Jun 2, 2020 | Advocacy, News
At a webinar hosted on 26 May, the ICJ heard from women human rights defenders (WHRDs) from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East discussed the adverse impact on women of lockdowns and other measures imposed by governments around the world as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Reports from around the world indicate a rise in the number of cases of domestic violence and new challenges faced by women victims in accessing justice.
“Support or assistance for women experiencing domestic violence was not classified as an essential service that may continue when the country went on lockdown,” said Nonhlanhla Dlamini who is the Director of Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse (SWAGAA) in Eswatini. Still, SWAGAA and other NGOs in Eswatini persisted in their work to lobby the government to classify their work as an essential service. The government later provided authorization to allow SWAGAA’s staff to move more freely in order to assist women experiencing gender-based violence during the lockdown.
Theresia Iswarini, Commissioner of Indonesia’s National Commission on Violence Against Women (KOMNAS Perempuan), observed that because of the limited movement during the lockdown, NGOs are having a hard time reaching women experiencing domestic violence who do not have phones or any devices to access the internet.
NGOs also face the challenge of placing these women in safehouses because they need to first present a certificate that they are COVID-free before they are accepted in the safehouse and such certificates are almost impossible to secure during the pandemic.
The WHRDs assisting women experiencing gender-based violence often also need psychosocial support, as “they also have to deal with the additional burdens of overseeing the homeschooling of their children and caring for family members who may have also fallen ill.”
In Sri Lanka, Mariam Dawood who is the Legal Adviser from Women in Need (WIN), noted that “women in Sri Lanka have always faced this problem and [of being] ignored when they report gender-based violence to police authorities.”
She also shared that while courts had started to operate on a limited basis in the country, women in maintenance cases risk being exposed to infection because they have to appear in court at least every month to get an order from the judge to compel their spouses to pay alimony or child support.
These orders were not automatically renewable and must be obtained by women every month from the court.
ICJ Commissioner and Member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women Nahla Haidar asked participants to think about how civil society could mobilize other stakeholders in pandemics to give an ethical call on how behaviors can change at home.
“Who is responsible? We have been trying to speak to faith leaders, especially women faith leaders [in the MENA region]. I am wondering how these channels can be used, as well as within traditional leadership channels in Africa,” Haidar said.
ICJ Senior Legal Adviser, Emerlynne Gil, noted that many of the issues raised showed that even during the pandemic, governments reproduced patriarchal approaches to public polices which effectively saw women as subordinate to men.
“This inequality underlines many of the actions taken by governments around the world to curb the pandemic,” said Emerlynne Gil. She added: “This means that it is all the more important for groups like the ICJ to continue its work eliminating gender stereotypes and discriminatory practices in the work of justice actors around the world.”
During the webinar, the ICJ launched an animation calling on States to adopt gender-sensitive responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Watch the animation here:
The webinar was live streamed on ICJ Asia’s facebook. Watch the livestream here:
Mar 24, 2020 | Advocacy, Non-legal submissions
In light of the global COVID-19 pandemic outbreak—qualified as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization (WHO)—the ICJ, together with 39 other organizations, today expressed grave concern over the situation of detainees and prisoners across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and called on governments in the MENA region to:
- Make known to the public their country-specific, and if relevant, facility-specific policies and guidelines in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in detention centers, prisons, and police stations.
- Share their emergency preparedness plans and provide specific training to relevant staff and authorities to ensure sufficient and sustained access to healthcare and hygiene provision.
- Conduct a thorough review of the prison population and in turn, reduce their prison populations by ordering the immediate release of:
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- “Low-risk” detainees and prisoners, including those convicted or held in pretrial detention (remand) for nonviolent offences; administrative detainees; and those whose continued detention is not justified;
- Detainees and prisoners particularly vulnerable to the virus, including the elderly, and individuals with serious underlying conditions including lung disease, heart disease, diabetes, and autoimmune diseases.
- Allow individuals serving probation and probationary measures to fulfill their probation and probationary measures in their homes.
- Guarantee that individuals who remain in detention:
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- Have their right to health effectively upheld by being granted full access to medical care as required;
- Access COVID-19 testing and treatment on a standard equal to that governing the general population;
- Are provided with means of communication and opportunities to access the outside world when in-person visits are suspended;
- Continue to enjoy their right to due process, including but not limited to the right to challenge the lawfulness of their detention, and their right not to experience delays that would render their detention arbitrary.
Full English language joint statement (in PDF): MENA-Covid-19-Prisons-Advocacy-2020-ENG
Full Arabic language joint statement (in PDF): MENA-Covid-19-Prisons-Advocacy-2020-ARA
Feb 6, 2020 | Advocacy, News, Non-legal submissions
The ICJ has made a submission to the UN Human Rights Committee in advance of its forthcoming examination of Tunisia’s sixth periodic report under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
In its submission, the ICJ highlights a number of ongoing concerns with respect to the country’s implementation of and compliance with the provisions of the ICCPR, including in relation to:
- Tunisian authorities’ implementation of the transitional justice law, particularly on issues pertaining to criminal accountability for gross human rights violations;
- Judicial independence and accountability, particularly on issues pertaining to the development of a Judicial Code of Ethics, and
- Tunisia’s failure to establish a Constitutional Court.
The submission is relevant for the Committee’s evaluation of Tunisia’s implementation of the State’s obligations and related Covenant rights under articles 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22 and 26 of the ICCPR.
The Human Rights Committee will examine Tunisia’s sixth periodic report during its 128th session, which will be held in Geneva from 2 March to 27 March 2020.
Tunisia submitted its sixth periodic report to the Committee in June 2019 according to the approved simplified reporting procedure and in response to the list of issues identified by the UN Human Rights Committee in April 2018. Among these issues, the Committee requested Tunisia to provide information in relation to: the Constitutional and legal framework within which the Covenant is implemented; transitional justice; and the independence and impartiality of the judiciary.
Download
Tunisia-ICJ-Submission-UNHRC-Advocacy-Non-Legal-Submissions-2020-ENG (full submission, in PDF)
Sep 27, 2019 | Advocacy, Non-legal submissions
Today, at the close of the 42nd regular session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the ICJ and other NGOs highlighted key acheivements and failures.
The joint civil society statement, delivered by International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) on behalf of the group, read as follows (not all text could be read aloud due to time limits):
“The Council reaffirmed that reprisals can never be justified. Council members rejected attempts to weaken the text including attempts to delete the references to the roles of the Assistant Secretary-General and the Human Rights Council Presidents. The resolution listed key trends such as the patterns of reprisals, increasing self-censorship, the use of national security arguments and counter-terrorism strategies by States as justification for blocking access to the UN, acknowledged the specific risks to individuals in vulnerable situations or belonging to marginalized groups, and called on the UN to implement gender-responsive policies to end reprisals. The Council called on States to combat impunity and to report back to it on how they are preventing reprisals, both online and offline. The Bahamas and the Maldives responded to this call during the interactive dialogue and we encourage more States to follow their good practice. We also encourage States to follow the good practice of Germany and Costa Rica in raising specific cases of reprisals. The Council also welcomed the role of the Assistant Secretary-General and invited the General Assembly to step up its efforts to address reprisals and ensure a coherent system-wide response.
We welcome the creation of a Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) on Venezuela as an important step towards accountability for the grave human rights violations documented by the High Commissioner. We urge Venezuela to cooperate with the FFM and to honor the commitments they have made during this session, including by allowing OHCHR unfettered access to all regions and detention centers and implementing their recommendations. Cooperation and constructive engagement and measures for international accountability and justice should be seen as complementary and mutually reinforcing.
We welcome the renewal and strengthening of the mandate of the Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen, sending a clear message to parties to the conflict – and to victims – that accountability is at the center of the mandate, and providing a crucial and much-needed deterrent to further violations and abuses. States should support the recommendations made by the GEE in their recent report, including prohibiting the authorization of transfers of, and refraining from providing, arms that could be used in the conflict to such parties; and clarifying the GEE’s role to collect and preserve evidence of abuses.
We welcome the renewal of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Cambodia, but regret that calls to strengthen the mandate of the OHCHR to monitor and report on the situation have been ignored. We regret that the resolution fails to accurately depict the continuing crackdowns on civil society and the severity and scale of recent attacks on the political opposition.
We welcome the renewal of the mandate of the Commission of Inquiry on Burundi. Its work is vital as the country heads towards elections in 2020. The Burundian Government should desist from denial and insults, and should cooperate with the Commission and other UN bodies and mechanisms.
We welcome that the EU and OIC have jointly presented a resolution on Myanmar requesting the High Commissioner to report on the implementation of the recommendations of the Fact-Finding Mission at HRC 45. However, the international community needs to take stronger action to ensure accountability for and cessation of grave international crimes, in particular by referring Myanmar to the ICC and imposing a global arms embargo – and by acting on the FFM’s reports, including those on economic interests of the military and on sexual and gender-based violence in Myanmar and the gendered impact of its ethnic conflicts.
The joint EU/OIC resolution on Myanmar welcomes the FFM report on the military’s economic interests, which identifies companies contributing to abuses. The High Commissioner, however, has still not transmitted the database of companies facilitating Israel’s illegal settlements more than 2 and a half years after its mandated release. The High Commissioner pledged in March to fulfil the mandate “within the coming months”. The ongoing unexplained and unprecedented delays have become a matter of credibility, for both the High Commissioner and the HRC. Mr. President, we request that you confer with the High Commissioner and advise as soon as possible when this important Council mandate will be fulfilled.
‘Cautious optimism’ best defines our approach to Sudan. While this year’s resolution, which welcomes the peaceful popular uprising, renews the Independent Expert’s mandate, supports the opening of an OHCHR country office, and highlights the role and needs of civil society, is an improvement on 2018, significant challenges remain. Ensuring accountability for the perpetrators of grave human rights and humanitarian law violations should be a central priority for the new Government, and the Council should assist in this regard.
We regret the lack of Council action on Kashmir and urge the Council, as well as India and Pakistan, to act on all the recommendations in the report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
On terrorism and human rights, we are deeply disappointed that Mexico and other States have partially acquiesced in attempts by Egypt to dilute or distract the work of the Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism away from its appropriate focus on human rights violations while countering terrorism and human rights of victims of terrorism. We regret that States have asked the Special Rapporteur to spend the limited time and resources of the mandate, to comment on the overbroad concept of the “effects” of terrorism, by which Egypt and some other States seem primarily to mean macroeconomic, industrial, and investment impacts, rather than the human rights of individual victims. The length to which States seem willing to put the existing Special Rapporteur’s mandate at risk, in the name of protecting it, while failing even to incorporate stronger consensus text on human rights issues included in the most recent merged parallel resolution at the General Assembly, suggests that the merger of the previous Mexican and Egyptian thematic resolutions no longer holds any real promise of positive results for human rights.
We welcome the adoption of the resolution on the question of the death penalty, which is an important reflection of the movement towards the international abolition of this cruel punishment. Significantly, this resolution reiterates and affirms the position of international law that the abolition of the death penalty is an irrevocable commitment and that an absolute prohibition exists to guard against its reintroduction. We also welcome the acknowledgement of the ‘most serious crimes’ threshold that acts to restrict the death penalty, in States that have yet to abolish it, only to crimes of extreme gravity; this resolution plainly identifies that criminal conduct that does not result directly and intentionally in death can never meet the threshold test and can never serve as a basis for the use of the death penalty. We are very pleased to acknowledge that the adoption of this resolution is complimentary to the General Assembly’s resolution calling for an international moratorium on the death penalty and, together, they serve to illustrate the advancing global commitment to abolition.
We welcome the Council’s renewed attention to the protection of the right to privacy in the digital age: fully integrating human rights into the design, development and deployment of Artificial Intelligence, machine learning technologies, automated decision-making, and biometric systems, is essential to safeguard not only the right to privacy, but also to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association, and economic social and cultural rights.
On human rights in the administration of justice, we welcome the focus in this year’s resolution on concrete measures to prevent and respond to violence, death and serious injury in situations of deprivation of liberty, which illustrates the potential of thematic resolutions to set out specific practical, legal and policy steps that can be drawn on by governments, civil society, and other stakeholders to have real positive impact at the national level.
We commend Australia for its leadership on Saudi Arabia, as well as the other States who stood up for women’s rights activists and accountability. We urge more States to live up to their commitment to defend civil society and sign the statement in the coming 2 weeks.
We appreciate the attention paid by individual governments to the situation in China, including the dire situation facing Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims; the crackdown on human rights defenders, including those working to draw attention to violations of economic, social and cultural rights; and the suppression of fundamental freedoms in Tibet. However, we deplore that the Council and many of its members have once again failed to take decisive action to ensure monitoring and reporting on the human rights situation in the country, especially Xinjiang, and press for access for the High Commissioner.
For five years since the last joint statement in March 2014, the Council has failed to hold Egypt accountable for continuing systematic and widespread gross human rights violations. In the latest crackdown on peaceful protests, reports indicate that more than 2000 people have been arrested in the past week. When will the Council break its silence and convene a Special Session to address the grave and deteriorating human rights situation in Egypt?”
Signatories:
- International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)
- DefendDefenders (the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project)
- Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI)
- CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation
- Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies
- Asian Legal Resource Centre
- Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA)
- International Commission of Jurists (ICJ)
- Amnesty International
- Association for Progressive Communications (APC)
- Human Rights Watch
- International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
Sep 25, 2019 | Advocacy, Non-legal submissions
The ICJ today highlighted the need for a Commission of Inquiry or similar accountability mechanism for Libya, at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The call came in an oral statement, delivered during an interactive dialogue on Libya. It read as follows:
“The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) welcomes the oral update by the High Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation in Libya.
Violations and abuses under international human rights, humanitarian and refugee law are being committed by State and non-State actors on a widespread and systematic scale in Libya, including since the resurgence of conflict in April. As noted by the High Commissioner on 9 September 2019, the human rights and potentially lives of migrants “intercepted by the Libyan Coast Guard and forcibly returned to Libya … are [also] under serious threat.”
Despite the scale of violations and abuses, only a handful of criminal investigations and prosecutions have been undertaken, resulting in near-total impunity.
A recent ICJ report on the criminal justice system in Libya found that the domestic legal framework governing investigations and prosecutions does not meet international law and standards on the right to a fair trial, the right to liberty and the prohibition on torture and other ill-treatment. As a result, any domestic investigation or prosecution is unlikely to satisfy the requirements of fair and effective justice. Moreover, most crimes under international law, including war crimes and crimes against humanity, are not penalized in domestic law.
These findings undercut the presumption relied upon by States in their engagement with Libya that the Libyan authorities can ensure accountability for crimes under international law.
To fill the accountability gap, the ICJ urges the Human Rights Council to establish a Commission of Inquiry or similar mechanism to document and report on gross human rights violations and to collect and preserve evidence of crimes for future criminal proceedings.
States should also refrain from entering into or implementing agreements with Libyan authorities that could give rise to support for or complicity in violations of international law.”
Sep 16, 2019 | Advocacy, Non-legal submissions
The ICJ today put the spotlight the increase and “normalisation” of enforce disappearances and abductions worldwide, with examples about Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, speaking at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The statement, made during the general debate, reads as follows:
The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) shares concerns highlighted by the Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances in its report (UN doc. A/HRC/42/40) at the “increasing use of extraterritorial abductions” and at the “normalization of these practices” globally. ICJ previously documented such practices in our 2017 report, Transnational Injustices.
The killing of Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi Arabia is an example of particular concern, as is the reported abduction, by Turkish authorities, of persons they claim to be linked to “terrorist organisations.” Several of these people, who later reappeared in Turkish prisons, are currently facing serious challenges in mounting a proper legal defence. Complaints of the families have not been properly investigated.
In Egypt, the National Security Agency (NSA) has been abducting and forcibly disappearing hundreds as a technique to suppress dissent. This year, the ICJ and Adalah reported on the disappearance of 138 detainees for between 10 to 219 days, many of whom were subjected to torture.
The ICJ urges the Council to address these worrying developments and calls on all countries:
- to stop all practices of enforced disappearance, abduction or informal international transfer;
- to ratify the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, and
- to provide to the victims of enforced disappearance and their families full access to their rights, including an effective remedy.
