Jun 22, 2018 | Events, News
This side event to the UN Human Rights Council session addresses equal and effective access to justice for indigenous people, people living with a disability and people from ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities.
Monday 25 June | 16:30-18:00 | Room XXVII, Palais des Nations
Sustainable Development Goal 16 calls for the realisation of peaceful and inclusive societies in which all individuals have equal access to justice.
Achieving access to justice, which includes due process and equality before the law, is a complex challenge. It demands not only examining the letter of the laws that are in force, but also identifying and overcoming systemic and practical barriers that preclude equal access to justice.
The International Commission of Jurists, Minority Rights Group International, the International Bar Association Human Rights Institute, the Permanent Mission of Austria to the UN and the Permanent Mission of Australia to the UN invite you to attend a panel discussion in the margins of the 38th Session of the Human Rights Council that will reflect on the multiple and intersecting barriers still experienced by those who are frequently among the most marginalised and at risk in society more generally: Indigenous people, people living with a disability and people from ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities.
The discussion will also explore the responses (systematic, legislative, practical, international or otherwise) that can include and legally empower such persons when they come into contact with the legal system as a means to promote their equal access to justice.
Speakers:
Mr Matthew Pollard, Senior Legal Advisor, UN Representative, International Commission of Jurists (Moderator)
Dr June Oscar AO, Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Australian Human Rights Commission
Mr Glenn Payot, UN Representative, Minority Rights Group International
Ms Victoria Lee, Programme Manager, Human Rights and Disability Team, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
For more information contact un(a)icj.org
Apr 16, 2018 | Advocacy, News, Non-legal submissions
The ICJ and ECRE have presented today to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants a submission on access to justice for migrants in Europe.
The submission is an input for the forthcoming report of the UN Special Rapporteur on access to justice for migrants to the UN General Assembly.
The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) have provided a brief overview of aspects of access to justice for migrants, with a particular focus on asylum seekers and migrant children, in European countries.
The issues dealt with include:
- obstructions to access to justice in relation to access to the territory;
- the undue use of national security exceptions to weaken access to justice in immigration procedures;
- concerns with access to justice in expulsion and detention procedures;
- specific obstacles to access to justice for asylum seekers, including when appealing the rejection of their claims by first instance asylum authorities before a judicial or administrative appeal body;
- specific obstacles to access to justice for undocumented minors.
ICJECRE-NonLegalSubmission-SRMigrants-Access2JusticeEurope4Migrants-2018-ENG (download the submission)
Mar 8, 2018 | Multimedia items, News, Video clips
Today on International Women’s Day the world looks to celebrate the achievements of women and advances made towards the realization of women’s human rights but the day is also an opportunity to address the issues that continue to disadvantage women.
In the 70th anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights many women around the world have seen States failing to live up to their obligations to ensure that they are able to exercise their human rights.
Where women’s human rights are violated many women face discrimination, denial of equal protection of the law and other impediments in accessing the justice that they deserve.
“The ICJ has a strong commitment to addressing the obstacles women face in accessing justice,” said ICJ Acting Vice-President, Justice Radmila Dragicevic-Dicic.
“The judiciary has an important role in protecting the rights of women, but in many States there is a lack of proper awareness and understanding of issues such as gender based-violence. Many judges would benefit from judicial education on specific gender-based issues to ensure that women victims are made visible and their rights protected by domestic laws and relevant international standards,” she added.
For several years the ICJ has worked on women’s access to justice issues in different countries in all regions with a variety of stakeholders, including human rights defenders, lawyers, judges, governmental authorities and international rights experts and mechanisms.
For example, in Tunisia, the ICJ issued a memorandum calling on authorities to remove the obstacles women face in accessing justice.
The ICJ has held regional dialogues in Africa and Asia with judges and lawyers.
In Asia, one outcome of this was The Bangkok General Guidance for Judges in Applying a Gender Perspective, designed to assist judges in employing a gender perspective in deciding cases before them, which has since been adopted for use by judiciaries in Indonesia and the Philippines.
In Africa, the need for gendered perspectives in judicial decision-making was also raised in a regional report evaluating sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) and fair trial rights.
The ICJ has undertaken substantial work on women’s access to justice in the context of SGBV, including a report calling for an eradication of harmful gender stereotypes and assumptions and a Practitioners’ Guide on Women’s Access to Justice for Gender-Based Violence.
Both have been used as training tools in Asia, Africa and MENA, most recently at a workshop on SGBV in Swaziland.
Last year the ICJ released a memorandum on effective investigation and prosecution of SGBV in Morocco.
The ICJ has also undertaken trial observations during hearings in the landmark Sepur Zarco case, the first case that resulted in a conviction for sexual crimes that had occurred during Guatemala’s internal conflict in the early 1980s.
The ICJ regularly engages with the UN Human Rights Council and the UN Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women to highlight issues around women’s access to justice and call on the international community to be vigilant in upholding women’s rights protections.
“The ICJ is lucky to count among its number some very impressive women human rights defenders, who bring a great deal of expertise to the work of the organization,” said Dragicevic-Dicic.
“The five most recent additions to the ICJ have further strengthened the organization’s ability to speak authoritatively on women’s rights, and I look forward to working with my new colleagues to enhance women’s access to justice,” she added.
The new additions to the ICJ include Dame Silvia Cartwright, Former Governor of New Zealand; Professor Sarah Cleveland, Constitutional and Human Rights Professor at Columbia Law School in the USA; Justice Martine Comte who has over 30 years judicial experience in France; Mikiko Otani, member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child from Japan; and Justice Lillian Tibatemwa-Ekirikubinza from the Supreme Court of Uganda.
In an interview with the ICJ, Commissioner Justice Elizabeth Evatt, a distinguished Australian lawyer, jurist and trailblazer for women in the legal profession in her country, spoke about the importance of women being able to access justice.
One of the architects of Australia’s Family Law Act of 1975, Justic Evatt told the ICJ how the Act made divorce more accessible and abolished the Common Law relics that gave men greater rights over women, however new problems have emerged since then.
Justice Evatt explained that “(the Act) was an extremely important reform for women. It made it far easier for men and women to access divorce and have their matters dealt with because the court had conciliation and counselling services and also legal aid was more readily available. But I am afraid that since those days, thing have changed. The Family Court is now beset with delays and obstacles and it is impossible for people to get legal aid. People have to take their case on their own or face huge legal costs, so having begun well, it hasn’t continued well. More resources are needed.”
Justice Evatt also considers that there is a need for the government and the judiciary to take more action to address domestic violence.
However, she noted, “there has been a change over the years with a growing awareness of both the police and the local courts, which are the main ones dealing with violence. They have become far more aware of the need to take action to protect women and prevent violence but the cure for domestic violence does not lie just with the courts but also with the whole of society.”
Watch the interview:
Mar 5, 2018 | News
The ICJ has welcomed last Thursday’s judgment of the Pretoria High Court which declares the South Africa’s involvement in shutting down the South African Development Community Tribunal “unlawful, irrational, arbitrary and therefore unconstitutional”.
ICJ’s Africa Director, Arnold Tsunga described the judgment as a “triumph for the rule of law in Southern Africa and an opportunity for governments in the SADC region to commit to immediate restoration of the Tribunal”.
The SADC Tribunal has been inactive since 2012, when SADC Member States suspended its operations and removed individual access to the Tribunal, including in cases involving human rights violations.
The action was widely seen as a backlash for several judgments against Zimbabwe in relation to land programmes implemented during the administration of former President Robert Mugabe.
In a unanimous judgment delivered by High Court Judge President D Mlambo, the Court held that “any act which detracted from the SADC Tribunal’s exercise of its human rights jurisdiction at the instance of individuals, was inconsistent with the SADC Treaty itself and violated the rule of law”.
Describing former President Zuma’s decision to sign the replacement 2014 Protocol of the SADC Tribunal as one such act, the Court held that the rule of law in South Africa’s constitutional dispensation required prior Parliamentary approval for the Executive to lawfully participate in a decision to curb the powers of the Tribunal or withdraw South Africa from its obligations under the SADC Treaty and the Protocol establishing the Tribunal.
“A restoration of the SADC Tribunal to its original character will facilitate individual access to a much needed accountability mechanism and greatly enhance regional confidence in human rights and the rule of law”, said Arnold Tsunga.
In line with articles 14 and 15 of its 2000 Protocol, the SADC Tribunal had exercised supervisory jurisdiction over the human rights commitments of SADC Member State under the SADC Treaty.
The ICJ called on the governments of Southern Africa’s other 14 SADC Member States to take immediate and concrete steps to restore the SADC Tribunal and recommit to rebuilding, staffing and funding it to ensure its effectiveness.
Contact
Arnold Tsunga, ICJ Africa Director; t: +27716405926, or +254 746 608 859 ; e: arnold.tsunga(a)icj.org
Solomon Ebobrah, Senior Legal Adviser, ICJ Africa Regional Programme, t: +234 8034927549; e: solomon.ebobrah(a)icj.org
Feb 27, 2018 | Events, News
The ICJ, in collaboration with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Regional Office for South-East Asia (OHCHR), and the Centre for Civil and Political Rights, organised a workshop for lawyers from southeast Asia, on engaging with UN human rights mechanisms.
The two-day workshop provided some thirty lawyers from Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Lao PDR with knowledge, practical skills and expert advice about UN human rights mechanisms, with the participants themselves sharing their own experiences and expertise.
In addition to explaining what the UN mechanisms are and how they work, the workshop discussed how lawyers can use the outputs of UN human rights mechanisms in their professional activities, as well as how to communicate with and participate in UN human rights mechanisms in order to ensure good cooperation and to best serve the interests of their clients.
Sessions were introduced by presentations by the ICJ’s Main Representative to the United Nations in Geneva and OHCHR officials, followed by discussions and practical exercises in which all participants were encouraged to contribute questions and their own observations.
A special discussion of effective engagement of lawyers with Treaty Bodies was led by Professor Yuval Shany, a member of the Human Rights Committee established to interpret and apply the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
The workshop also aimed to encourage the building of relationships and networks between the lawyers from across the region.
The workshop forms part of a broader project of awareness-raising and capacity-building for lawyers from the region, about UN mechanisms.
A similar workshop was held in January 2017 for lawyers from Myanmar.
The project has also published (unofficial) translations of key UN publications into relevant languages, and is hosting lawyers in a mentorship programme in Geneva.
More details are available by contacting UN Representative Matt Pollard (matt.pollard(a)icj.org) or by clicking here: https://www.icj.org/accesstojusticeunmechanisms/
