basic human rights and societies

dossier

Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict

The power of partnership : guiding principles for partnerships to end violations against children during armed conflict

Appalling abuses continue to be committed against children affected by armed conflict, despite the substantial strides made by the United Nations Security Council and the international community since the adoption of the Security Council’s six resolutions establishing an architecture for monitoring, reporting and eventually holding perpetrators of violations against children accountable. With the adoption of the UN Security Council’s Resolution 1612 in July 2005, and the creation of the (...) read

date of on-line publication : 14 February 2007

Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict

Angola Report

According to UNICEF, Angola was among the worst places in the world to be a child, at least until 2002. One out of every three children used to die before the age of five. This was equal to one child dying every three minutes and 420 children dying every day. More than half of Angola’s population is under 18, yet little attention is paid to the urgent needs of youth and the consistent violations of their rights by the government and the opposition armed forces during the war. Both the (...) read

date of on-line publication : 14 February 2007

dossier

CETIM

The right to health

> Part of a series of the Human Rights Programme of the CETIM, 64 p., 2006

At first glance, it might seem misplaced to speak of health as a right when ever increasing segments of the world’s population are witnessing a steady degradation in the state of their health, to the point where their very existence is threatened. Further, most of the world’s disease - like most of its death - results from the non-satisfaction of basic needs, the lack of, or the non-access to, sanitation, potable water and food being surely the greatest and most pressing. The development of (...) read

date of on-line publication : 19 January 2007

dossier

UNICEF

The State of the world’s children 2007 : women and children, the double dividend of gender equality

> The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 2006, 160 p.

The State of the World’s Children 2007 examines the discrimination and disempowerment women face throughout their lives - and outlines what must be done to eliminate gender discrimination and empower women and girls. It looks at the status of women today, discusses how gender equality will move all the Millennium Development Goals forward, and shows how investment in women’s rights will ultimately produce a double dividend : advancing the rights of both women and children. Read the full (...) read

date of on-line publication : 12 December 2006

dossier

Amnesty International

Philippines : political killings, human rights and the peace process

Numbers of political killings in the Philippines are increasing for a second year, with at least 51 killings in the first six months of 2006 compared to 66 collated by Amnesty International in the whole of 2005. The leadership of the armed insurgency has threatened to form retaliatory assassination squads. The killings follow a pattern of unidentified men shooting leftist party members before escaping on motorcycle and have taken place in the context of an intensified counter-insurgency (...) read

date of on-line publication : 23 November 2006

dossier

Euro-mediterranean human rights network (EMHRN)

Achieving gender equality in the Euro-Mediterranean region : change is possible and necessary

In 2002 the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN) issued a report on Integration of Women’s Rights from the Middle East and North Africa into the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership. It provided a context for understanding the dynamics that hinder and promote women’s rights in the region. The current report Achieving gender equality in the Euro-Mediterranean region : change is possible and necessary revisits the key areas of discrimination against gender equality: family laws, penal and (...) read

date of on-line publication : 14 November 2006

The battle of Oaxaca

> ALAI, Latin America in Movement

http://alainet.org/active/14417& (...)

While the People of Oaxaca prepared to partake in the traditions that are repeated from year to year, spending the day in the cemeteries sharing food, flowers, pains and joys with their deceased, “operation Juárez 2006” unfolded around the Independent University Benito Juárez de Oaxaca (UABJO).
Just as in Iraq, the Ramadan is an opportunity to execute military operations that take advantage of the lowered guard of the resistance movement, the Day of the Dead in Oaxaca, with its rituals and the general demobilization due to the long break (November 1-5), was the occasion that was chosen for taking control of what the military commanders, after having occupied the main square (Zocalo), have considered to be the center core for activities of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO).
The treatment of this conflict, which in previous months had managed, though with many difficulties, to remain within a largely political framework, registered a rapid shift, as of October 28th, towards the military plane. The change was announced after a gloomy day on which groups of irregular forces, presumably linked to the governor Ulises Ruiz, mobilized to create a scene of disordered and uncontrolled violence. The scene was used to justify the presence of the Federal Preventative Police (PFP), a body of military police created for internal security, and whose statue is, by the way, unconstitutional. The military intelligence, under direct orders from the commanders of the Center of National Research and Security (CISEN) which form the High Command (or Joint Command), has taken control of Oaxaca after the incidents of violence (that caused the death of American journalist Bradley Will, among others), thereby turning a political dispute into an issue of national security, for which military operations are put in place.
The operation put in practice is defined by the Minister of the Interior as one of “occupation” in which the PFP works together with the Federal Agency of Investigations (AFI), homologous to the North American FBI. Meanwhile, the Navy and the Army are placed on guard for potential intervention (troops prepared in the military and coastal sectors) and keep watch.
Taking control of the main square was the first step in a strategy apparently thought of as a star which, once having occupied the center, unfurls itself in lines of irradiation towards the peripheries and outside the capital, where evidently exist the roots and deeper origins of a movement that emanates from the peoples of Oaxaca.
Paradoxically, the operation was not intended for the demobilization of the irregular groups responsible for the confusion and deaths on the 29th, but is directed specifically to the places where the APPO maintained a public presence.
The immediate goal consists, then, of dismantling the positions in the main square and in disabling the means of communication that the Oaxacan people would use to communicate among themselves and with the world. But just as in Iraq the delicate operation planned by the Pentagon failed, the taking of the main square in this case only spatially displaced what has never been a just a group of leaders, but an entire people mobilized. The first planning error in this operation is that, being conceived in military terms, it identifies with the enemy as a fixed and delimited being, when its nature is diffused, extended, interwoven and impersonal, because it has a collective and not an individualized personality. The bases of the APPO shifted, creating a sort of strip around the main square that, at one point, inspired an image of the besieger being besieged; but they actually disintegrated into the whole city, recreating their territoriality according to the new circumstances.  read

date of on-line publication : 9 November 2006

dossier

CETIM

The right to food

> Part of a series of the Human Rights Programme of the CETIM, 53 p., 2005.

http://www.cetim.ch/en

The right to food is a universal human right, recognized at the national, regional and international level.Currently, however, some 852 million persons throughout the world are seriously, and permanently, undernourished, 815 million of whom are in developing countries, 28 million in countries in transition and 9 million in developed countries.
The causes of undernourishment and of death from hunger and malnutrition are immensely complex, and they cannot be simply attributed to war or natural catastrophes. They are primarily due to social injustice, to political and economic exclusion and to discrimination. The means of demanding one’s right to food and the chances of obtaining redress highly depend on the information and enforcement mechanisms available at the national, regional and international level.
With this in mind, this brochure can be said to have a double purpose :

• to contribute to a clarification of the available information about the right to food
• to set out the monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, on the national, regional and international level, to which victims can have recourse when their right to food is violated.

date of on-line publication : 3 November 2006

OTTOLINI Cesare

Katrina one year later: civil movements demand right of return

http://www.habitants.org/noticias/in (...)

2005 Katrina demolished the United States Golf Coast with catastrophic results, previously known only to residents of the poorest countries like Bangladesh, but with an unprecedented mass media impact: this time the first world was the victim.
After the emotion and the initial phase of confusion, everything seemed to be under control, so much that the Bush Administration declared that America was able to handle the catastrophe on its own, refusing the assistance of countries that, like Cuba, were ready to send urgently needed assistance. More than 110 billion dollars were immediately allocated for the reconstruction. The government, marking August 29th a National Day of Remembrance of Hurricane Katrina, today affirmed that in excess of 70% of the resources were either utilized or available.
This is not the truth. We are familiar with the dramatic images of those days, with survivors desperately clinging to their roofs in Louisiana and Missouri, the inferno of the Superdome transformed into a welcome center, and the army set to patrol to keep order and defend private property.
We know even less about what happened during the last 12 months: the solidarity initiatives, the marches, the protests, the lawsuits, the network proposals, the citizens’ organizations, the labor unions relegated to the local news.  read

date of on-line publication : 18 October 2006

Human Rights Watch (HRW)

Sudan: No Justice for Darfur Victims

Special Courts Failing to Prosecute War Crimes

http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006 (...)

The Office of the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced it had opened an investigation into the events in Darfur. The next day Sudan’s chief justice announced the establishment of the Special Criminal Courts on the Events in Darfur (SCCED), telling the Sudanese media that the court was “considered a substitute to the international criminal court.” “The cases before the court so far involve ordinary crimes like theft and receiving stolen goods, which don’t begin to reflect the massive scale of destruction in Darfur,” said Sara Darehshori, senior counsel to the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch and author of the briefing paper. “The Sudanese government must do more than pay lip service to the idea of justice.”  read

date of on-line publication : 22 June 2006