Category Archives: News

12Jan/23

Human Rights Watch Issues Damning Verdict for UK

Click to expand Image

Volunteers sort food into food parcels at the Rumney Forum community charity on November 8, 2022 in Cardiff, Wales.
© 2022 Matthew Horwood/Getty Images

(London) – The United Kingdom government repeatedly sought to damage and undermine human rights protections in 2022, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2023. 
 
“In 2022, we saw the most significant assault on human rights protections in the UK in decades,” said Yasmine Ahmed, UK director at Human Rights Watch. “From your right to protest to your ability to hold institutions to account, fundamental and hard-won rights are being systematically dismantled.” 
 
In the 712-page World Report 2023, its 33rd edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in close to 100 countries. In her introductory essay, acting Executive Director Tirana Hassan says that in a world in which power has shifted, it is no longer possible to rely on a small group of mostly Global North governments to defend human rights. The world’s mobilization around Russia’s war in Ukraine reminds us of the extraordinary potential when governments realize their human rights obligations on a global scale. The responsibility is on individual countries, big and small, to apply a human rights framework to their policies, and then work together to protect and promote human rights. 
 
Human Rights Watch highlighted several laws introduced in 2022 that had the effect of significantly weakening human rights protections. The UK government introduced laws that stripped rights of asylum seekers and other vulnerable people, encouraged voter disenfranchisement, limited judicial oversight of government actions, and placed new restrictions on the right to peaceful protest. 
 
The government also proposed the repeal and replacement of the Human Rights Act, which gives life to the European Convention on Human Rights in the United Kingdom, with a so-called Bill of Rights. Human Rights Watch said the bill, if adopted, would fundamentally undermine human rights protections in the UK. 
 
As these rights were being stripped away, the United Kingdom was hit hard by a cost-of-living crisis, with inflation reaching 11.1 percent by the end of October and official data showing that low-income households disproportionately felt the impact of rising energy and food prices. 
 
The government’s refusal to reverse a social security cut made in 2021, and a November 2022 announcement that social security support would not increase to meet inflation until April 2023 breach the rights to social security and to an adequate standard of living, Human Rights Watch said. Frontline welfare, anti-poverty, and food aid organizations criticized the government’s position. 
 
On the world stage, the UK’s record was decidedly mixed, Human Rights Watch said. Commendably, the government took on a leading role in multilateral forums to address abuses in Myanmar, China, Hong Kong, Russia, and Sri Lanka, as well as referring the Ukraine situation to the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor. However, in a number of situations, the UK failed to speak up or act against abuses, including those committed by Israel or that had been committed, including by the UK, during the colonial period. 
 
In April, the government passed the Nationality and Borders Act, which stripped away fundamental commitments to protect people fleeing persecution. The act criminalizes many of those who attempt to enter the UK irregularly to seek protection, empowers UK officials to engage in dangerous pushbacks at sea, and allows the government to expel asylum seekers from the UK to alleged “safe third countries.” 
 
The government then brokered a deal with Rwanda to expel asylum seekers arriving by boat or other irregular routes to Rwanda, despite the country’s appalling human rights record and opposition to the deal by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other UN experts. The deal has been challenged in court, with the UNHCR intervening in the case, and the government has not yet been able to expel anyone to Rwanda. 
 
In June, when the UK’s then prime minister visited Rwanda for a Commonwealth summit, he failed to raise any human rights concerns. The UK government also continued to fund countries engaged in egregious human rights violations, including Bahrain; obstructed a proposal at the World Trade Organization to waive intellectual property rules for Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics; undermined a Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel; and voted against a UN Human Rights Council resolution on racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia. 
 
These policies undermine the UK’s ability to effectively advocate for a rules-based international order, Human Rights Watch said. 
 
“Despite heralding itself as playing a ‘leading role in defending democracy and freedom across the world,’ the UK Government has taken a sledgehammer to fundamental international commitments,” Ahmed said. “In one breath the British government is denouncing Russia for violating international law and in the next it’s actively flouting and undermining its own international commitments.” 

12Jan/23

Ukraine: Russian Invasion Causing Widespread Suffering for Civilians

Click to expand Image

A family walks amid destroyed military vehicles in Bucha, near Kyiv, Ukraine, April 6, 2022.
© 2022 AP Photo/Felipe Dana.

(Kyiv, January 12, 2023) – Russia’s war in Ukraine has wrought a devastating toll on civilians and shattered civilian life in much of the country, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2023.

Russian forces have committed apparent war crimes and crimes against humanity, including torture, summary executions, and enforced disappearances. They have carried out indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas and repeatedly targeted energy infrastructure, leaving millions of civilians periodically without electricity, water, and heat as winter temperatures plunged. More than 14 million Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes. Information about Ukrainian forces violating the laws of war by mistreatment and apparent summary executions of prisoners of war, which would constitute a war crime, also emerged.

“Throughout the war, Russian forces have carried out horrific abuses in Ukraine with unconscionable disregard for civilian life,” said Yulia Gorbunova, senior Ukraine researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Accountability is crucial, both to bring justice to victims and survivors and to ensure that there is no impunity for these grave crimes.”

In the 712-page World Report 2023, its 33rd edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in close to 100 countries. In her introductory essay, acting Executive Director Tirana Hassan says that in a world in which power has shifted, it is no longer possible to rely on a small group of mostly Global North governments to defend human rights. The world’s mobilization around Russia’s war in Ukraine reminds us of the extraordinary potential when governments realize their human rights obligations on a global scale. The responsibility is on individual countries, big and small, to apply a human rights framework to their policies, and then work together to protect and promote human rights.

Since Russia’s February invasion, the United Nations has reported at least 6,919 civilian deaths and more than 11,000 wounded as a result of the war in Ukraine and estimates the actual figures to be much higher. Approximately 6.5 million Ukrainians are internally displaced, and about 5 million have fled as refugees to European countries. About 2.8 million Ukrainians are in Russia and Belarus, in some cases against their will.

Russian forces have killed, arbitrarily detained, tortured, and forcibly disappeared civilians. Detainees reported beatings, electric shocks, mock executions, and water boarding, among other torture and mistreatment. Russian forces have also tortured Ukrainian prisoners of war. Russian soldiers held people in degrading conditions in basements, pits, boiler rooms, and factories.

In December 2022, the UN reported that between February 24 and October 21, it had documented 86 cases of sexual violence, most by Russian forces, including rape, gang rape, forced nudity, and forced public stripping in various regions of Ukraine and in one penitentiary facility in Russia. Women, including older women, and girls constituted the majority of reported victims and survivors. Hostilities, occupation, displacement, and destruction of medical services, as well as stigma and fear of retaliation, hindered survivors’ access to essential services and support.

Human Rights Watch and UN monitors have documented killings and torture of prisoners of war held by Russian forces, including torture leading to death. The UN also documented instances of ill-treatment of Russian prisoners of war held by Ukrainian forces.

Since February, Russian forces have repeatedly carried out disproportionate and indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilian areas. These attacks destroyed and severely damaged homes, businesses, schools, health care institutions, and other facilities. Over 2,700 educational institutions have been damaged, more than 300 beyond repair.

These attacks have struck many hospitals, including at least one children’s hospital in Chernihiv, a maternity hospital in Kharkiv, and a maternity ward in Vilniansk. As of October, the World Health Organization had confirmed more than 700 attacks on healthcare facilities, personnel, and vehicles, which killed at least 200 people.

Many of these attacks on civilian areas have been with explosive weapons with wide area affects, including cluster munitions, unguided aerial bombs, and guided missiles.

At times, Russian and Ukrainian forces used schools for military purposes, leading to their coming under attack by the opposing force.

Ukrainian forces used cluster munitions in the Kharkiv region on a few occasions against areas under Russian control.

The use of antipersonnel landmines in Ukraine has been extensive.

Russian forces also carried out targeted attacks on civilians in vehicles trying to flee hostilities, without any apparent effort to verify whether the occupants were civilians.

Russian forces’ attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure disrupted access to electricity, heat, and in some cases water services for millions of civilians throughout the country, ahead of and during the cold winter months. Russian military and other personnel restricted civilians fleeing hostilities in the Mariupol area in southern Ukraine from accessing Ukrainian-controlled territories, forcing some to stay in Russian-occupied areas or go to Russia. In some cases, Russian officials organized mass, forced transfers of Ukrainians, sometimes against their will or without providing any meaningful choice.

Russian officials also subjected thousands of civilians fleeing hostilities to compulsory, punitive, and abusive “filtration,” during which the officials collected extensive sensitive personal information including biometric data. An unknown number of people were detained during the filtration process and are presumed to be held in Russian-controlled regions.

The UN and human rights organizations have noted the disproportionate impact of the war on people with disabilities and older people. Some have been trapped in residential institutions facing enormous risks to their life and health. The UN and human rights and humanitarian aid groups have also highlighted the war’s disproportionate impact on women and girls, including female-headed households, and other marginalized groups.

As part of an unprecedented response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, multilateral organizations and foreign governments swiftly made use of a range of accountability mechanisms and tools, underscoring the importance of justice for serious crimes.

12Jan/23

A New Model for Global Leadership on Human Rights

Click to expand Image

(London) – The litany of human rights crises that unfolded in 2022 – from Ukraine to China to Afghanistan – has left behind a sea of human suffering, but it has also opened new opportunities for human rights leadership from countries around the world, Tirana Hassan, acting executive director at Human Rights Watch, said today in releasing the Human Rights Watch World Report 2023. The World Report looks at the state of human rights in nearly 100 countries where Human Rights Watch works.

As power shifts across the world, protecting and strengthening the global human rights system in the face of predictable efforts by abusive leaders to tear it down demands renewed commitments by all governments that transcend current political alliances.

“The past year has demonstrated that all governments bear the responsibility of protecting human rights around the world,” Hassan said. “Against a backdrop of shifting power, there is more space, not less, for states to stand up for human rights as new coalitions and new voices of leadership emerge.”

In the 712-page World Report 2023, its 33rd edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in close to 100 countries. In her introductory essay, Hassan says that in a world in which power has shifted, it is no longer possible to rely on a small group of mostly Global North governments to defend human rights. The world’s mobilization around Russia’s war in Ukraine reminds us of the extraordinary potential when governments realize their human rights obligations on a global scale. The responsibility is on individual countries, big and small, to apply a human rights framework to their policies, and then work together to protect and promote human rights. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which has targeted civilian infrastructure and resulted in thousands of civilian casualties, captured the world’s attention and triggered the human rights system’s full arsenal. The United Nations Human Rights Council opened an investigation into abuses and appointed an expert to monitor the human rights situation inside Russia. The International Criminal Court opened an investigation following a referral from a record number of the court’s member countries. The European Union, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and other governments also imposed unprecedented international sanctions against Russian individuals, companies, and other entities linked to the Russian government.

Governments that are providing unparalleled consolidated support for Ukraine should ask what the situation would be if they had held Putin to account in 2014, at the onset of the war in eastern Ukraine; or in 2015, for abuses in Syria; or even earlier, for the escalation of human rights abuses in Russia over the last decade.

This sort of global action is needed in Ethiopia, where two years of atrocities by all parties to the conflict have received only a tiny fraction of the attention focused on Ukraine, contributing to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, Hassan said.

The UN Security Council, which is charged with ensuring international peace and security, has not been willing to put Ethiopia on its formal agenda due to blocks by African members as well as Russia and China. The recently concluded African Union-led peace process has resulted in a fragile truce, but for it to hold, the agreement’s backers including the African Union, UN, and US should signal and maintain pressure to ensure that those who committed grave crimes during the war are held to account to break deadly cycles of violence and impunity. Accountability is critical for victims to obtain a measure of justice and reparations that has so far been elusive.  

The Chinese government’s lack of accountability for the mass detention, torture, and forced labor of as many as a million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in the Xinjiang region persists. The UN Human Rights Council fell two votes short of passing a resolution to discuss the UN high commissioner for human rights report that concluded that abuses in Xinjiang may amount to crimes against humanity.

The closeness of that vote shows the growing support among governments to hold the Chinese government accountable and highlights the potential for cross-regional alliances and fresh coalitions to challenge Beijing’s expectation of impunity.

Governments, such as Australia, Japan, Canada, the UK, EU, and US, that are reconsidering their relationships with China, are looking to expand trade and security arrangements with India. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has mimicked many of the same abuses that have enabled Chinese state repression, and deepening ties with India without pressure on Modi to respect rights squanders valuable leverage to protect India’s increasingly endangered civic space.  

“Autocrats rely on the illusion that their strong-arm tactics are necessary for stability, but as brave protesters around the world show time and again, repression is not a shortcut to stability,” Hassan said. “The protests in cities across China against the Chinese government’s strict ‘zero Covid’ lockdown measures show that people’s desires for human rights cannot be erased despite Beijing’s efforts to repress them.”

Rights-respecting governments have both the opportunity and the responsibility to lend their political attention and stamina to protest movements and civil society groups that are challenging abusive governments in countries like Sudan and Myanmar. In Sudan, policymakers from the US, UN, EU, and regional partners engaging with Sudan’s military leadership should prioritize the demands of protest and victims’ groups for justice and an end to impunity for those in command positions. And the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) should intensify pressure on Myanmar’s junta by aligning with international efforts to cut off the military’s sources of foreign currency.

The international community should also apply a human rights lens to the existential threat of climate change. From Pakistan to Nigeria to Australia, every corner of the world faces a nonstop cycle of human-induced catastrophic flooding, massive wildfires, and drought. These disasters illustrate the cost of inaction, with the most vulnerable paying the highest price. Government officials have a legal and moral obligation to regulate the industries, such as fossil fuel and logging, whose business models are incompatible with protecting basic rights.

“Assisting frontline communities and environmental defenders is one of the most powerful ways to push back against corporate and government activities that harm the environment and protect critical ecosystems needed to address the climate crisis,” Hassan said. “In Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has pledged to reduce Amazon deforestation to zero and defend Indigenous rights, and his ability to deliver on his climate and human rights commitments is critical for Brazil and the world.”

The magnitude, scale, and frequency of human rights crises across the globe demonstrate the urgency of a new framing and new model for action. Centering our greatest challenges and threats to the modern world around human rights reveals not only the root causes of disruption but also offers guidance to address them. Every government has the obligation to protect and stand up for human rights.

“The world’s mobilization around Ukraine showed what’s possible when governments work together,” Hassan said. “The challenge for all governments is to bring the same spirit of solidarity to reimagine what it takes to achieve success in protecting and promoting human rights around the globe.”