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
Sep 16, 2016 | Advocacy, Non-legal submissions
On 16 September 2016, the ICJ made a submission to the Universal Periodic Review of India.
The submission brings to the attention of the members of the Human Rights Council’s Working Group on the UPR issues concerning:
- discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity;
- death penalty;
- impunity and accountability;
- freedom of speech, expression and association;
- ratification and implementation of international human rights instruments.
india-icj-upr-submission-advocay-non-legal-submission-2016-eng (full text in PDF)
Sep 15, 2016 | Advocacy, Non-legal submissions
The ICJ, with support of the NGO the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), spoke at the UN Human Rights Council today on the continuing problem of enforced disappearances in Pakistan.
The statement was delivered during an interactive dialogue with the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.
The ICJ, with support of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), welcomed the Working Group’s follow-up report on recommendations from its 2012 visit to Pakistan, and stated further as follows:
The practice of enforced disappearance has persisted and expanded since the Working Group’s visit. Previously restricted mainly to Balochistan, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, enforced disappearances are now a nation-wide phenomenon.
In August 2015, Zeenat Shahzadi, a Pakistani journalist, went “missing” from Lahore, a rare case of alleged enforced disappearance of a woman.
Estimates of the overall number of cases of enforced disappearance vary. The official Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances has reported nearly 1,400 unresolved cases.
The HRCP, an NGO that documents human rights violations in 60 districts, has reported 370 cases of enforced disappearance since 2014.
Other NGOs claim between 5,000 to 18,000 cases. Even by the most conservative estimates, a significant number of enforced disappearances remain unresolved.
The Government has not brought perpetrators to account in even a single case of enforced disappearance. Rather than effective measures to prevent the practice or to strengthen existing accountability mechanisms, recent legislation actually facilitates enforced disappearances.
In January 2015, Pakistan empowered military courts to try civilians for terrorism-related offences. These courts have since sentenced at least 100 people to death, and at least 12 have been hanged, after grossly unfair trials without possibility of appeal to any civilian courts, including the Supreme Court.
Families allege that some of those tried had been subjected to enforced disappearance by military authorities, and military control over the proceedings leaves the family and victim without effective remedy.
Victims’ groups, lawyers, and activists working on enforced disappearance also continue to face security risks including attacks, harassment, surveillance, and intimidation.
The ICJ and HRCP commend the Working Group for its systematic follow-up, which can have a positive impact, and urge the Working Group to continue to monitor and report on the situation in Pakistan.
The statement may be downloaded in PDF format here: hrc33-oralstatement-disappearances-pakistan-15092016
