Proposal is attempt to find compromise on issue after two rejections in Commons
The government’s marathon resistance to giving the UK judiciary any role in determining if a country is committing genocide has suffered a fresh blow after peers voted to set up an ad hoc five-strong parliamentary judicial committee to assess evidence of genocide crimes. The peers voted in favour by a majority of 367 to 214, a majority of 153.
It is the third time peers have voted for the measure in various forms and Tory whips will have to face down a third rebellion on the issue when the trade bill returns to the Commons. The judicial but parliamentary genocide assessment would be made if the government was planning to sign a new trade or economic agreement and would be most relevant to claims that China is committing genocide against the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province.
In advance of the Biennial High-level Discussion on the Question of the Death Penalty during the upcoming 46th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, The Advocates and partners submitted a joint written statement refuting the idea that the death penalty deters crime. The panel discussion at the United Nations, which takes place tomorrow (February 23, 2021) aims to expose human rights violations related to the application of the death penalty and discuss whether the death penalty is effective in deterring crime. The Federation internationale de l’action des chretiens pour l’abolition de la torture (FIACAT) will give the joint oral statement related to the lack of deterrent effect of the death penalty on behalf of the coalition that submitted the written statement.
Proponents of the death penalty commonly justify capital punishment by claiming it is a stronger deterrent of crime compared to other punishments such as life imprisonment. This argument is based on a theory of choice in which potential offenders weigh the consequences of their actions before they commit a crime. Within this framework, a potential offender would think twice before committing a crime for fear of possible execution.
Research on the death penalty as a deterrent tells a different story. The United States National Research Council (NRC) identified two key deficiencies in existing studies on the topic. First, though non-capital punishments like life imprisonment are more commonly available than the death penalty in the United States, researchers do not measure the likelihood that someone will be apprehended and charged with a punishment other than the death penalty. This omission is important because research has correlated fear of apprehension with deterrence of crime. Thus, existing studies do not determine whether the death penalty uniquely deters crime. Second, existing studies do not assess potential offenders’ perception of the risk of execution before they commit a crime because those perceptions are subjective and difficult to measure precisely. These studies, therefore, fail to gather precise data on the crux of the argument for the death penalty: that a would-be criminal carefully calculates the risks of committing a crime based on his perception of the consequences.
Some data gathered in the United States correlate the abolition of the death penalty with decreased crime rates. For instance, state-level data consistently show lower murder rates in states that have abolished the death penalty compared to states where the death penalty is available. The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) conducted another analysis of murder rates in the United States between 1987 and 2015, finding states that had abolished the death penalty saw lower murder rates of law enforcement officers. As The Advocates and its partners pointed out in their written statement, this analysis “exposes the unfortunate reality that the death penalty and justifications for it are more politically driven than factually supported.”
Research has also shown that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent for crimes other than murder, like crimes of violence against women. In fact, imposing the death penalty for rape can be more harmful to victims because it increases barriers to reporting and perpetuates a stereotypical perception of women. Read more about the death penalty and violence against women in our December blog post or watch our panel discussion on the death penalty for rape in Bangladesh to learn more.
The Advocates and our partners conclude in our written statement that effective law enforcement, rather than severe punishment, is more effective in preventing crime. We also offer five recommendations to countries that retain the death penalty, including: 1) Halt executions 2) Take immediate steps to establish de jure moratoriums on executions, and 3) Educate the public and policymakers about the research and evidence showing the death penalty does not deter crime.
The Advocates for Human Rights, Parliamentarians for Global Action, the International Federation of ACAT (Action by Christians for the Abolition of Torture), Reprieve, and the International Union of Lawyers will make a joint oral statement during the biennial discussion at the UN Human Rights Council on February 23, 2021. You can watch on UN Web Live TV, either live from 9-11am CET, or on demand.
By: Elizabeth Lacy, Program Associate for the International Justice and Women’s Human Rights Programs at The Advocates for Human Rights
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Civil war has drastically cut support services for women already at high risk of violence while displacing others who are now vulnerable to armed groups
Rima* was married the year civil war erupted in Yemen. She was 15 and for much of the time over the next five years, her husband kept her chained to a wall in their home in central Yemen. “He didn’t treat me as a wife, he treated me as a slave,” says the 21-year-old.
An aunt eventually took pity on Rima, taking her to a psychosocial support centre in the town of Turba, 90 miles (145km) north-west of Aden. According to a doctor there, Rima now suffers from a neurological disorder brought on by the constant beatings.
Exclusive: The ‘biggest international crisis in generations’ has rolled back years of progress and been used as a pretext to crackdown on freedoms, says António Guterres
The world is facing a “pandemic of human rights abuses”, the UN secretary general António Guterres has said.
Authoritarian regimes had imposed drastic curbs on rights and freedoms and had used the virus as a pretext to restrict free speech and stifle dissent.
Red Lines host Anya Parampil speaks with Alena Douhan, UN special rapporteur on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights, about her recent trip to Venezuela.
In her first interview since the publication of the preliminary findings of her mission to Venezuela, Professor Douhan discusses her main takeaways from the visit, her method for investigating, as well as the response to her report.
Alena Douhan is the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights. Douhan visited Venezuela on 1 February “to assess the impact of unilateral sanctions on the enjoyment of human rights by people living in Venezuela and any other affected people”.
On 12 February, Douhan published her preliminary findings based on “extensive consultations with a wide range of interlocutors”. The UN independent expert recognised the negative impact of coercive sanctions on human rights and urged European banks to “unfreeze assets of the Venezuela Central Bank”.
The Special Rapporteur of the United Nations (UN) on the effects of sanctions on human rights, Alena Douhan, held a press conference today before leaving Venezuela. Douhan detailed the impact of the United States’ unilateral coercive measures on the Venezuelan people.
Douhan reported that the unilateral “sanctions” violate International Law. The conclusion followed Douhan’s comprehensive report on damages caused by coercive measures implemented by Washington and its European partners against Venezuela, and specified that the final report will be presented to the UN in September 2021. Douhan urged the interlocutors to continue presenting additional material so that she can include them in her final report.
A group of Muslim families are launching a complaint to the UN Human Rights Committee (HRC) about Sri Lanka’s policy of enforced cremation of all those confirmed or suspected to have died with Covid, saying it breaches their religious rights and is causing “untold misery”.
The case seeking interim relief is being brought on behalf of the families by the Muslim Council of Great Britain and with the support of the British law firm Bindmans. It is alleged that the Sri Lankan government is enforcing hundreds of cremations despite international and Sri Lankan medical experts saying there is no evidence that Covid-19 is communicable from dead bodies.
The United States will seek to rejoin the United Nations Human Rights Council — as an observer nation, initially — according to a statement made on Monday by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“When it works well, the Human Rights Council shines a spotlight on countries with the worst human rights records and can serve as an important forum for those fighting injustice and tyranny,” Blinken said in announcing the decision.
The move comes almost two years after the Trump administration removed the U.S. from the council as both a voting and an observing member. The choice to do so, ostensibly to protest against the council’s actions that Trump officials had disagreed with, “did nothing to encourage meaningful change, but instead created a vacuum of U.S. leadership, which countries with authoritarian agendas have used to their advantage,” Blinken said.
There are 47 member countries on the UN Human Rights Council. No country can serve as a voting member of the council for more than two consecutive three-year terms.
The council has faced a number of criticisms in recent years, most notably for having among its members representatives from countries with notable records of human rights abuses themselves, including China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela and Eritrea. But while the Trump administration cited the membership of those nations as a partial reason for leaving the council, it is believed that the decision may have been largely prompted by the Trump White House’s desire to bolster diplomatic ties with Israel, which is widely viewed in the international community as a chronic violator of human rights. Biden’s decision to reenter the council will likely earn him the criticism of Republicans.
Former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, who served in that post when the U.S. left the council, justified the decision to leave at the time by saying the country’s commitment to the issue “does not allow us to remain a part of a hypocritical and self-serving organization that makes a mockery of human rights.”
Ironically, the administration’s departure from the council came about at the same time that the Trump White House was engaged in human rights abuses of its own — that of forcibly separating migrant children from families and placing them in cages as they came across the U.S.’s southern border. Thousands of families were ripped apart from one another as a result of the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy on immigration, and to this day more than 600 children remain separated from their loved ones.
Human rights groups have urged Japanese brewing giant Kirin, the multinational behind beer brands XXXX, Tooheys, Kirin, and Little Creatures, to cut ties with its Myanmar business operations, alleging its continued part-ownership of two military-linked breweries there makes it effectively complicit in war crimes committed by the military in Myanmar.
The company owns just over half of of both Myanmar Brewery and Mandalay Brewery in partnership with Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd (MEHL), a company controlled by the country’s military that a UN investigation has found is overseen by the commander-in-chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.
On January 22, 2021, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) became international law for the 122 states who signed the agreement in July 2017. Article 1a of TPNW states: “Each State Party undertakes never under any circumstances to… Develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.”
Initiated by a cross-regional group comprising Austria, Brazil, Ireland, Mexico, Nigeria and South Africa, the TPNW was approved by the United Nations General Assembly by a vote of 122-1. The treaty required that 50 signatory nations officially ratify it before it could become international law. That happened on October 24, 2020, when Honduras became the fiftieth country to do so. And then 90 days had to pass, which occurred on January 22.
Disregard for World Peace
The nuclear nine – the United States, Russia, China, the UK, France, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea – boycotted the vote. In October 2020, the US government circulated a letter asking those governments who signed the treaty to withdraw from it. The US ambassador to the United Nations in 2017 – Nikki Haley – said that the TPNW threatens the security of USA. She asked those governments who had joined TPNW: “do they really understand the threats that we have?”
The nuclear powers are in violation of the 50-year-old Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which requires them to negotiate to reduce and eventually eliminate all nuclear weapons. Instead, the nuclear powers are developing new nuclear weapons. The US is spending $494 billion over the next ten years, and more than $1.7 billion in the next 30 years to “upgrade” its arsenal of nuclear weapons. Powerful corporations will be making billions of dollars from the nuclear programs over the next decade.
The US has withdrawn from one nuclear weapons treaty after another. Whether it is the Iran nuclear deal, Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty or the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty – USA has tried its hardest to undermine the idea of a world free from nuclear weapons. The last bilateral nuclear weapons treaty between the US and Russia, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) concerning strategic nuclear forces, expires February 5, 2021.
As a US Senate condition for ratifying New START in 2010, the US administration carelessly initiated a multi-trillion-dollar nuclear weapons modernization program. Russia and China have responded with their own nuclear modernization programs. The new strategic arms are hypersonic – six times faster. Modernization also deploys more tactical nukes in conventional forces with the dangerous military doctrine of “escalate to de-escalate.”
The allies of nuclear-armed nations, including all NATO members, have also opposed TPNW. These powers lack nuclear weapons but are relieved that their guardians do. The notion of an “umbrella of extended nuclear deterrence” provides them comfort. For that reason Japan, despite advocating for the non-use and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons, has refused to endorse the weapons ban.
Nuclear Annihilation
In January 2020, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds to midnight – the closest it has ever been. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, founded by Albert Einstein and students from the University of Chicago in 1945, created the “Doomsday Clock” as a symbol to represent how close the world is to a possible apocalypse.
It is set annually by a panel of scientists, including 13 Nobel laureates, based on the threats that the world faced in that year. When it was first created in 1947, the hands of the clock were placed based on the threat posed by nuclear weapons. Over the years, they have included other threats, such as climate change and technologies like artificial intelligence.
As is evident from the Doomsday Clock, human civilization is moving closer toward possible destruction. One of things which can be done to avert such a scenario is for nuclear-armed nations to completely abolish nuclear weapons. The US and Russia have more than 90% of all the 13,410 warheads. Four countries – the US, Russia, the UK and France – have at least 1,800 warheads on high alert, which means that they can be fired at very short notice. A situation like this carries the threat of nuclear annihilation. Major nuclear powers should comply with TPNW to prevent such an occurrence.
UK urged to end ‘unlawful occupation’ of major strategic asset in Indian Ocean
The UK has been urged to end its “unlawful occupation” of the Chagos Islands by the prime minister of Mauritius, after Britain’s claim to sovereignty over the strategically important islands in the Indian Ocean was comprehensively rejected by the United Nation’s special international maritime court in Hamburg.
The court ruling provides a major headache as the islands represent the UK’s main strategic asset in the Indian Ocean, but a refusal to comply with the judgment will damage Britain’s international reputation for compliance with the law.
Arab normalization with Israel is expected to have serious consequences that go well beyond the limited and self-serving agendas of a few Arab countries. Thanks to the Arab normalizers, the doors are now flung wide open for new political actors to extend or cement ties with Israel at the expense of Palestine, without fearing any consequences to their actions.
African countries, especially those who worked diligently to integrate Israel into the continent’s mainstream body politic, are now seizing on the perfect opportunity to bring all African countries on board, including those who have historically and genuinely stood on the side of Palestinians.
‘Empower Africa’, an Israeli firm that is constantly seeking financial opportunities throughout the African continent, was one out of many who jumped on the opportunity to exploit Arab normalization with Israel. The goal is about maximizing their profits while promoting Arab normalization as if an economic opportunity for struggling African economies. In December, ‘Empower Africa ’hosted its first event in Dubai under the title “UAE and Israel Uniting with Africa”. In its press release, celebrating what is meant to be a momentous occasion, the Israeli company said that its guests included representatives from UAE, Israel, Bahrain, Nigeria, Rwanda, Egypt, among others.
Such events are meant to translate normalization with Israel into economic opportunities that will entangle, aside from Arab countries, African, Asian and other traditional supporters of Palestine, worldwide. The central message that the advocates of normalization with Israel are now sending to the rest of the world is that closer ties with Tel Aviv will guarantee many benefits, not only direct American support, but innumerable economic benefits as well.
Those who promote solidarity with Palestine worldwide, based on moral maxims, are correct to argue that solidarity and intersectionality are crucial in the fight against injustice everywhere. However, realpolitik is rarely shaped by moral visions. This is the truth that Palestinians now have to contend with, as they watch their own Arab and Muslim brothers move, one after the other, to the Israeli camp.
Unfortunately, it was the Palestinian leadership itself that strengthened the normalization argument many years ago, especially in the early 1990s, when it first agreed to negotiate unconditionally with Israel, under the auspices of the US and not exclusively the United Nations. The Palestinian/Arab engagement with Israel in the Madrid Talks in 1991 provided the impetus for Washington to reverse a 1975 UN Resolution that equated Zionism with racism.
Ironically, it was the African Union that, in fact, first championed UN Resolution 3379, soon after it passed its own Resolution 77 (XII), earlier that year in the Kampala Assembly of Heads of State and Governments, where it condemned Zionism as a racist, colonial ideology.
Those days are long gone and, sadly, it was the Middle East and Africa that altered their views of Israel, without compelling the latter to abandon its racist political doctrine. On the contrary, racism and apartheid in Israel are now even more integrated within the country’s official institutions than ever before. Moreover, Israel’s military occupation and siege of the West Bank and Gaza seem to accelerate at the same momentum as that of Arab and African normalization with Israel.
The now defunct Oslo Accords of 1993 served as a major pretense for many countries around the world, especially in the global South, to draw nearer to Israel. “If the Palestinians themselves have normalized with Israel, why shouldn’t we?” was the knee-jerk retort by politicians in various countries, in response to the advocates of the Palestinian boycott movement. This immoral and politically selective logic has been reinforced since the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco joined the camp of Arab normalizers in recent months.
While arguments that are predicated on moral values and shared history are, still, very much valid, making a case against normalization cannot rest entirely on ethical reasoning or sentimentalities. True, the shared anti-colonial past of Africa and the Arab world, especially that of Palestine, is uncontested. Still, some African countries did not side with the Arabs in their conflict with colonial Israel based on entirely moral and ideological arguments. Indeed, the Israel-Africa story has also been shaped by outright economic and business interests.
Africa’s significance for Israel has acquired various meanings throughout the years. Soon after Israel was established upon the ruins of historic Palestine, diplomatic ties between the newly-founded Israel and African countries became essential for Tel Aviv to break away from its geopolitical isolation in the region. That, in addition to the strategic importance of the Bab Al-Mandab Strait – separating Africa from the Arabian Peninsula and offering Israel breathing space through the Red Sea – gave Africa additional geostrategic significance.
In fact, on the eve of the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, 33 African countries had full diplomatic ties with Israel. Immediately following the war and in the run-up to the war of 1973, African countries abandoned Israel in large numbers, signaling the rise of an unprecedented Arab-African unity, which continued unhindered until the 1990s. It was then that Israel began, once more, promoting itself as a unique ally to Africa.
In recent years, Israel has accelerated its plans to exploit Africa’s many political and economic opportunities, especially as the continent is now an open ground for renewed global attention. The United States, the European Union, China, Russia and others are jockeying to win a piece of Africa’s massive wealth of material and human resources. Israel, too, as a regional power, is now part of this renewed ‘scramble for Africa’.
A statement by Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in 2016 that “Israel is coming back to Africa, and Africa is returning to Israel,” should not be dismissed as another political hyperbole by the Israeli leader. One could even argue that Israel’s burgeoning political and economic ties with Africa are Netanyahu’s greatest achievements in recent years. More, diplomatic rapprochements with Muslim-majority African countries, such as Mali and Chad, have served as the backdoor entrance to African Arab Muslim countries, such as Sudan and Morocco.
There is more to Israel’s keen interest in Africa than mere business, of course. Since the US’ superpower status in the Middle East is being challenged by other global actors, namely Russia and China, Israel is actively trying to diversify its options, so it is not exclusively reliant on a single benefactor.
Now that Arab and Muslim countries are normalizing, whether openly or discreetly, with Israel, some African governments feel liberated from their previous commitment to Palestine, as they are no longer forced to choose between their Arab allies and Israel.
Solidarity with Palestine, in all traditional platforms, certainly stands to lose as a result of these seismic changes. Even the UN General Assembly is no longer a safe space for Palestinian solidarity. For example, in the UN General Assembly Resolution titled “Peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine”, which was adopted on December 3, 2019, by 147 countries, 13 countries abstained from the vote. Unprecedentedly, several African countries including Cameroon, Rwanda, South Sudan and Malawi also abstained from the vote. The trend worsened a year later, on December 2, 2020, when more African countries abstained from voting on a similar resolution, with Cameroon, Madagascar, Malawi, Rwanda, and even South Africa refusing to acknowledge what should have been a straightforward recognition of Palestinian rights.
Based on this disturbing trajectory, more such African countries are expected to either adopt a ‘neutral’ position on Palestine and Israel or, depending on the nature of their interests or the combined US-Israeli pressures, could potentially take Israel’s side in the future.
The Palestinian dichotomy rests on the fact that African solidarity with Palestine has historically been placed within the larger political framework of mutual African-Arab solidarity. Yet, with official Arab solidarity with Palestine now weakening, Palestinians are forced to think outside this traditional framework, so that they may build direct solidarity with African nations as Palestinians, without necessarily merging their national aspirations with the larger Arab body politic.
While such a task is daunting, it is also promising, as Palestinians now have the opportunity to build bridges of support and mutual solidarity in Africa through direct contacts, where they serve as their own ambassadors. Obviously, Palestine has much to gain, but also much to offer Africa. Palestinian doctors, engineers, civil defense and frontline workers, educationists, intellectuals and artists are some of the most recognized and accomplished in the Middle East; in fact, in the world. Palestine must utilize its people’s tremendous energies and expertise in winning Africa back, not as a bargaining chip, but as a true and genuine attempt at reinvigorating existing solidarity between the Palestinians and the peoples of Africa.
Israel is trying to lure in Africa’s elites through business deals which, judging by previous experiences, could become a burden on African economies. Palestine, on the other hand, can offer Africa genuine friendship and camaraderie through many areas of meaningful cooperation which, in the long run, can turn existing historical and cultural affinities into deeper, more practical solidarity.
The UN released the largest ever opinion poll on the climate crisis on 26 January. Involving 1.2 million respondents spanning 50 countries around the world, the People’s Climate Vote is both comprehensive and crystal clear. It found that two-thirds of people believe we are in a “global emergency” and want decisive action to tackle it.
But news that emerged a couple of days earlier from Nigeria is a timely reminder of how far the world is from adequately tackling this global emergency. According to the NGO Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), an oil rig fire has been raging in the country for eight months.
Eternal flame
News reports say the fire initially broke out at an oil well in the Ondo state in May 2020. As Africa Oil+Gas Report magazine reported shortly after the blaze began, the rig – Grace-1 HWU – was “working for the Nigerian independent [company] Guarantee Petroleum” at the time. However, as the magazine also noted, the Nigerian government had revoked Guarantee Petroleum’s licence during its operations in 2020. As a result, the government assumed responsibility for tackling the fire.
Oil giant Chevron, meanwhile, is the operator of the oil mining lease in the relevant area – OML 95. After the fire broke out, its public affairs general manager told Africa Oil+Gas Report that the fire had occurred at “a third-party facility”, not operated by Chevron or its affiliates. The company said, however, that it was “prepared to provide necessary emergency response assistance in accordance with petroleum industry emergency response protocol”.
“This impunity must stop”
Nigeria’s Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) toldAfrica Oil+Gas Report in May 2020 that it would do “all it could” to put out the fire. According to HOMEF, that same month the country’s National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) also said it would take at least six weeks to extinguish the blaze.
But, as HOMEF said in a recent press release the fire is ‘raging on’ still. It also claims that the blaze has had:
huge impacts on the environment generally, the aquatic ecosystem particularly and the livelihoods of community members, especially fishers
The group referred to the ongoing incident as an “act of ecocide”. But it says the government has offered no “clear communication on how the environment will be remediated”. The group’s director, Nnimmo Bassey, commented:
It is sad to note that national, international and government-owned oil companies operating in the Niger Delta are rapidly setting a pattern of totally ignoring oil spills for weeks and months in the same way they have ignored gas flares for decades.
This impunity must stop. Our people deserve better. The Niger Delta must not continue to be a sacrifice zone
HOMEF is calling on the DPR to put out the fire and “remediate the environment”. It’s also urging the government to compensate those impacted by the fire, such as fishers and communities. Furthermore, it’s demanding sanctions against whichever company is ultimately responsible for causing the “gross ecological damage”.
The Canary contacted the DPR and Nigeria’s Environment Assessment Department for comment. Neither responded by the time of publication.
Citizens in Africa have long been fighting against the environmental and human rights abuses they’ve faced thanks to the extractive industries. Now, in the biggest poll of its kind, two-thirds of the world’s citizens have recognised that the climate crisis represents a “global emergency”. The UNDP’s strategic adviser on climate change, Cassie Flynn, said:
The voice of the people is clear – they want action on climate change.
In his book, Bassey was also clear about what that action should be:
The world knows that the climate challenge is caused primarily by the release of carbon into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels.
The simple answer to our climate crisis, one begging to be accepted, is that we must simply leave the oil in the soil, the coal in the hole and the tar sands in the land. We do not require expensive carbon capture and storage technologies to make this happen. It’s just common sense. Simple.
We must leave fossil fuels in the soils, holes and lands. If there’s an environmental catastrophe involving extraction that’s already taken place, we must also work quickly and diligently to clean it up.
We cannot afford to continue the environmental destruction and recklessness that’s been characteristic of ‘human progress’ to date. The world’s people are waking up en masse to that. It’s high time those who wield power do the same.
UN calls for help as cholera breaks out with the arrival of rainy season, compounding ‘dire’ situation in Cabo Delgado
Northern Mozambique has lurched into a humanitarian crisis as growing numbers of people have lost their homes amid escalating conflict.
Fighting in the northern province of Cabo Delgado displaced more than 500,000 people last year and on Wednesday UN agencies said they were deeply worried about the current situation and called for the international community to do more to help.
Human rights session calls on Canberra to raise age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 as China attacks Australia over ‘baseless charges’
Australia has come under international pressure to reduce the number of children in detention, with more than 30 countries using a UN human rights session to call on authorities to raise the age of criminal responsibility.
Amid ongoing tensions between China and Australia, Beijing’s representative took the opportunity on Wednesday evening to demand that Canberra “stop using false information to make baseless charges against other countries for political purposes”.
Fiji won a fierce contest to head the global rights group, but coalition of NGOs says repression and abuses domestically must be addressed
Fiji has won an intense and secretive geo-political battle to become the first Pacific island nation to win presidency of the United Nations Human Rights Council, but its ascension has come with demands from critics for it to address systemic rights abuses at home.
Overcoming last-minute challenges from Bahrain and Uzbekistan, both backed by China, Russia and Saudi Arabia, Fiji decisively won 29 out of 47 votes to take control of the powerful and influential global body.
Nations question delay in raising age of criminal responsibility to 14 and response to Uluru statement
The Australian government is to be challenged over the country’s lack of progress in reducing rates of Indigenous incarceration at a UN hearing this week.
Sweden and Uruguay have submitted questions in advance about the overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australian prisons, while Germany wants to know why Australia has delayed a push to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 years.
I’ve had an incredible experience interning with The Advocates in the International Justice Program this summer and fall. One of the things that made this such an impactful experience was the wide range of issues that I was exposed to, particularly through reading and working on reports for UN human rights mechanisms. I conducted background research for, wrote, and edited reports about human rights in various countries for the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and treaty body reviews. I learned about issues like LGBTQI rights in Tanzania, civil and political rights in Ethiopia, and the death penalty in Yemen. I gained an understanding of how the human rights review process works at the United Nations and of the different human rights treaties and treaty bodies that enforce them. I really enjoyed learning about the role of civil society in contributing to human rights review within the United Nations, including all the steps that go into the production of reports for these review mechanisms. It was a unique experience not only to read about this process and learn about it on a theoretical level, but also to directly participate in it at the same time.
I also gained valuable knowledge from the other assignments that I worked on and from the opportunities that I had access to as an intern. Through writing case summaries for the Human Rights Tools for a Changing World manual, I learned about advocacy efforts like congressional lobbying by Uighur rights advocates and members of the Ethiopian and Armenian diasporas and other tactics for advancing human rights like coalition building through Mutual Assistance Associations. While writing summaries of past reports for The Advocates’ website, I learned even more about the human rights situations in countries that I had never read about in depth. I attended the online 2020 Upper Midwest Immigration Law Conference, where I was introduced to immigration law in more detail. I also learned about strategies that human rights defenders use in their research and advocacy work through events like a webinar on New Tactics in Human Rights’ Tactical Mapping Tool and an online course on field research. This variety of projects and events exposed me to human rights issues in so many different parts of the world and to a variety of strategies that can be used to address human rights violations.
One of my favorite events was an early premiere of the film Welcome to Chechnya. The documentary focuses on violence against LGBTQI individuals in Chechnya, the work of LGBTQI rights activists to rescue individuals persecuted by the Chechen authorities, and the experiences of LGBTQI Chechen refugees. The Advocates organized a post-film discussion with director David France and staff at the Moscow Community Center for LGBT+ Initiatives featured in the film. Earlier in the summer, I helped edit a Suggested List of Issues about LGBTQI rights in Russia and contributed to expanding the section on abuses against LGBTQI individuals in Chechnya. While I had heard about violence against LGBTQI individuals in Chechnya in recent years, I didn’t know very much about the context or details until I worked on this assignment. Helping with this report provided me with the perfect amount of background information to really understand the documentary in context. I was amazed by the bravery of the human rights defenders who helped LGBTQI individuals escape Chechnya and the bravery of the individuals themselves who were forced to flee such extreme persecution. It was amazing to hear directly from Olga Baranova, one of the activists featured in the film, during the film discussion over Zoom. Her work made me realize what a significant difference one person, or a small group of people, really can make in fighting against injustice and in protecting people whose rights are violated.
I also loved attending RightsCon, an annual convention on human rights in the digital age, which was held remotely this summer. The discussions engaged with themes like protest, participation, and political change; content governance, disinformation, and online hate; privacy and surveillance; and civil society resistance and resilience, among others. I attended panels and seminars on a wide variety of topics, ranging from the use of data collection and open-source investigation in accountability work in the Middle East, to challenges in detecting the use of bandwidth throttling and internet shutdowns by governments, to the importance of archiving evidence of human rights violations using reliable platforms. Many of these topics were completely new to me and outside the range of issues, technologies, and strategies that had been on my radar.
During the summer portion of my internship, I also watched and took notes on Human Rights Council sessions related to human rights conditions in various countries like Belarus, Burundi, and Georgia. This assignment offered me an informative glimpse into what actually goes on in UN meetings. This summer in particular was an extremely interesting time for me as an American to observe Human Rights Council meetings. In June, following the killing of George Floyd, the Human Rights Council held an urgent debate about systemic racism in law enforcement and police violence against protesters in the United States. Philonise Floyd, George Floyd’s brother, spoke at the session. He urged the Human Rights Council to establish a commission of inquiry to investigate police brutality against Black people in America. The United States was not present at the meeting. At the intern and staff meeting following the urgent debate, we talked about the fact that this was unusual, as countries typically take the opportunity to respond to criticism or comments directed toward them at Human Rights Council meetings. It was helpful to hear comments about the urgent debate from the International Justice Program Director and Senior Staff Attorney because they highlighted noteworthy details I otherwise may not have noticed or understood.
One of the most valuable pieces of knowledge that I’ve gained from this internship is a much more well-rounded understanding of the human rights review process at the United Nations, as well as civil society’s role in holding countries accountable for human rights violations and for following through with promised reforms. I gained exposure to so many different human rights issues in different countries, as well as the unique issues that certain countries focus on when participating in peer review processes like the UPR. I also gained a better understanding of the politics that play out during the UPR and during Human Rights Council sessions, where the relationships between member states affect the issues that are emphasized or overlooked when a particular country’s human rights conditions are reviewed.
Interning with the International Justice Program has been immensely rewarding, and I’m so grateful to have had this experience. I’ve been so inspired by the International Justice Program staff and their dedication to working to address human rights issues around the world. Observing the work of the staff in all of The Advocates’ programs has been enriching and inspiring and I look forward to keeping up with The Advocates in the future and continuing to follow all of the incredible work they are doing.
By Sarah Borden, Yale undergraduate student and International Justice Program intern
Sarah Borden
The Advocates for Human Rights is a nonprofit organization dedicated to implementing international human rights standards to promote civil society and reinforce the rule of law.
Curious about volunteering? Please reach out. The Advocates for Human Rights has an opportunity for you.
Eager to see change? Give to our mission, our vision, our work. Your gift matters.
Human Rights Watch lists persecutions in Xinjiang, Mongolia, Tibet and Hong Kong but notes new willingness to condemn Beijing
China is in the midst of its darkest period for human rights since the Tiananmen Square massacre, Human Rights Watch has said in its annual report.
Worsening persecutions of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet, targeting of whistleblowers, the crackdown on Hong Kong and attempts to cover up the coronavirus outbreak were all part of the deteriorating situation under President Xi Jinping, the organisation said.
Equality Coalition makes formal complaint about make-up of ministerial appointments to NIHRC
A network of more than 90 NGOs and trade unions has complained that ministerial appointments to the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) are undermining the public body.
The group raised particular concerns about the selection of candidates with a policing background at a time when the commission is required to advise on addressing the legacy of the Troubles.
When I began law school, I knew that I would like to one day work in advocacy or human rights work, preferably in the space of international law. While I was aware of organizations like The Advocates for Human Rights where these kinds of legal positions were available, I did not really understand the role of lawyers in advocacy work or how their work fits into international law spaces.
Since becoming an intern at The Advocates, one of the most valuable things I have gained is an understanding of what it means to be a lawyer in the field of human rights advocacy and how important all aspects of a civil society organization are in that work.
The first and most obvious way that lawyers have an impact in advocacy work is through direct representation of someone who experiences a human rights violation. Direct representation is one way to help someone seek justice for a human rights violation they experienced, either in the form of reparation or punishment for the perpetrator. As an intern in the International Justice Program, I knew that this sort of direct advocacy would not necessarily be in our realm of work; direct service is more in line with programs like The Advocates’ Refugee and Immigrant program.
I was surprised to learn that in the International Justice program there are opportunities, slightly different from representation, to directly help someone who has experienced a human rights violation. For example, the International Justice Program works with the Maldivian Democracy Network, a human rights organization that the Maldivian Government arbitrarily shut down in 2019. Providing support to and advising them during their legal proceedings to challenge the government’s actions is an aspect of advocacy that I had not thought about as part of a lawyer’s role before my internship. Although it is not direct representation, it still is an explicit way to help someone who has experienced a human rights violation.
I have also discovered a big impact that lawyers can have by effecting change on a big picture level, rather than the individual level that I just mentioned. Coming into the internship, I knew what some of the overarching goals of The Advocates were, but I was not sure about the role of a lawyer in achieving those goals. After a semester of observing this process, I think a lawyer’s role can be best described as someone who figures out how to get from where we are now to the end goal by navigating through existing law and finding the best path to make change happen. I have observed and participated in this part of the process by engaging with UN mechanisms designed to bring about change. Sometimes, this path can be very straightforward in that we just need to advocate for a country to uphold its international obligations. The path toward change can be more complicated when organizations lobby a country to adopt new international obligations. I’ve learned this process takes longer and its effects can be harder to see than direct representation. If you are successful, your efforts will prevent a rights violation from even happening in the first place.
Overall, it has become clear to me in my time at The Advocates that lawyers play a prominent role in human rights advocacy and international law. The path from recognizing the need for change and getting that result can be long, arduous, and likely impossible without a person specialized in knowing how to do so. YetI have also learned that a lawyer’s role is just one piece of the process of advocating for change and that all members of civil society and civil society organizations play a role that is just as important as a lawyer’s role.. The entire advocacy process would not be possible without people who recognize a problem and push for change, which provides space for lawyers to work toward a solution. Further, people who ensure implementation of a solution are also vital to the advocacy process.
My time at The Advocates so far has given me immeasurable experience in understanding the framework and process of human rights advocacy on an international scale. Understanding the role of a lawyer in this field has been extremely beneficial to honing a career path and has prepared me for any future endeavors in advocacy work.
By John Weber, University of Minnesota Law student and legal intern in The Advocates’ International Justice Program
John Weber, U of MN Law student and legal intern at The Advocates for Human Rights
The Advocates for Human Rights is a nonprofit organization dedicated to implementing international human rights standards to promote civil society and reinforce the rule of law.
Curious about volunteering? Please reach out. The Advocates for Human Rights has an opportunity for you.
Eager to see change? Give to our mission, our vision, our work. Your gift matters.
For thousands of years folk wisdom has insisted that ‘you shall be known by the company you keep’. This is also true of countries.
A recent United Nations vote condemning the “glorification of Nazism, neo‑Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance” generated significant commentary on social media. The US and Ukraine voted against the widely supported resolution while Canada, Australia, New Zealand and most European countries abstained. One commentator tweeted that the countries who failed to condemn Nazism were “more or less the same coalition of stooges that recognized Juan Guaido” as president of Venezuela while another pointed out that it was similar to the coalition of “countries condemning China’s policies in Hong Kong.” Another connected it to NATO.
These commentators hit on something fundamentally important. It is instructive to consider Canada’s UN votes and position on international issues through the lens of its many alliances.
Canada is a leading member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Canada participated with the US and Britain in the secret talks on creating a north Atlantic alliance and since NATO was established in 1949 has been one of its most active contributors.
Canada is a member of the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing arrangement. A series of post-Second World War accords, beginning with the 1946 UKUSA intelligence agreement, created the “AUS/CAN/NZ/UK/US EYES ONLY” arrangement. The Five Eyes partnership oozes of white supremacy. Settler colonialism and empire unite an alliance that excludes wealthier non-white nations (Japan and South Korea) or those with more English speakers (India and Nigeria). It’s not a coincidence that the only four countries that originally voted against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in 2007 are part of the Five Eyes.
Canada is a member of the Commonwealth. It was a member of the alliance when it only included Britain, Australia, New Zealand and apartheid South Africa.
Canada is a member of the Group of Seven (G7) wealthy nations. It also has a permanent (constituency-based) seat on the International Monetary Fund’s executive board (Canada represents 10 Caribbean countries and Ireland on the IMF board).
Canada is part of the Lima Group seeking to overthrow the Venezuelan government. Instigated by Canada and Peru in mid 2017, the Lima Group has successfully corralled regional support for the US-led campaign to oust President Nicolas Maduro.
Canada is a member of the Core Group that heavily shapes Haitian affairs. Comprising the ambassadors of the US, France, Brazil and Spain, as well as representatives of the EU and OAS, Core Group representatives meet regularly among themselves and with Haitian officials and periodically release collective statements on Haitian affairs. While formally established two months after the 2004 US, France and Canada coup against President Jean–Bertrand Aristide, Radio Canada’s Enquête pointed out that the Core Group was actually spawned at the “Ottawa initiative on Haiti”. Held at the Meech Lake Government Resort on January 31 and February 1, 2003, no Haitian officials were invited to the private gathering where US, French, OAS and Canadian officials discussed overthrowing Haiti’s elected government, putting the country under UN trusteeship and recreating the Haitian military.
Few countries are represented in as many powerful and openly interventionist coalitions. Canada’s different alliances suggests this country sits near the centre of global imperialism.
Towards the end of November, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres addressed the German Bundestag to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the United Nations (UN). At the heart of the UN is its Charter, the treaty that binds nations together in a global project, which has now been ratified by all 193 member nations of the UN. It is well worth reiterating the four main goals of the UN Charter, since most of these have slipped from public consciousness:
Guterres pointed out that the avenues to realise the aims of the Charter are being closed off not only by the neofascists, who he euphemistically calls ‘populist approaches’, but also by the worst kind of imperialism, as illustrated by the ‘vaccine nationalism’ driven by countries such as the United States of America. ‘It is clear’, Guterres said, ‘that the way to win the future is through an openness to the world’ and not by a ‘closing of minds’.
CoronaShock: A Virus and the World. Cover image by Vikas Thakur (India).
At Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, we take the UN Charter as the foundation of our work. To advance its goals is an essential step for the construction of humanity, which is a concept of aspiration rather than a concept of fact; we are not yet human beings, but we strive to become human. Imagine if we lived in a world without war and with respect for international law, if we lived in a world that honoured fundamental human rights and tried to promote the widest social progress? This would a be a world where the productive resources would no longer be used for military hardware but would be used to end hunger, to end illiteracy, to end poverty, to end houselessness, to end – in other words – the structural features of indignity.
In 2019, the world’s nations spent nearly $2 trillion on weaponry, while the world’s richest people hid $36 trillion in illicit tax havens. It would take a fraction of this money to eradicate hunger, with estimates ranging from $7 billion to $265 billion per year. Comparable amounts of money are needed to finance comprehensive public education and universal primary health care. Productive resources have been highjacked by the wealthy, who then use their money power to ensure that Central Banks keep inflation down rather than pursue policies towards full employment. It’s a racket, if you look at it closely.
Two new World Bank studies show that, because of a lack of resources and imagination during this pandemic, an additional 72 million primary school aged children will slip into ‘learning poverty’, a term that refers to the inability to read and comprehend simple texts by the age of ten. A UNICEF study shows that in sub-Saharan Africa an additional 50 million people have moved into extreme poverty during the pandemic, most of whom are children; 280 million of sub-Saharan Africa’s 550 million children struggle with food insecurity, while learning has completely stopped for millions of children who are ‘unlikely to ever return to the classroom’.
The gap between the plight of the billions who struggle to survive and the extravagances of the very few is stark. The UBS report on wealth bears an awkward title: Riding the storm. Market turbulence accelerates diverging fortunes. The world’s 2,189 billionaires seemed to have ridden the storm of the pandemic to their great advantage, with their wealth at a record high of $10.2 trillion as of July 2020 (up from $8.0 trillion in April). The most vulgar number was that their wealth increased by a quarter (27.5%) from April to July during the Great Lockdown. This came when billions of people in the capitalist world were newly unemployed, struggling to survive on very modest relief from governments, their lives turned upside down.
CoronaShock and Patriarchy. Cover image by Daniela Ruggeri (Argentina)
Our most recent study, CoronaShock and Patriarchy, should be compulsory reading; it provides a sharp assessment of the social – and gendered – impact of CoronaShock. Our team was motivated by the acute state of deprivation in which billions of people find themselves and how that deprivation morphs basic social bonds towards the hyper-exploitation and oppression of specific parts of the population. The report closes with an eighteen-point list of demands that are a guide for our struggles ahead. We make the case that the capitalist states are controlled by elites who are unable to solve the basic problems of our time such as unemployment, hunger, patriarchal violence, and the under-appreciation, precarity, and invisibility of social reproduction work.
The texts that we published this year – from our red alerts on the coronavirus to the studies on CoronaShock – seek to orient us towards a rational assessment of these rapid developments, rooted in the world-view of our mass movements of workers, peasants, and the oppressed. We took seriously the view of the World Health Organisation to ground our studies in ‘solidarity, not stigma’. Based on the startlingly low numbers of infections and deaths in countries with a socialist government from Vietnam to Cuba, we studied why these governments were better able to handle the pandemic. We understood that this was because they took a scientific attitude towards the virus, they had a public sector to turn to for the production of necessary equipment and medicines, they were able to rely upon a practice of public action which brought organised groups of people together to provide relief to each other, and they took an internationalist – rather than a racist – approach to the virus which included sharing information, goods, and – in the case of China and Cuba – medical personnel. Because of this, we – alongside other organisations – have joined the campaign for the Nobel Prize for Peace to be given to the Cuban doctors.
We have assembled a remarkable archive of material on CoronaShock and on the world that it has begun to produce. This includes a provisional ten-point agenda for a post-COVID world, a paper first delivered at a High-Level Conference on the Post-Pandemic Economy, organised by the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA). In the first few months of 2021, we will release a fuller document on the world after Corona.
CoronaShock and Socialism. Cover image by Ingrid Neves (Brazil), adapted from People’s Medical Publishing House, China, 1977
On a personal note, I would like to thank the entire team at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research for their resilience during the pandemic, their ability to work at a pace much greater than before, and their good cheer towards each other during this period.
We swim in the waters of our movements, whose fortitude against the opportunistic and cynical use of the crisis by capitalist governments lifts us up and gives us courage. Last week, the newsletter highlighted the patient and dedicated work done by the young comrades of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Kerala, who work to build a humane and just society. The same kind of work can be seen amidst the Landless Workers’ Movement in Brazil (MST), and it can be seen in the Copper Belt region of Zambia, where the members of the Socialist Party campaign for next year’s presidential election, and in South Africa, where the National Union of Metal Workers (NUMSA) fights to defend workers against retrenchment during the pandemic and where Abahlali baseMjondolo builds confidence and power amongst shack dwellers. We see this great endurance and commitment from our comrades of the Workers’ Party of Tunisia and the Democratic Way of Morocco, who are leading a revitalisation of the Left in the Arabic-speaking regions, and in the great application of the peoples of Bolivia, Cuba, and Venezuela, China, Laos, Nepal, and Vietnam, as they seek to build socialism in poor countries who face a sustained attack against the socialist path. We take strength from our comrades in Argentina, who struggle to consolidate the power of the excluded workers and to build a society beyond patriarchy. We are a movement-driven research institute; we rely upon our movements for everything that we do.
Rights experts say pardon of four contractors over Iraq killings undermine humanitarian law
Donald Trump’s pardon of four American men convicted of killing Iraqi civilians while working as contractors in 2007 violated US obligations under international law, United Nations human rights experts have said.
Nicholas Slatten was convicted of first-degree murder and Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard were convicted of voluntary and attempted manslaughter over an incident in which US contractors opened fire in busy traffic in a Baghdad square and killed 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians.
Dutch authorities left 10-year-old without legal protection by registering him as ‘nationality unknown’
The Netherlands violated a child’s rights by failing to acknowledge that he was stateless and eligible for international protection, a UN committee has found, urging the country to change its legislation.
In its first ever decision on the right of children to acquire nationality, the UN Human Rights Committee determined on Tuesday that by registering the child as “nationality unknown”, the Dutch authorities had violated his right to international protection and also to seek a nationality.
Country’s expected ascension to human rights council presidency is being challenged by a China-backed bid by Bahrain
For a small country in the South Pacific that joined the UN’s powerful human rights council for the first time in 2019, Fiji has made giant strides within the organisation: right to the very top … almost.
By consensus, Fiji’s chief diplomat in Geneva, ambassador Nazhat Shameem Khan, was set to assume the presidency of the council for 2021, a historic first not only for Fiji, but for a Pacific region consistently under-represented on the global stage.
Happy 72nd International Human Rights Day, friends! On December 10, we celebrate the day when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted.
This December, HRI also celebrates its 20th birthday and the founding vision that primed the organization to distribute close to $250,000 of direct rental payments, utility payments and emergency funds since the public health crisis began.
“On this 20th anniversary, we remain inspired by our over 600 clients from countries all over the world,” said Bill Holston, HRI’s Executive Director. “They are navigating the challenges of the pandemic and economic crisis with strength, grace and fortitude. We’re honored to be able to do a small part to help them weather this storm.”
On occasion of our 20th birthday, and to help us realize our mission, community supporters have generously created a Matching Challenge. “We support HRI because we know the importance of strong local organizations defending immigrant rights,” noted Dallas philanthropists Trish Houck and Lyssa Jenkens. “HRI has built a powerful community of immigrants and volunteers working together to realize American promises of safety, freedom, and opportunity. We invite you to join us in celebrating HRI this Human Rights Day!”
Houck and Jenkens have created a $5K matching challenge grant that will directly fund HRI’s client programs. View the campaign here.
“Over the past 10 years, we’ve scaled up our capacity to provide social services to our clients,” said Holston. “Our team has worked hard to build relationships with generous folks in the community who wanted to support our clients’ basic needs. Those folks have really come through for our clients during this difficult time.”
A LETTER FROM HRI’S EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, BILL HOLSTON
December 10 is Human Rights Day. It celebrates the day when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted. The very first article is:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
For twenty years, HRI has been fighting to make those words a reality.
Those words were shaped by women activists: Indian delegate Hansa Mehta, champion of women’s rights in her home country, revised the phrase “All men are born free and equal” to “All human beings are born free and equal,” to make it less patriarchal. She, Eleanor Roosevelt, and a fierce group of women were instrumental in ensuring that the Universal of Declaration of Human Rights is what we know today.
On our twentieth birthday, we celebrate women’s rolein shaping the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in part becauseit mirrors our own founding, which was born of two women: Betsy Healy, an attorney, and Serena Connelly, a social worker.Today, as has often been the case for the last twenty years, our staff (other than me) are all fierce intelligent women justice warriors. They fight every day to assist our clients obtain the legalstatuswhich is so key to our clients’ futures.
When I was a lawyer in private practice, I was drawn to HRI as a volunteer because I knew that this organization was founded by strong, competent and compassionate women and I wanted to be a part of their work. It’s the reason I took pro bono cases from HRI, and the reason I was and remain a financial supporter. I was thankful for the meaning it gave my life. Many of our volunteers experience this same satisfaction.
All of us are drawn to this work with a deep respect for our clients. Every day we see the resilience of the women who are escaping domestic violence; the pro-democracy activists, who have freely stood up against oppression; the children making the brave and harrowing journey to seek a life free of violence and abuse; and the brave LGBTQIA individuals fighting for the right to live their authentic life. We approach this work in deep appreciation of bearing witness to their bravery and resourcefulness.
The last year of fighting against the white nationalist agenda of our government during a global pandemic has been extremely difficult, but we are heartened by the example of our clients, and, of course the support we receive from our community.
Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the primary proponents of the UDHR said:
“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home – so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerned citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.”
I am thankful to go to work every day with strong women who have taken up that challenge. This is what makes this organization great, and one which continues to live up to the vision of our founders. Stand with us!
On Saturday 21 November 2020 Russia celebrated the 75th Anniversary of the beginning of the Nuremberg Trials which started on 20 November 1945 and lasted almost a year, until 1 October 1946. The Tribunal was given the task of trying and judging 24 of the most atrocious political and military leaders of the Third Reich.
For this unique celebration – so we shall never forget – Russian leaders and people of the Arts and History organized a Special Performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Requiem” at Moscow’s Helikon Opera Theatre. Daniel Hawkins, from RT, introduced this extraordinary event, as a journey through history, a journey through life and death, when some of – at that time – most genocidal people in history had to answer for their crimes.
This opera event was prepared for more than a year and was first performed in January 2020 for the Holocaust victims and the victims of the Nazi concentration camps in Leningrad. The Nuremberg Trials were conducted by an International Military Tribunal. They resulted in 12 death sentences.
The idea of the “Requiem” performance is “not just to appeal to emotions, but to reason. Because if we fail to learn from history, the tragedy could be repeated.”
This is precisely what Sergei Novikov, head of the (Russian) presidential directorate for social projects, intimidated. He says, “Despite of what we have seen happening 75 years ago – we do not seem to have learned a lesson. Today we seem to go down the same road, which is frightening.”
The musical performance interplays with theatrical realism – so memories are awake and moving – better than a museum. The educational impact of this celebration of remembrance is extremely important especially for the young people, who do not remember these events, but with this first-class performance, they may learn a crucial lesson, a lesson hardly talked about in history books and even less so in the west.
If we compare what has happened then – 75 years ago – actually the anti-Jewish demonstration in Berlin, known as Kristallnacht, on 9 and 10 November 1938, effectively the beginning of WWII, and look at today’s extremism in Europe, Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, we know that we are not far from a tyranny we knew as “Nationalsozialismus”, a political Nazi-concept of the late 1930s and up to mid-1940s, that today can best be compared with extreme neoliberalism and merciless oppression of peoples’ rights by police and military.
In fact, we may be steps ahead of what Hitler and his crime and war cabinet had done, but again, today, like then, we are blind to it. There may be a time when we can no longer move, when we are in constant lockdown, masked with dismembered faces, so to speak, kept away from each other under the pretext of social distancing so that we cannot communicate with each other, all for reasons of public health, for the “good intentions” of our governments to protect us from an evil virus – the corona virus.
Today, this oppression is the result of a long-term plan by a small elite to implement The Great Reset (Klaus Schwab, WEF, July 2020).
*****
There is, of course, a good reason, why Moscow wants the world to remember what WWII meant and how eventually Nazi-Germany was defeated – yes, largely if not solely by enormous sacrifices of the Soviet Union. Some 25 to 30 million USSR soldiers and Soviet citizens had left their lives for salvaging Europe – and possibly the world – from an all invading fascism.
The United States, nominally an ally of the Soviet Union, had clandestinely funded the Third Reich’s war against the Soviet Union. One of the key purposes for the US getting “involved” in WWII, other than defeating the British Empire, was to defeat their arch-enemy, communist Soviet Union. The Rockefellers funded Hitler’s war machine by providing them with hydrocarbons, with petrol, the energy that drove the war.
On the other hand, the Federal Reserve (FED), via the Bank for International Settlement (BIS) – the pyramid tower still omni-present in Basle, Switzerland, near the German border – transferred gigantic monetary resources to the Reichsbank (at that time Hitler’s equivalent of a German Central Bank)
Verdi’s Requiem Performance in Moscow on 21 November is important to go back in history and open the “memory books” in front of our eyes. It is even more important, as we see the trend of fascism taking over the entire European continent and possibly also the United States.
Europe basically ignores the importance of the 75th Anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials which still, as of this date, provides precedents for international war crimes – except, these precedents are miserably ignored. If not, we would have multiple repeats of Nuremberg in our days and age with European and US leaders (sic) in “retirement’ but still with power. Our dystopian western world is beset by war criminals even to the point where they blackmail judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, not to touch their – the European and US – war crimes, or else…
That’s where we have arrived.
Since we are going back to the times when WWII and Nuremberg happened, we should take the opportunity to also look at the Big Picture, one that may be at the root of this new wave of fascism invading Europe. It is, in essence, a health dictatorship; it has become a Health Martial Law. Many countries have ratified, quietly, or rammed it through Parliament without the public at large noticing – a law allowing them switching from everyday life to an emergency situation; i.e., (health) Martial Law.
The Big Picture, though, is a diabolical plan of eugenics. Yes, it’s a term nobody wants to use, but it must be said, because it’s one of the fundamental principles that lies in all that is planned, the 2010 Rockefeller Report and the extremely important WHO Report “A World at Risk” – Annual Report on Global Preparedness for Health Emergencies, by the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board – GPMB (September 2019).
Key members of this Monitoring Board include the World Bank, IMF, CDC and many more influential players, who have been concocting the “Preparedness” for a new epidemic since at least 2016, when the World Bank set up a special “Health Emergency Fund” to face the “next pandemic”.
Also, part of the SARS-Cov-2 preparedness and planned outbreak, was Event 201 (18 October 2019, NYC, sponsored by Gates, the WEF, and the Johns Hopkins School for Medicine (Rockefeller created and funded), which simulated the outbreak of a SARS-Cov-2 virus which curiously happened a few weeks later. The “outbreak” was actually officially announced on the dot of the beginning of the Decade 2020.
The Big Picture scheme also includes as an aftermath to covid, The Great Reset by Klaus Schwab, WEF, July 2020), a plan to implement the 4th Industrial Revolution and the enslavement of the remaining population. The Rockefellers and Bill Gates, Kissinger and many more have nurtured the idea of massively reducing the world population for at least the last 70 years.
Ever since the Rockefellers espoused the concept of the “Bilderberger Society” (a parallel organization to the WEF (World Economic Forum), with overlapping and an ever-moving memberships) their one and only continuous “project” was a selective population reduction. And they actually never made it a secret. See Bill Gates TedTalk in February 2010 – just about the time when the infamous 2010 Rockefeller Report was issued, the one that has us now in “lockstep” following all the rules and regulations, issued by WHO and supported by the entire UN system .
Why then was the eugenics agenda never seriously picked up by the mainstream, by the public at large? – Possibly, because nobody can even imagine people so evil – or allow me to call them non-humans – to actually want to make this reality. But these non-humanoids do exist. How they infiltrated themselves into human society is a mystery.
By the way, have you ever seen Bill Gates – with his obnoxious grin – wearing a mask? Or the Rockefellers, Kissingers, et al? How come they are always spared from this deadly virus, SARS-Cov-2? How come they get very old, but appear to be always in good health? What kind of life elixir are they using?
Back to the Eugenists. To implement such a massive plan on a worldwide scale, one needs a uniform approach to world health. In 1948, just a couple of years after the Nuremberg trials started, where war criminals like the Rockefellers should also have been indicted for supplying the enemy (German Nazis) with energy to drive their (anti-Soviet) war machine – back then, in 1948, Rockefeller created WHO, the World Health Organization.
The philanthropic Rockefeller Foundation (RF) has marked the field of health like no other organization. The oil magnate, John D. Rockefeller “to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world.” Hence, the RF created and provided the original funding to set up WHO in 1948. On 7 April 1948, WHO inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health Organization, which had been an agency of the League of Nations. Twenty-six (out of then 58) UN members ratified WHO as a UN agency under the UN Constitution.
Once you have “Global Health” under one roof, the WHO, funded primarily by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the pharmaceutical industries (predominantly GAVI – Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization – also created by Bill Gates in 2000) and you also have the predominant donor, Bill Gates, an obsessed vaxxer (and eugenist) without any medical training, choose WHO’s Director General – Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a buddy of Gates and former Board Member of GAVI – it is relatively easy to make the foundation of WHO’s health policies based on vaccination.
That’s what we see today. As we have heard from Gates’ TedTalk (2010 see above), vaccination seems to lend itself perfectly to reduce the world population. It has the further advantage, that if anything goes “wrong” – no vaccine company can be held responsible, let alone being sued. For example, if people get seriously ill or die from the vaccinations – which would not be a surprise, after the Covid-19 are planned to be administered in warp speed – the vaccine pharmaceuticals cannot be sued.
In fact, vaccine companies do not bear any liability risk. The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986 (42 U.S.C. §§ 300aa-1 to 300aa-34), was signed into law by US President Ronald Reagan on November 14, 1986. NCVIA’s purpose was to eliminate the potential financial liability of vaccine manufacturers due to vaccine injury, since lawsuits led many manufacturers to stop producing the vaccines, a lame argument, but that shows once more the lobbying power the pharma industry commands.
That’s where we stand today. Any sinister vaccination agenda, no matter how hurtful to the public, is home free. Today we are at this crucial point of massive forced vaccination. Many governments; i.e., UK’s Boris Johnson and Australia’s Scott Morrison, have already advanced the idea of a vaccination-pass. Without it you are banned from flying and from just about every public event. That’s promising.
And one might ask what does that have to with public health? What is the real agenda behind it?
Again, returning to the Nuremberg Trials, aren’t we in the midst of a world tyranny to which all 193 UN member countries subscribed, or were coerced into – a tyranny that has already been genocidal, in as much as it destroyed the world economy, creating countless bankruptcies, unemployment – untold poverty and misery and death, and now a potentially genocidal massive vaccination campaign, the effects of it might be death in the medium to long term, but “untraceable”, or too late by the time the cause is discovered.
A world tyranny inflicted by all 193 UN member countries – whatever their motivation – all these governments and the heads of WHO and the entire UN system belongs before a new Nuremburg-type Tribunal – where the same legal principal would be applied as 75 years ago in 1945.
Who says this will not happen? We can make it happen. We, the People, are the 99.99%. They are only 0.01 %. We have the power to resist – and we will prevail.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. Read other articles by Peter.
