Asst Secretary of State, Esther Brimmer © 2009 United States Mission
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Esther Brimmer, assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, addressed the UN Human Rights Council as US representative, and announced 14 September that the US was committed to ensuring the council’s operational independence.
She pointed out that the US is already the council’s top donor, and that the US would continue to support the technical assistance programmes of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights worldwide. Brimmer added that the US record on human rights was not perfect, and that the US looked forward to its universal periodic review (UPR), a review mechanism that aims to improve the human rights situation in all 192 UN member states.
President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya has removed the country’s police commissioner, putting Mohammed Hussein Ali in charge of the postal service instead. He also removed seven top deputies, but the official statement on the changes gives no reason. Ali was brought in six years ago to clean up the police force, which had a reputation for corruption, but human rights groups in Kenya and outside, including Human Rights Watch and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, have accused the police of looting and raping during the 2007 election riots where more than 1,000 people died. The new man in charge is Mathew Iteere, who has headed what the BBC describes as the “elite General Services Unit – the feared police shock troops often called in to control civil unrest.” Initial reaction to the changes, inside and outside Kenya, appear to be cautiously positive. BBC World Service radio, Independent Online, South Africa and 28 August editorial in AllAfrica on reforms under discussion
Missing persons, working with families: Peru (image: © 2009 B Heger / ICRC)
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Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – When the second world war came to an end in 1945 it was clear to witnesses of the more than six years of massive abuses of human rights that the world needed to banish the idea of “total war” and find a way to protect non-combatant victims of war. The four Geneva Conventions were signed 12 August 1949 in Geneva, sixty years ago today, cementing and extending earlier conventions to protect military people, prisoners, and civilian populations in times of war. They became the legal basis of humanitarian protection during war, around the world. Jakob Kellenberger, the president of the ICRC (International Red Cross) in Geneva, an organization whose history is closely intertwined with that of the Conventions, called on governments to better respect the treaties. “The lack of respect for existing rules remains, as ever, the main challenge,” he told a gathering in Geneva. The ICRC is the custodian of the Conventions.
The Geneva Conventions, with additional Protocols to the Conventions, are in fact a series of treaties, ratified by 194 countries, making them the most widely embraced treaties after the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Bosnia, 10 years later: identifying bones (image: © 2009 B Schaeffer / ICRC)
“They aimed to abolish the concept of ‘total war’ as witnessed during the second world war by establishing a legal framework to place limits on how war is waged. Today, they continue to constitute the bedrock of international humanitarian law, or IHL, and are among the most important treaties governing the protection of victims of armed conflict,” Christine Beerli, vice-president of the ICRC (International Red Cross) told a group in London in July.
A string of murders of journalists and activists in Chechnya and Russia continues, with the abduction and killing Monday 10 August of a couple who ran a children’s charity in Grozny. Zarema Sadulayeva was the head of a nongovernmental organization, Save the Generation, which worked for several years with the UN Save the Children Fund. Her husband, Alik Dzhabrailov, worked iwth the organization. The two were taken from their office Monday by several men who appeared to be security officers, according to at least one witness, but the phone number the gunmen gave was fake. The reason for the killings is unclear, with observers and officials speculating on a number of contradictory possibilities. The deaths come just a month after human rights activist Natalya Estemirova was abducted and killed.
Guardian, UK, Moscow Times
Political background: Chechnya, wikipedia
Elections to 178 local councils will be delayed two years, announced Saudi Arabia’s Council of Ministers, King Abdullah at its head, the New York Times reports 19 May. The country’s first elections were held in 2005, when men only were allowed to vote for half the representatives. The rest were appointed. Local human rights activists say they were disappointed by the decision.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Speakers at the Geneva Summit for Human Rights, Tolerance and Democracy Sunday 19 April expressed their shock and outrage at the presence of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the Durban Review Conference 20-24 April. The summit, organized by a coalition of human rights, anti-racism and pro-democracy activists, refers to itself as a parallel event to the Durban conference of governments, which will evaluate progress in achieving goals set by the first world conference against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, in Durban, South Africa, in 2001.
Russia ended its more than 10-year counter-terrorism operation in Chechnya in an attempt to restore and develop the economic and social infrastructure, according to a BBC report. Chechnya’s pro-Kremlin President Ramzan Kadyrov has helped to stabilize the country, according to Moscow. Human rights groups accuse his militias of abuse. Al Jazeera
Title: Human rights film festival
Location: Geneva
Link out: Click here
Description: This is not just any film festival. According to its organizers, it has become a platform for dialogue for human rights activists, movie directors and civil society actors denouncing human rights violations.
Start Date: 06 Mar 2009
End Date: 15 Mar 2009
