Feb 10, 2017 | News
Extending the mandate of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and Commission on Investigation of Disappeared Persons (COID) without accompanying legal amendments to the TRC Act, 2014, in line with Nepal’s international legal obligations, will be meaningless, the ICJ said today.
It will fail to empower the commissions to address the root causes of the conflict and provide justice to victims, the ICJ added.
On 9 February 2017, the Government of Nepal formally extended the mandate of the TRC and COID for another year.
The TRC and COID were established on 10 February 2015 through the Commission on Investigation of Disappeared Persons, Truth and Reconciliation Act, 2014 (TRC Act), with the mandate to investigate alleged human rights abuses committed by both sides of Nepal’s decade-long armed conflict between the Government of Nepal and Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) rebels.
However, due to a flawed legal mandate, resource and capacity limitations, and lack of political will, the commissions have been unable to carry out their work effectively.
“Unless the government of Nepal is prepared to amend the TRC Act in line with the Nepal Supreme Court’s rulings and international law, and to take other concrete steps to address the persistent challenges that have plagued the commissions’ ability to complete their work over the past two years, the extension of their mandate will be meaningless,” said Sam Zarifi, the ICJ’s Asia-Pacific Director.
In two separate rulings, the Nepal Supreme Court has previously ruled that the TRC Act and its predecessor TRC Ordinance were in violation of Nepal’s international legal obligations, as they allowed for amnesties for gross human rights abuses and serious violations of international humanitarian law amounting to crimes under international law.
Despite repeated calls by the ICJ, as well as other human rights and victims groups, to ensure a credible transitional justice process by amending the TRC Act in line with Nepal’s Supreme Court order and international standards, and by providing adequate resources to enable the commissions to carry out their work effectively and independently, the Government of Nepal has thus far failed to take any steps to implement the Supreme Court’s orders.
Nevertheless, the commissions finally commenced their work in February 2016, one year into their two-year mandate, and despite a severe lack of public faith in the commitment of the government and the ability of the commissions to deliver justice, victims came forward to submit more than 60,000 complaints to the two commissions combined.
“The government of Nepal must demonstrate its commitment to deliver justice to victims of Nepal’s armed conflict,” said Zarifi. “Victims have already waited more than a decade to receive justice and are losing hope in the transitional justice process.”
“The Nepal government and political parties must not once again betray the trust of victims by perpetuating a fundamentally flawed transitional justice process without concomitant reforms that will address victims’ rights to truth, justice and reparation,” he added.
While extending the mandate of the TRC and COID, the Government of Nepal must immediately establish a credible transitional justice process that ensures victims’ rights to truth, justice and reparation by: amending the TRC Act in line with the Supreme Court rulings and international law; empowering the TRC and COID with adequate resources to function independently, transparently and in a victim-centred manner; and, adopting necessary legislation to criminalize serious international crimes, including enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment, and rape and other sexual violence, with retroactive effect and without any limitations period for conflict-era cases.
Feb 2, 2017 | News
Today, the ICJ in cooperation with the the Supreme Court of Turkmenistan holds a seminar on Comparative Approaches to Judicial Ethics.
The seminar, supported by the European Union, will be attended by judges of the Supreme Court of Turkmenistan as well as other judges.
ICJ experts, including Judge Vladimir Borissov, former judge of the Supreme Court of Kazakhstan, Judge Georg Stawa, the President of the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ), and others will present comparative perspective and international standards related to the judicial ethics, accountability and guarantees for judges.
This is the second such event the ICJ holds in Turkmenistan. The first event, organized in June 2016, was dedicated to the issue of international obligations in national courts.
Turkmenistan-Judicial ethics seminar-News-web story-2017-RUS (full story in Russian, PDF)
Turkmenistan-Seminar Ethics-Agenda-2017-ENG (agenda in English, PDF)
Turkmenistan-Seminar Ethics-Agenda-2017-RUS (agenda in Russian, PDF)
Feb 1, 2017 | News
The ICJ today launched a new global initiative focussed on redress and accountability for gross human rights violations.
In all regions of the world, perpetrators of gross human rights violations enjoy impunity while victims, especially the most vulnerable and marginalized, remain without effective remedies and reparation.
Governments of countries in transition and/or experiencing a wider rule of law crisis often seek to provide impunity for perpetrators of gross violations of human rights, or make no effort to hold them to account, or misuse accountability mechanisms to provide arbitrary, politically partial justice.
Yet international law requires perpetrators to be held accountable and victims to be provided with effective remedies and reparation, including truth and guarantees of non-recurrence.
This is reinforced by the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, which recognizes the need to build peaceful, just and inclusive societies that provide equal access to justice, are based on the rule of law and respect for human rights, and provide for accountability.
“Impunity and lack of redress dehumanizes victims and acts as an impediment to the cementing of democratic values and the rule of law”, said Alex Conte, coordinator of the ICJ initiative.
Lack of accountability and claims for justice dominate national debates, frequently leading to a paralysis or reduced functioning of the institutions of the State and detracting from the pursuit of other rule of law and development initiatives.
Impunity threatens a nascent democracy by rendering its constitution hollow, weakening its judiciary and damaging the political credibility of its executive.
Public institutions often act in ways that bring them into disrepute and undermine the public confidence in them that is required for sustainable transition, for example through the legislature enacting laws providing for impunity, through law enforcement and the judiciary acting on a selective basis or without independence, and/or through the executive ignoring rule of law based judgments by higher courts.
A failure to guarantee redress and accountability has too often also resulted in former structures of power, to the extent that they enjoy impunity, transforming into criminal and hostile elements that may perpetuate violence and conflict.
The ICJ’s new initiative, generously sponsored by the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, currently focuses on seven countries (Cambodia, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Tajikistan, Tunisia and Venezuela) aims to combat impunity and promote redress for gross human rights violations.
It concentrates on the transformative role of the law, justice mechanisms and justice actors, seeking to achieve greater adherence of national legal and institutional frameworks with international law and standards so as to allow for effective redress and accountability; more independent justice mechanisms capable of dealing with challenges of impunity and access to redress; and judges, lawyers, human rights defenders, victims and their representatives that are better equipped to demand and deliver truth, justice and reparation.
The initiative will commence with the production of baseline studies on the situation in each focus country concerning accountability, access to justice/redress and the independence and accountability of judges and lawyers.
These will form the basis for tailored plans of action for each country identifying interventions and capacity building activities that can best drive the brining to justice of perpetrators of human rights violations and the access of victims to effective remedies and reparation.
Implementation of those activities will follow, alongside the production of global manuals and guides on key challenges for redress and accountability.
GRA Initiative Factsheet
Jan 19, 2017 | News
The Sri Lankan government must deliver on the clear demand for justice from Sri Lankans nationwide by implementing the Consultation Task Force recommendations without further delay, the ICJ said today.
Among these recommendations, the calls for a special court with international judges and a bar against amnesties for crimes under international law are of particular importance, the ICJ added.
The Consultation Task Force on Reconciliation Mechanisms (CTF), a panel of 11 independent eminent persons appointed by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in January 2016, publicly released its final report on 3 January 2017.
The report, reflecting the views of people across the country gathered through island-wide public consultations on transitional justice, highlights the lack of public confidence in the justice system’s capacity and will to deliver justice for victims of Sri Lanka’s nearly 30-year armed conflict that ended in 2009.
“The CTF report highlights a widespread lack of trust among Sri Lankans across the country, regardless of region, ethnicity, religion or language, in the ability of the criminal justice system in its current form to address serious human rights abuses stemming from the conflict,” said Nikhil Narayan, the ICJ’s South Asia senior legal adviser.
The report also calls upon the Government of Sri Lanka to take necessary steps to ensure a credible transitional justice process in line with the October 2015 UN Human Rights Council resolution 30/1 that it co-sponsored.
“If the Sri Lankan government wants to restore public confidence in the system, it must seriously consider victims’ voices and implement the CTF recommendations on truth, justice and reparation consistent with the commitments it voluntary undertook at the Human Rights Council,” Narayan added.
Importantly, the CTF report reiterates the commitments pledged in HRC resolution 30/1, calling for active international participation in a special judicial mechanism established to deal with accountability for human rights abuses committed during the conflict by both sides, and for a bar against amnesties for international crimes.
According to the ICJ, the Sri Lankan government took an important first step towards reconciliation when it adopted the UN resolution and later established the CTF to carry out public consultations to hear a cross section of voices on transitional justice.
“Unfortunately, since then, it has been disappointing in its lack of urgency in implementing much of those stated promises and in its apparent disregard for the CTF recommendations,” Narayan said.
Several members of the government have dismissed the CTF’s recommendations, especially with regard to the inclusion of at least one international judge on every bench of the special judicial mechanism.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs recently spoke of the need for “an independent and credible domestic mechanism” without alluding to any international participation, as has been reiterated by those seeking redress as a crucial element to ensure faith in the justice mechanism.
The ICJ has in the past highlighted Sri Lanka’s culture of impunity in the justice system looking at a number of emblematic cases, and called into question the State’s capacity and political will to use the criminal justice system and other ad-hoc measures to deliver justice and accountability to victims and survivors of serious human rights abuses.
“As the situation of Sri Lanka comes before the UN Human Rights Council again this March, the Sri Lankan government is in a position to demonstrate both to the UN Member States but more importantly to its own people at home its seriousness in pursuing truth, justice, reparation and non-recurrence for conflict victims who have been waiting for justice for decades. It must seize this opportunity before it is one more of many missed opportunities,” Narayan added.
Contact:
Nikhil Narayan, ICJ South Asia senior legal adviser, t: +91-8939325204 (Chennai); +94-758898067 (Sri Lanka); +1-562-261-3770 (Whatsapp) ; e: nikhil.narayan(a)icj.org
Download the full text with additional background info, in PDF:
Sri Lanka-CTF recommendations-News-Press release-2016-ENG
Dec 14, 2016 | Advocacy, Non-legal submissions
The ICJ today joined other NGOs in calling on the UN Human Rights Council to take bold and decisive action to address the grave situation in South Sudan.
The statement, made during a Special Session of the Human Rights Council, convened on an urgent basis to discuss the situation in South Sudan, underscores the negative consequences of continuing impunity and lack of accountability, and calls among other things for the Human Rights Council resolution to be adopted that would:
· Support a strengthened mandate and capacity of the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan to investigate serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law and identify alleged perpetrators, with a special focus on sexual and gender based crimes.
· Request that the report of the UN Commission is transmitted to the UN Security Council for consideration and further action.
· Urge that all states encourage further concrete action to prevent a further escalation of violence and conflict, and to deter and address these on-going violations of international human rights and humanitarian law at the UN Security Council, including sanctions and the imposition of a comprehensive arms embargo.
· Urge the African Union to take immediate steps to establish the hybrid court for South Sudan provided for in the 2015 peace agreement.
The Human Rights Council ultimately adopted, without a vote (i.e. by consensus), a resolution that includes many of these elements (final text not yet available).
The full statement can be downloaded in PDF format here: un-jointstatementsouthsudan-advocacy-2016
It was delivered by Human Rights Watch on behalf of:
- Amnesty International
- Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia
- Defend Defenders
- Human Rights Watch
- Humanity United
- International Commission of Jurists
- International Refugee Rights Initiative
- International Service for Human Rights
- National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders Uganda
- Pan-African Human Rights Defenders Network
- South Sudan Human Rights Defenders Network
