Dorman Wandikbo said the Otsus Law had become an enabler for gross human rights violations in West Papua in the past 20 years, such as the Biak, Abepura, Paniai and Wamena massacres.

    “Therefore, the Papuan people reject the continuation of the Otsus Law,” he said.

    Wandikbo cited the result of a study conducted by the Indonesian Institute of Science (LIPI), which said the root of the problems in Papua was racism, which had caused Papuans to suffer culturally, politically, and economically despite being given a special autonomy.

    Appeal for international help
    He asked for the international community’s help in underlining the rejection of continuation of the Otsus Law.

    Wandikbo also said that the covid-19 pandemic must not be used as an excuse to obstruct the United Nations special envoy on human rights from entering West Papua.

    “This is an emergency situation. We, the Papuan people, will be extinct in 20 or 30 years if something is not done,” he said.

    “God put us here in the land of Papua not to be killed, enslaved, nor called monkeys.”

    Human rights lawyer Veronica Koman said international organisations such as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) were effectively banned from entering the region.

    Rev Socratez Yoman
    Alliance of West Papuan Baptist Churches president Reverend Socratez Yoman … “the Papuan people are left out.” Image: APR File

    Reverend Socratez Yoman of the WPCC, who is also the head of the Aliance of West Papua Baptist Churches, said that Indonesian lawmakers had been debating the Special Autonomy Law while ignoring the law itself, which required the Papuan People’s Assembly (MRP) and the Papuan Legislation Council (DPRP) to be included in the evaluation and amendment of the law.

    “In fact, the MRP and DPRP are not included in the deliberation process. Only Jakarta ha[d] to agree, the Papuan people are left out,” Reverend Yoman said.

    Division into more provinces
    Reverend Yoman also said that under the upcoming Otsus Law, the Indonesian government planned to divide the region — currently two provinces, Papua and West Papua — into more provinces despite the low population in Papua.

    “Who is this [plan] really for? It will only result in more military basis, more migrants coming from the other provinces in Indonesia, and we will be a minority in our own land and eventually be extinct,” he said.

    In the online forum, Sister Rode Wanimbo of the WPCC also gave updates on the situation in West Papua, as she had just returned from Puncak regency’s capital of Ilaga last Tuesday.

    “There are 11 civilians who have been shot dead in Ilaga from April to July this year. There are also nine churches destroyed and bombed by the Indonesian military from the air,” she said.

    Wanimbo said that there were currently 4862 displaced people accommodated in six districts in Puncak, not including the displaced people from Paluga village and Tegelobak village.

    “They don’t build a tent, the community let the displaced people stay in their homes. No health services for these displaced people,” he said.

    Food aid limited
    “They got food aid from the local government once, but mostly it was from the church, parliament members, and the people,” he said.

    Responding to the WPCC updates on the latest conditions in West Papua, WCC director of International Affairs Peter Prove said that the WCC had held a bilateral meeting in Geneva with the Indonesian government and other diplomats in a hope to bring the Papuan issue to light.

    They were especially trying to address the internally displaced people in West Papua and pushing for humanitarian actors to be allowed to enter the region.

    “I have also talked to the UN Special Adviser that West Papua has a high risk for genocide,” he said.

    Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • NZ should raise human plight of West Papuans at UN, says author

    RNZ Pacific

    A New Zealand explorer who trekked in West Papua before Indonesian rule says he is saddened to see what colonisation has done to the region’s indigenous people.

    Philip Temple, who is also a renowned author, was part of a small group who made the first recorded ascent of the Carstensz Pyramid in West Papua in 1962 before Dutch colonial rule ended.

    “The Dutch had already given [West Papua] its own flag and all that sort of thing. And in fact when we made the first ascent of the Carstenz Pyramid, that was the flag we took to the top,” he said.

    “It was a West Papuan flag that made it to the top, not an Indonesian flag.”

    Temple said it was sad to see ongoing human rights violations against West Papuans, and their marginalisation in their own homeland due to transmigration of settlers from other, heavily populated parts of Indonesia.

    Dani tribesmen with Philip Temple
    A member of the Dani tribe hangs on to Philip Temple for balance as he embarks on the first Yehlimeh trek. Image: Heinrich Harrer/RNZ

    He also cited the violence and displacement suffered by the indigenous people of Papua’s highlands due to ongoing conflict between Indonesian security forces and pro-independence fighters.

    This was the remote interior region where Temple explored six decades ago. Today it is also a resource-rich region where the one of the world’s largest gold mines, Grasberg, operated by US company Freeport McMoran, has been in operation since Indonesian administration began, producing major revenue for the state while devastating the environment.

    Papua example of modern colonisation
    What has happened to the territory, according to Temple, is another example of modern colonisation.

    “There’s quite a thing going on in New Zealand at the moment about the effects of colonisation, and yet not that far away in the geopolitical sphere, it’s happening right now,” he said.

    “What is really distressing for me is that the Dani people, who I got to know pretty well, they’ve been completely taken over by Indonesian settlers, especially in the Grand Valley, the Baliem, and they’re now treated as kind of curiosities by Indonesian visitors and so on.

    “It’s the same kind of thing that happened to Māori at the end of the 19th century.”

    Temple said that the New Zealand government’s reluctance to upset Indonesia by pushing for a resolution of the conflict in West Papua is at odds with its obligations to support the rights of indigenous Pacific peoples.

    He said there was a lot that New Zealand could do, including raising the issue at the United Nations level, and also review defence ties it has with Indonesia, as well as military exports to Indonesia.

    Descending to Mangaleme in the Toli Valley, Papua
    Descending to Mangaleme in the Toli Valley in Papua. Image: Philip Temple/RNZ

    NZ ‘closely monitors’ West Papua
    A spokesperson from New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it continued to closely monitor developments in Papua.

    “For example, earlier this year the New Zealand Ambassador met virtually with local government and civil society leaders in Papua,” he said.

    “We support the PIF (Pacific Islands Forum) Leaders’ call for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to be permitted to visit Papua, in a manner that is safe and consistent with covid-19 restrictions.

    “New Zealand recognises Papua as part of Indonesia’s sovereign territory. We encourage Indonesia to continue with its efforts to deliver on the goals and principles underpinning special autonomy for the benefit of all Papuans, including its recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples in Papua.

    “New Zealand continues to encourage Indonesia to promote and protect the human rights of all its citizens. We take appropriate opportunities to raise concerns with the Indonesian government.”

    Temple has written dozens of books, including The Last True Explorer: Into Darkest New Guinea, published by Godwit in 2002, which details his exporations of unmapped swathes of central New Guinea Highlands.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Haiti’s White Rulers Have Spoken On Haiti’s Political Future

    The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) condemns the arrogance and illegality of United Nations Special Envoy for Haiti Helen La Lime’s July 8 statement that Haitian Prime Minister Claude Joseph will be the new president, just one day after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

    The post Haiti’s White Rulers Have Spoken On Haiti’s Political Future appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Why Human Rights in China and Tigray but Not in Haiti, Palestine, or Colombia?

    U.S. President Joe Biden and the Democrats have been playing the “Black Lives Matter” tune on their fiddle. Biden even raised the issue of Black Lives Matter during his presidential campaign. But, just days after Biden was sworn into office, his administration lent support for the Haitian dictator, Jovenel Moïse, who stayed in office past his term to the dismay of the Haitian people, who flooded the streets in protest.

    Now, Moïse is dead and the United Nations has decided who will be the new president of Haiti. We see the racist irony. The people of Haiti have not been allowed to weigh in. The white rulers have made their decision, as the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) stated in its July 9 press release.

    And while the director of Colombia’s National Intelligence Agency and the director of its national police’s Intelligence Division are in Haiti to investigate the role of Colombia in the assassination, those agencies have not launched investigations into police forces and paramilitary elements involved in the recent killings of peaceful protesters in Colombia, a client state of the United States.

    Accepting the recommendation from the United Nations Special Envoy for Haiti that contested Prime Minister Claude Joseph would be the new president is the ultimate in Western arrogance. The white West is continuing its white-supremacist narrative that the predominately African/Black population of Haiti cannot govern itself. What is really going on is the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination is working through the “Core Group” to ensure Haiti remains subordinate to its interests. The United States remains in the lead of that axis.

    That is why we say Biden and Democrats could care less about Black lives.

    In fact, Biden was quoted in 1994 as saying, “If Haiti just quietly sunk into the Caribbean or rose up 300 feet, it wouldn’t matter a whole lot in terms of our interest.”

    Is this the man and are Democrats the people Africans and other colonized people around the world are supposed to trust with our lives?

    No, they are committed to one thing: The perpetuation of the pan-European colonial-capitalist project that has been underway for more than 500 years. That ideological foundation explains why they do not believe in the inherent dignity of all human beings. Hence, the double standard in place: The pretense of democracy and the rule of law for them and colonial fascism for the nations and peoples of the global South.

    This is why the white West’s deployment of “humanitarian intervention” because of the “Responsibility to Protect” is so cynical. The West is responsible for the barbaric treatment and conditions colonized peoples have faced for centuries. The U.S. ruling class has shown nothing but contempt for the lives of workers inside its borders and for the millions worldwide who live in abject poverty as a result of the global U.S.-dominated capitalist-imperialist system.

    Why the concern about Muslims in China while Biden and Democrats greenlight Israel’s war crimes against predominately Muslim Palestinians?

    Whenever the United States raises humanitarian issues—be it in the Horn of Africa or in China—we know it can only mean one thing: The United States has strategic interests that have nothing to do with the humanity of the people they pretend to care about.

    That is why BAP will continue to tell the truth, no matter the consequences.

    The post Why Human Rights in China and Tigray but Not in Haiti, Palestine, or Colombia? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Launch Of The ‘Group Of Friends In Defense Of The Charter Of The United Nations’

    We, representatives of Algeria, Angola, Belarus, Bolivia, Cambodia, China, Cuba, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Nicaragua, the State of Palestine, Russia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Syria, and Venezuela to the United Nations, are pleased to announce the official launch and establishment of the “Group of Friends in Defense of the Charter of the United Nations”.

    The post Launch Of The ‘Group Of Friends In Defense Of The Charter Of The United Nations’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • July & August 2021 Deadlines – Calls for Inputs by UN Human Rights Mechanisms

    The following UN Human Rights Mechanisms have issued calls for inputs with deadlines in July and August 2021 and law professors whose practice, research, and/or scholarship touches on these topics may be interested in submission: Special Rapporteur on racial discrimination…

    This post was originally published on Human Rights at Home Blog.

  • CPJ joins letter to UN and AU rapporteurs expressing concern about free expression in Zimbabwe

    The Committee to Protect Journalists yesterday joined the Southern African Human Rights Defenders Network, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights groups in an open letter to six special rapporteurs at the UN and African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, expressing concern about the targeting of journalists and human rights defenders in Zimbabwe.

    The organizations note that Zimbabwe authorities arrested freelance journalist Hopewell Chin’ono and New York Times correspondent Jeffrey Moyo in the first half of 2021 alone, and said they were particularly concerned that the arrests and charges against journalists and human rights defenders were politically motivated and violated their human rights, including their personal liberty and freedom of expression.

    The letter said that the groups were encouraged by a January statement by Jamesina King, the African Union’s special rapporteur for freedom of expression and access to information, expressing concern about Chin’ono’s arrest, and the organizations urged the UN and AU special rapporteurs to follow through on that statement in light of the significant escalation in harassment since then.

    The groups also expressed concern about the proposed Patriotic Bill, a piece of legislation that seeks to prohibit public messages on international platforms or to foreign governments that the Zimbabwe government deems harmful to its image. The letter stated that, if passed, that law would be another vehicle to target dissidents, human rights defenders, and journalists.

    The letter can be read in full here.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • CPJ joins letter to UN and AU rapporteurs expressing concern about free expression in Zimbabwe

    The Committee to Protect Journalists yesterday joined the Southern African Human Rights Defenders Network, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights groups in an open letter to six special rapporteurs at the UN and African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, expressing concern about the targeting of journalists and human rights defenders in Zimbabwe.

    The organizations note that Zimbabwe authorities arrested freelance journalist Hopewell Chin’ono and New York Times correspondent Jeffrey Moyo in the first half of 2021 alone, and said they were particularly concerned that the arrests and charges against journalists and human rights defenders were politically motivated and violated their human rights, including their personal liberty and freedom of expression.

    The letter said that the groups were encouraged by a January statement by Jamesina King, the African Union’s special rapporteur for freedom of expression and access to information, expressing concern about Chin’ono’s arrest, and the organizations urged the UN and AU special rapporteurs to follow through on that statement in light of the significant escalation in harassment since then.

    The groups also expressed concern about the proposed Patriotic Bill, a piece of legislation that seeks to prohibit public messages on international platforms or to foreign governments that the Zimbabwe government deems harmful to its image. The letter stated that, if passed, that law would be another vehicle to target dissidents, human rights defenders, and journalists.

    The letter can be read in full here.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Separatist or radically inclusive? What NZ’s He Puapua report really says about the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

    ANALYSIS: By Dominic O’Sullivan, Charles Sturt University

    For many New Zealanders, He Puapua came shrouded in controversy from the moment it became public knowledge earlier this year.

    Released only when opposition parties learned of its existence, the report on “realising” the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was labelled a “separatist” plan by National Party leader Judith Collins.

    “Quite clearly there is a plan,” Collins said, “it is being implemented, and we are going to call it out.”

    But He Puapua is not a plan and it’s not government policy. It’s a collection of ideas drafted by people who are not members of the government. To understand its real significance we need to examine how and why it was commissioned in the first place.

    Self-determination for all
    He Puapua’s origins can be traced back to 2007 when the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, confirming the human rights affirmed in all previous international declarations, covenants and agreements belonged to Indigenous peoples as much as anybody else.

    It confirmed the right to self-determination belongs to everybody. Thus, in Aotearoa New Zealand, Pakeha have the right to self-determination, and so do Māori.

    At the time, 143 UN member states voted for the declaration, including the major European colonial powers of Britain, Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands.

    There were 11 abstentions, but four states voted against — Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. They were especially concerned about the scope of Article 28(2) which deals with compensation for confiscated or other dishonestly acquired land:

    Unless otherwise freely agreed upon by the peoples concerned, compensation shall take the form of lands, territories and resources equal in quality, size and legal status or of monetary compensation or other appropriate redress.

    The He Puapua report
    The He Puapua report. Image: OIA

    New Zealand was worried this article would justify returning much more Māori land than was already occurring under te Tiriti o Waitangi (Treaty of Waitangi) settlements.

    Future aspirations
    However, the phrase “other appropriate redress” is open to less restrictive interpretation. In 2010, the National-led government decided the declaration did not threaten freehold private property rights. Then Prime Minister John Key argued:

    While the declaration is non-binding, it both affirms accepted rights and establishes future aspirations. My objective is to build better relationships between Māori and the Crown, and I believe that supporting the declaration is a small but significant step in that direction.

    Australia, Canada and the United States also changed their positions. In 2019, New Zealand’s Labour-led government established a working group to advise on developing a plan for achieving the aims of the UN declaration. These aims are not just concerned with land rights, but also with things like health, education, economic growth, broadcasting, criminal justice and political participation.

    Not government policy
    He Puapua, the group’s report, was provided to the government in 2019. However, the government didn’t accept a recommendation that the report be promptly released for public discussion.

    According to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, this was due to the risk it could be “misconstrued” as government policy.

    Nevertheless, it has now been released and the government appears to have accepted the recommendation that Māori should be actively involved in drafting a plan.

    Collins also objected to the report’s description of this involvement as “co-design”. What she can’t say, however, is that including people in policy making is separatist. Inclusion is an essential democratic practice.

    He Puapua also uses co-design to describe Māori involvement in the delivery of social services and the protection of the natural environment. This involvement isn’t new, but He Puapua says it should be strengthened.

    And while there may be arguments against this kind of inclusivity (for example, co-design is a weaker authority than the rangatiratanga affirmed in te Tiriti), calling it separatist is an error of fact.

    Securing rangatiratanga
    Rangatiratanga describes an independent political authority and is consistent with international human rights norms. It has gradually influenced public administration in New Zealand under successive governments over more than 40 years.

    He Puapua says there are human rights arguments for strengthening and securing rangatiratanga.

    In fact, the UN declaration may help clarify how independent authority might work in practice, especially in the context of the Crown’s right to govern — which the declaration also affirms.

    Separatism versus sameness
    He Puapua’s potentially most controversial idea involves creating “a senate or upper house in Parliament that could scrutinise legislation for compliance with te Tiriti and/or the Declaration”.

    There are reasons to think this won’t get far. The government has already rejected it, and the idea was raised in just one paragraph of a 106-page report. But its inclusive intent shows why “separatism versus sameness” is the wrong way to frame the debate.

    What it means to ensure all, and not just some, people may exercise the right to self-determination requires deeper thought. In that sense, He Puapua might usefully be read in conjunction with British Columbia’s draft action plan on the UN declaration.

    Released only last month for public consultation, the plan coincided with the Canadian federal parliament passing legislation committing to implement the declaration. The British Columbian plan addressed four themes:

    • self-determination and inherent right of self-government
    • title and rights of Indigenous peoples
    • ending Indigenous-specific racism and discrimination
    • social, cultural and economic well-being.

    He Puapua in practice
    Some of the plan’s specific measures are not relevant to New Zealand and some may be contested. But its important general principles draw out some of the basic attributes of liberal inclusivity.

    Those include ensuring people can live according to their own values, manage their own resources, participate in public life free of racism and discrimination, and define for themselves what it means to enjoy social, cultural and economic well-being.

    British Columbia’s far-reaching proposals can inform New Zealand’s debate about what He Puapua’s proposals might mean in practice.

    'We Are All Here To Stay' cover,'
    ‘We Are All Here To Stay,’ by Dominic O’Sullivan. Image: APR

    As I try to show in my book ‘We Are All Here to Stay’: citizenship, sovereignty and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, there are ways state authority can be arranged to reject the colonial assumption that some people are less worthy of the right to self-determination than others.

    This requires radical inclusivity.The Conversation

    Dr Dominic O’Sullivan, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology and Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Malawi Pride and press freedoms in Palestine: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

    A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Chile to Cambodia

    Continue reading…

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

  • Biden Starts to Hit Stride on Asylum Protections

    World Refugee Day (June 20) marked six months of the Biden Administration.  In that time, The Advocates and other organizations have been extremely disappointed with the President’s failure to deliver on promises for swift and bold action on immigration and human rights.  While we celebrated the first days of Administration with executive orders ending the Muslim and African Bans, laying-out plans for asylum protections, stopping harmful Trump-era regulations, pausing funding for the Border Wall, and sending comprehensive immigration reform to Congress, enthusiasm had given way to concerns as months passed with the Biden Administration failing to take decisive action, continuing the status quo, and waffling on crucial rights issues.   

    Yet, almost as if it’s awoken and decided to meet the moment, there have recently been some  exciting actions on immigration from President Biden.  The Advocates views these steps as crucial, positive, and exciting, but remains cautions that the Administration must maintain its commitment, energy and resolve in not only undoing harmful Trump-era immigration policy but leading bold and visionary change that eschews political decisions to ensure our immigration system is safe, orderly, transparent, just and protects the dignity and rights of all people.   

    The changes The Administration has recently announced  include:   

    1. Vacating harmful and illegal Attorney General decisions on asylum issued under the Trump Administration to dismantle protections for victims of gender-based, family and gang violence. 

    Attorney General Garland announced on June 16 that the Department of Justice would vacate several Trump-era decisions that resulted in the denial of thousands of claims.  Attorney General Sessions and Attorney General Barr referred the cases of Matter of A- B- and Matter of L- E- A- to themselves.  Not only is such a move by an Attorney General highly unusual, but the move made it nearly impossible for an asylum seeker to prevail on fears of persecution based on gender and family violence (Matter of A- B-) or gang violence targeted at family members (Matter of L- E- A-).  This, despite the fact that international law is clear that such claims can be sufficient to trigger obligations against removal under the Refugee Convention to which the U.S. is a party.   

    Immigration advocacy groups, including The Advocates, have been calling for the Biden Administration to vacate these decisions as well as Matter of A- C- A- A- for months, including in a recent letter signed by more than 300 organizations.  The Attorney General’s announcement, therefore, is a welcome step toward bringing U.S. asylum law in-line with international obligations and best practices.  Yet, more remains to be done not just to undo the harms of the Trump Administration but to more wholistically reform the asylum system to meet international standards and ensure protections are not eroded in the future.  The Advocates will be continuing our work to advocate for Congressional reform as well as regulations from President Biden to this effect.          

    1. Plans for a regulation  on asylum processing  

    The Advocates supports the plan to allow asylum seekers who present themselves at the U.S. border or ports and show a credible fear of persecution or torture to process their claims with the U.S. Asylum Office instead of going through immigration court. Under the current system, people presenting themselves at U.S. ports of entry (such as the border) to seek asylum must present their case in immigration court upon a showing of a credible fear of persecution.  This, despite the fact that immigration courts are facing years-long backlogs and also present an adversarial system that is inappropriate for vulnerable and trauma-impacted people.  The proposed change would increase efficiency and uphold our commitment to protecting the rights of asylum seekers. The Advocates is awaiting the text of this regulation and hopes that it reflects the newer, bolder vision the Administration has hinted.  We will look forward to submitting comments on the proposed rule. 

    1. Plans for a regulation on Particular Social Groups in asylum applications 

    The Advocates welcomes plans for rulemaking that would clarify and codify the proper standard for asylum claims based on Particular Social Group (PSG).  Under the UN Refugee Convention, parties such as the U.S. must provide asylum protections to people who have a well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of their membership in a PSG.  The drafters purposely left definition of PSG undefined in recognition of the fact that the ways in which humans do harm to each other is always evolving and must be left vague so as not to foreclose valid claims in the future.  The U.S. has long used the Matter of Acosta standard, which broadly defined PSG as members sharing a characteristic that a person either cannot change or should not have to change.  Yet, under the Trump Administration, we saw attempts to severely narrow these protections—something they were able to do because of the lack of controlling guidance in legislation or precedent codifying Acosta at a higher level.  A regulatory action that codifies this standard would protect bona fide claims while increasing administrative efficiency by ensuring immigration judges and asylum officers are not left to ping pong between standards with each change of administration.  

    The Advocates further calls for ensuring that any such regulation specifically include gender-based and sex-based claims as meeting the PSG definition.  The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Guidelines on implementation and interpretation of the Refugee Convention is clear that persecution on account of someone’s gender (such as domestic violence, Female Genital Mutilation, and more) falls within the Convention’s protections.  Yet, the Trump Administration attempted to erode and foreclose those protections through the Attorneys General decisions in a number of appealed cases—decisions that must be overruled and clarified through regulation to keep US law in-line with international standards and our obligations.   

    1. Plans for regulations rescinding or modifying numerous Trump-era regulations that sought to gut asylum protections and due process in immigration proceedings 

    The Advocates welcomes the plan to rescind or modify numerous harmful Trump-era regulations on immigration.  In 2020 alone, the Administration issued more than 20 proposed regulations, which is hastily finalized before leaving office, aimed at eroding immigrant rights, and asylum in particular.  The Advocates fought against these actions by submitting extensive comments in opposition to the changes.  And, the courts agreed with the challenges, issuing injunctions in litigation brought by other groups on nearly every regulation finalized.   

    The Biden Administration must rescind these regulations to both uphold court findings on the illegality of the rules and to ensure US law meets international standards.  Further, however, The Advocates believes the Biden Administration must work to not only restore protections in U.S. law, but to push beyond them.  U.S. immigration law is outdated, unjust, and harmful.  Rooted in old concepts of nationalism and exclusion, rather than human rights and a globalized world, U.S. immigration law creates harsh lines and bars that do not allow people to move with dignity.  The law also harshly intertwines the immigration system and criminal justice systems, barring immigration options for criminal issues, including even where there is no conviction.  The Biden Administration—and the 117th Congress—have an opportunity to take bold steps on immigration reform to ensure our system fits the realities of the 21st century, adequately protects human rights in-line with our international treaty obligations and US law, and build a robust immigration system that reflects the benefits of safe, orderly and clear migration.    

    1. Plans for regulations to comprehensively address asylum  

    We look forward to seeing President Biden issue a broad, visionary and protective regulation making important changes to further—not narrow—asylum.  This is anticipated in late 2021 or early 2022.  The Advocates will be vigorously advocating to ensure any comprehensive regulation meets or exceeds international standards.   

    1. An announcement on plans for cancelling and revising use of Border Wall funding 

    President Biden issued a plan to cancel any border wall projects that involved diverted funds; end expansion to the extent permitted by law; and address safety and environmental issues resulting from construction under the Trump Administration.  Instead, it plans to use funds to address root causes of migration from Central America ($861 million), support the immigration courts and US Citizenship and Immigration Services to more fairly and effectively run ($345 million), and advance modern solutions for border management ($1.2 billion). 

    While we welcome these changes, we caution the Administration not to use these funds as an excuse to expand surveillance and harmful technologies.  The Administration has stated that it “calls on Congress to cancel any border barrier funds that remain at the end of the year so that these resources can instead be used for modern, privacy-protective, and effective border management measures like enhanced technology between points of entry and improved infrastructure at Land Ports of Entry.”  We welcome the recognition that technological approaches to border security must be “privacy-protective,” but remain concern about the proliferation of technology and enhanced surveillance in President Biden’s immigration policies.  Rather than taking a more humane and logical approach to immigration and border security, which recognizes the nature of human movement, Biden appears to be replacing the Trump-era physical barriers with technological ones.  While the Biden Administration’s more inclusive and human rights-based rhetoric is welcome, these efforts threaten to sidestep human rights around privacy, present continued barriers to meaningful access to asylum, and raise equity issues given the overwhelmingly negative impact of surveillance on BIPOC communities who are victim to technology’s failure to distinguish certain races.   

     The Advocates has also welcomed the Administration’s moves on protections for victims of crimes as well as some steps toward reducing detention and restoring immigration judicial independence.  In the past few months, President Biden issued new policies restoring Prosecutorial Discretion by DHS attorneys to dismiss, decline to prosecute, or agree to terminate certain cases in immigration proceedings.  This is welcome news as many of The Advocates clients will benefit from these actions which will allow trafficking victims and immigrant youth who have experienced abuse, abandonment or neglect—among others—time to pursue protections outside of immigration court.  Earlier, we also welcomed news that the Administration would revoke the harmful Trump-era policy of sending people to immigration court who were denied immigration benefit applications.  In addition, the new Enforcement Priorities memo should reduce backlog in immigration courts, decrease the number of people detained, and conserve government resources by targeting a narrower group of people for immigration enforcement rather than the broad groups of undocumented people sought after under President Trump.   

    While these moves and others signal intentions from President Biden to take a more humane and logical approach to migration, The Advocates is concerned about the effect in practice.  We continue to see people held in detention despite the guidance against such.  While the new prosecutorial discretion memo should help many of our clients, it may take time for the local actors to implement it without clear directives from the Administration.  And, despite the many positive actions promised on asylum and victim’s protections, we remain concerned about the expulsions under Title 42 and strong rhetoric against seeking asylum coming from the Biden Administration as it appears to remain concerned about political expediencies. 

    The Advocates has worked on immigration policy for nearly 40 years.  We fought vigorously against the harmful policies of the Trump Administration, and looked forward to the Biden Administration delivering on promises around immigration and human rights.  Yet, the first six months have been a very slow start, raising concerns about the fulfillment of those promises and any likelihood of visionary action.  The announcements last week do present some glimmers that President Biden may meet the moment, eschew political gamesmanship, and do the right thing on immigration.   

    By Lindsey Greising, Staff Attorney with The Advocates for Human Rights 

    This post was originally published on The Advocates Post.

  • Pacific civil society groups slam ‘naked hijack’ fast-track seabed mining bid

    Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

    Pacific regional civil society groups claim that DeepGreen, a venture capitalist company, has started “the clock ticking” with little regard for potential wide-ranging environmental damage from seabed mining in two years’ time.

    An aggressive push by any industry player to fast-track the conclusion of seven years of ongoing global negotiations on the mining code was a “naked attempt to hijack and undermine” a process seeking stringent standards and regulations for the extremely risky activity, the groups say.

    The company is the real beneficiary of the Nauru government’s decision to trigger the start of a process which could lead to potential widespread seabed mining, said the Pacific Civil Society Organisations Collective (CSOC) today in a statement.

    The trigger, a clause within a 1994 Agreement on implementing Part XI of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) allows sponsor states such as Nauru to jump-start the mining process, by invoking a rule that sets a deadline for finalising and adopting of globally negotiated mining laws and regulations.

    In the event that the global community failed to agree to mining laws and regulations, DeepGreen or its Nauru subsidiary NORI could proceed to mine based on work plans submitted.

    “The Pacific Blue Line collective recognises that under the Sponsorship Agreement, Nauru believes it is required, pursuant to Clause 2.1, to ‘do all things reasonably necessary to give effect to DeepGreen and its subsidiary having the full benefits of the sponsorship’.

    “This would include pulling the trigger to ensure full benefits of the sponsorship,” the statement said.

    Sovereign decision
    “The decision to start the two-year clock ticking is a sovereign decision. However, the Pacific collective believes the Nauru government has been persuaded by DeepGreen to take this action on the pretext that the urgency of the climate crisis demands the commencement of mining in two years, without regard for the potentially wide-ranging environmental damage arising from deep sea mining (DSM).

    “The damage could see the Nauru government, future administrations, and Nauruan people face liability for environmental consequences that cannot be foreseen or appreciated at this stage.”

    The collective said that last week in media interviews pushing for a rapid opening of the seabed through pulling a trigger, DeepGreen had dismissed the increasing scientific knowledge about the deep sea and its biodiversity, as well as the risks to ocean health from seabed mining.

    “In the same week, over 300 scientists voiced their support for a moratorium on DSM. Prior to this, major brands BMW Group, Google, Volvo Group and Samsung SDI signed a pledge not to source deep seabed minerals.

    “The European Parliament also called for a moratorium on DSM. Here in the Pacific, the collective has called for a total ban on DSM.”

    The collective said that in the Pacific, “one of the major concerns is the impact of mining upon coastal communities”.

    “Deep seabed mining would likely cause massive sediment plumes that could affect crucial tuna and other fish stocks, thus further destabilising livelihoods for hundreds of thousands of ocean dependent people and communities,” the collective said.

    Mounting pressure
    “The Pacific Ocean is already under mounting pressure from human activities and the impacts of climate change, and there is substantial evidence that we need to now be embarking on an era of restoration, not further reckless exploitation.

    “Those who are swayed by the false promise that deep seabed mining is a ‘green’ and attractive investment proposition need to think again and listen to the science. It is simply not the case.

    “Based on the best scientific knowledge available, scientists predict deep sea mining will cause irreversible harm to the environment, including to species, habitats, ecosystems and critical ecosystem functions and services.”

    While the economic gains promised by DeepGreen and other potential investors remained highly speculative and unsubstantiated there was real danger of a domino effect occurring, in which other states would follow Nauru’s lead, with potential Oceania-wide impacts on the people, nature and economies of the region.

    Signatories to the civil society collective statement include the Pacific Conference of Churches, Pacific Islands Association of NGOs, and the Pacific Network on Globalisation.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Do not let the Murugappan family be deported to danger

    The federal government insists that the Murugappan family can be safely returned to Sri Lanka and that they do not meet the refugee criteria. Janet Parker takes a look at the adverse security situation for Tamils.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • UN calls for end of ‘impunity’ for police violence against black people

    Report launched in aftermath of George Floyd murder cites example of 2018 death of Kevin Clarke in UK

    A UN report that analysed racial justice in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd has called on member states including the UK to end the “impunity” enjoyed by police officers who violate the human rights of black people.

    The UN human rights office analysis of 190 deaths across the world led to the report’s damning conclusion that law enforcement officers are rarely held accountable for killing black people due in part to deficient investigations and an unwillingness to acknowledge the impact of structural racism.

    Continue reading…

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

  • Weaponizing Science In Global Food Policy

    Santa Cruz, CA – In July, the United Nations will convene “Science Days”, a high-profile event in preparation for the UN Food Systems Summit later this year. Over the course of two days, the world will be treated to a parade of Zoom sessions aimed at “highlighting the centrality of science, technology and innovation for food systems transformation.”

    Nobody disputes the need for urgent action to transform the food system. But the UNFSS has been criticized by human rights experts for its top-down and non-transparent organization. Indigenous peoples, peasants, and civil society groups around the world know their hard-won rights are under attack. Many are protesting the summit’s legitimacy and organizing counter-mobilizations.

    The post Weaponizing Science In Global Food Policy appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Despite global opposition, the US stays adamant on Cuban embargo

    The United Nations (UN) General Assembly has voted on a motion to condemn the decades-long US embargo against Cuba. The vast majority of the world’s nations supported the resolution. But two countries voted against it. It will come as a surprise to no one which two countries they are.

    Overwhelming support in General Assembly…

    On 23 June, a UN resolution on the “necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba” passed the body’s General Assembly. 184 member nations were in favor. Members have voted on the motion every year since 1992, with the exception of 2020 owing to the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. In every one of those years, the resolution has passed the assembly with a majority in support.

    Usually there are only a handful of countries that oppose it, and this year was no different. Only the US and Israel voted against the measure, while Colombia, Brazil, and Ukraine abstained. This follows a long pattern of the world’s sole remaining superpower, along with its proxy state in the Middle East, opposing the motion. In 2018, the US and Israel were again the sole countries voting against it. The following year, Brazil’s far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro joined them in opposition.

    …but thwarted by US Security Council veto

    Despite almost three decades of majority votes in support of the motion, however, the resolution has never been formally adopted. This is because, as a permanent member of the UN security council, the US has veto power. It has consistently used this power to unilaterally overrule the measure. In addition to thwarting the will of the vast majority of the world’s nations, the US also has a huge conflict of interest. Because it’s the US itself that imposes the embargo in the first place.

    It first did so in the 1960s following the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista‘s dictatorship in 1959. Batista was a ruthless autocrat with a long record of human rights abuses, corruption, and crushing dissent. But Washington had long supported him because of his obedience to US power. With more and more restrictive measures being added, the embargo has ultimately morphed into a full-blown economic blockade. According to UN figures, it’s cost the Cuban economy around $130bn throughout the decades. The Washington-based NGO Center for International Policy, meanwhile, has said that the embargo has “created a situation of scarcity and uncertainty that has affected all aspects of Cuban society”.

    Bogus human rights concerns, flagrant hypocrisy

    Successive administrations in Washington have claimed that the embargo is predicated on human rights concerns and deficits in democracy in Cuba. The reality, however, is that it was imposed in revenge for Cuba threatening US economic interests. The revolutionary government of Fidel Castro committed what for Washington is the cardinal sin: nationalizing US-owned enterprises. Moreover, the US’s double standards are transparent when you consider the wider context. Not only has Washington not issued any punitive measures whatsoever against states with much worse records on human rights and democracy (such as Saudi Arabia), but it has rewarded them so long as they serve US interests.

    And in a cruel irony, the embargo has itself become a major human rights violation. Mainstream human rights organizations and regional institutions have condemned its effects on Cuba’s civilian population. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, for example, has stated that “the economic sanctions have an impact on the Cuban people’s human rights, and therefore urges that the embargo be lifted”.

    As The Canary has previously reported, US sanctions very rarely harm their stated targets in government. But rather they harm the general population, and especially those who are worst off. Amnesty International has pointed specifically to “the negative impact of the embargo on the economic and social rights of the Cuban population, affecting in particular the most vulnerable sectors of society”. And what’s worse, US sanctions end up not only causing great harm but failing even on their own narrow terms. Obviously, the embargo hasn’t succeeded in its purported goal of bringing about ‘regime change’ in Cuba. (Not that the US has either the credibility or the right to impose its preferred government on another country, of course.)

    US isolation continues under Biden

    This latest UN vote again highlights the US’s isolation on the world stage when it comes to this issue. In addition to being on the losing side of the vote, the US had also been one of the only countries to not have diplomatic relations with Cuba until 2014. In that year, the administration of then-president Barack Obama initiated a ‘normalization’ process that re-established diplomatic relations but kept the embargo in place. His successor, Donald Trump, rolled back many of these reforms. This was in part to curry favor with the Cuban-American exile community and its political representatives. The majority of this population lives in Florida. And due to its status as swing state, this constituency forms a crucial voting bloc in presidential elections.

    High hopes were pinned on Joe Biden’s incoming administration to take things back to the Obama era, or perhaps even drop the embargo altogether. However, so far Biden has left the Trump era policies intact. And, worse still, his press secretary has said that “a Cuba policy shift is not currently among [his] top priorities”. This should come as no great surprise, however. As The Canary has argued on many occasions, when it comes to foreign policy, the US essentially has two right-wing major parties. And both parties uphold the US’s system of global coercion. Indeed, it was under Democrat Bill Clinton’s administration that the embargo’s major provisions were codified into the Helms-Burton Act.

    Clearly, the US’s inflexibility on this issue is a function of this wider reality of its bipartisan neo-imperialist consensus. As laudable as the UN vote is, therefore, it’s clearly not enough to force the US’s hand to lift sanctions. Action at the UN must go alongside the mobilization of mass solidarity movements, pressuring other governments to openly defy the US’s destructive policy toward Cuba.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons – Wilfried Huss and Wikimedia Commons – Brian Snelson

    By Peter Bolton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.