Sep 15, 2014 | Advocacy, Non-legal submissions
The ICJ supports a joint oral statement, delivered by ARC International, in relation to the Panel on “Protection of the Family”, at the UN Human Rights Council today.
The oral statement emphasised the importance of recognising the diversity of forms of families around the world.
It also noted that familes can be sites for transmissions of values, and that this can on the one hand include the promotion of human rights values, or on the other hand values incompatible with respect for human rights.
Finally, the statement highlighted that a human rights-based approach to family policies must recognise that individuals within families have human rights that require protection. Indeed, while families have the potential to help protect the human rights of their members from violations, families also have the potential to conceal abuses of human rights within the family.
The full statement in PDF format may be downloaded here: Universal-ProtectionofFamily-Advocacy-nonlegalsubmission-2014.EN
Sep 5, 2014 | Advocacy, Non-legal submissions, Uncategorized
The ICJ, Amnesty and independent experts Eugene R. Fidell, Elizabeth L. Hillman, Nancy Duff Campbell, made a submission for the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the United States on the failure of the US military justice system to comply with the State’s international human rights obligations.
USA-Military Justice system UPR-Advocacy-non legal submission-2014 (full text in pdf)
Aug 26, 2014 | Advocacy, Non-legal submissions
The ICJ and other leading NGOs have called on the President and member states of the Human Rights Council, as well as the government of Sri Lanka, to take action to ensure no-one faces reprisals for cooperating with the United Nations.
Aug 12, 2014 | Events
Matt Pollard and Alex Conte, of the ICJ’s International Law and Protection Programmes, will give presentations during the Global Consultation on the Right to Challenge the Lawfulness of Detention, to be held in Geneva on 1-2 September 2014.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, in cooperation with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, will convene the Consultation. The aim of the two-day meeting is to seek input on the development by the Working Group of draft basic principles and guidelines on remedies and procedures on the right of anyone deprived of his or her liberty, by arrest or detention, to bring proceedings before court, in order that the court may decide without delay on the lawfulness of his or her detention and order his or her release if the detention is not lawful.
ICJ experts, Matt Pollard and Alex Conte, will be members of two panel discussions during the Global Consultation, respectively on the framework, scope and content of the right to court review of detention and on exercise of that right in situations of armed conflict, state of emergency or for counter-terrorism purposes.
The ICJ has already made two written submissions to the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on the subject, in November 2013 and April 2014.
Go to the OHCHR webpage on the Global Consultation
See the ICJ’s written submissions to the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention
Jul 2, 2014 | Advocacy, Position papers
The ICJ and other NGOs have issued a joint statement urging the UN Human Rights Council to ensure that a discussion of “protection of the family” in September will reflect diversity and focus on human rights.
The ICJ is concerned, due to the way the resolution to establish the Panel discussion has been pursued, that some States will seek to exploit it as a vehicle for promoting a narrow, exclusionary and patriarchal concept of “the family” that denies equal protection to the human rights of individuals who belong to the various and diverse forms of family that exist across the globe.
Previous UN resolutions on the family include language, agreed by all States, that recognized that “various forms of the family exist”. The authors of the resolution deliberately omitted this language, despite this issue being consistently raised by other States throughout the negotiations.
A wholly inappropriate procedural tactic was used by some states to block discussion of a proposed amendment that would have restored the “various forms” language.
Efforts to ensure that the resolution clearly acknowledged and addressed the fact that the family is also a setting in which human rights abuses sometimes take place were partially successful.
The Panel topic will be “on the protection of the family and its members to address the implementation of States’ obligations under relevant provisions of international human rights law and to discuss challenges and best practices in this regard” (emphasis added).
The resolution reaffirms “that States have the primary responsibility to promote and protect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all human beings, including women, children and older persons”. Unfortunately, however, the text of the resolution still does not give enough emphasis to this important aspect.
The organizations affirm that they will continue to insist on recognition that various forms of the family exist, and that individuals should not be discriminated against as a result of the form of family to which they happen to belong.
States should not fail to promote and protect the rights of persons because they belong to particular forms of family.
The organizations will continue to insist that the promotion and protection of the human rights of individuals within all families must be of the paramount importance to the UN Human Rights Council.
The joint statement may be downloaded in PDF here: HRC26-Joint statement family resolution-Advocacy-Position paper-2014
