U.S.| O’Connor Launches Initiative to Abolish Elected Judges
Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has launched an initiative that would end voting for judges. Read more
Editorial| “Guantanamo Must Be Closed”
Editorial from the New York Times: The White House defied all the chest pounding and announced this week that the federal government would acquire a maximum-security prison in Illinois and use part of it to house inmates from the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. Moving the prisoners is an indispensable step toward closing an extra-legal offshore lockup that has stained this nation’s reputation and become a recruitment tool for terrorists.
There are about 210 inmates in Guantánamo. The administration has said it plans to prosecute 40 in civilian or military courts, including 5 who will be tried in federal court in New York. Some of the others should be tried. Some, perhaps, once posed a threat but no longer do so and should go to other countries under supervision. Some should go free.
Sorting them out is a difficult process, and we are not happy with the way the administration has been deciding which prisoners should be tried in federal criminal courts and which should be tried in military courts. President Obama has yet to forswear the idea of indefinite detention without charges, as he vowed to do while running for president. And there are signs that he, like George W. Bush, will decree that the entire planet is a battlefield and anyone arrested anywhere on terrorism charges may be tried in military tribunals. [...]
More here.
U.S.| Obama’s Human Rights Policy Combination of “Rules and Flexibility”
From the Brookings Institution Up Front Blog: In a pair of speeches that bookended the largely neglected International Human Rights Day on December 10, President Obama and Secretary Clinton set forth a sophisticated, nuanced and, most importantly, pragmatic message on democracy and human rights. In a nutshell, the policy is: “remain true to core American principles of human freedom and dignity, restore U.S. credibility on human rights, demand that rules be followed, but above all, stay flexible in how to apply these values to realities on the ground.”
As a former Clinton administration policy advisor on democracy and human rights, I can certainly appreciate the fine line policymakers need to walk in this domain of foreign policy. As we saw during the years of the last Bush administration, a brash approach to democracy promotion can backfire, particularly when our government’s own record on protecting human rights falls so blatantly short of the standards to which we hold others. And as we saw in the first several months of this administration, a timid or ambiguous approach can embolden autocrats to dig their heels in further; it also has encouraged critics to attack the White House for abandoning human rights dissidents and for engaging in shameful exercises of self-flagellation, allegedly weakening our moral standing around the world. [...]
More here.
UN| GA takes up texts on terrorism convention, UN internal justice, recommended by Legal Committee
UN meeting coverage:
Acting without a vote on the recommendations of its Sixth (Legal) Committee, the General Assembly this morning adopted 15 resolutions and two decisions on issues ranging from international terrorism to the rule of law, as it also adopted a text on assistance to the Palestinian people and continued its consideration of the Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy. Read more
U.S.| Illinois prison likely choice to house Guantanamo Bay detainees
The Obama administration is expected to announce today that it has selected a prison in northwestern Illinois to house terrorism suspects from Guantánamo Bay. This comprises a major step in closing that military detention facility. Read more
U.S.| Clinton’s defense of a human rights approach
From the New York Times:
The Obama administration on Monday laid out a human rights agenda that recognized the limits of American authority: emphasizing the need for change within countries, defending engagement with adversaries like Myanmar and Iran and asserting that differences with big countries like China and Russia are best hashed out behind closed doors.
“We must be pragmatic and agile in pursuit of our human rights agenda, not compromising on our principles, but doing what is most likely to make them real,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a wide-ranging address at Georgetown University.
Mrs. Clinton’s remarks came a week after President Obama, in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, warned that there would be consequences for countries that brutalize their own people. Together, the speeches appeared to be an attempt to answer critics who say the Obama administration has not staked out a forceful position on human rights. [...]
Mrs. Clinton also defended the administration’s reluctance to publicly chide China and Russia for human rights abuses, given the range of other strategic interests the United States has with both countries. Public opprobrium, she implied, was better left for small countries. [...]
Human-rights groups harshly criticized Mrs. Clinton for sidelining human rights issues on her first visit to China last February. Other critics have voiced frustration with the administration’s policy toward Sudan, an approach that they say offers more incentives than prods to a government whose leader has been charged with crimes against humanity because of the genocide in Darfur.
Last Thursday, a group of human rights advocates met with Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, to express their concerns.
On Monday, Mrs. Clinton said, “We must continue to press for solutions in Sudan where ongoing tensions threaten to add to the devastation wrought by genocide in Darfur.” She insisted that the administration would seek to protect ethnic minorities in Tibet and the Xinjiang region in China, as well as people who signed Charter 08, a manifesto that calls for democratic reform in China.
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More here.
Event| Sexual orientation and gender identity panel discussion at UN
International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) issues a summary on the recent panel discussion held at the UN on the occasion of International Human Rights Day. The theme of the discussion was “Opposing grave human rights violations on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity”.
Here’s an excerpt of the summary:
[...] The panel, held at UN Headquarters in New York, was organised with the assistance of a coalition of NGOs defending the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. It provided an informal means of following up on the historic statement on ‘human rights, sexual orientation and gender identity’ that Argentina delivered at last year’s General Assembly on behalf of 66 States. Some States also used the panel discussion as an opportunity to follow up on the counter-statement Syria delivered on behalf of 57 States. [...]
It was notable that the US made a strong positive statement, given that it was only after the Obama Administration took office that the US belatedly endorsed the 2008 GA statement on human rights, sexual orientation and gender identity. The US commented that this issue had been neglected by the UN for too long, and there were a range of protections in the UDHR and other legal instruments that required States to protect the human rights of all people. These instruments obligated States to ensure no person was subject to torture, cruel or degrading treatment, arbitrary arrest or other human rights violations. The US acknowledged that some States were uncomfortable talking about these issues, but compared the suggestion that the panel discussion promoted homosexuality, with the distorted view that CEDAW somehow promoted discrimination against women. [...]
More here from ISHR.
Related resources:
- ICJ Practitioner’s Guide Series: “Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and International Human Rights Law”. 2009.
China| Charter 08′s Liu Xiaobo faces 15 years in prison
From the Guardian:
One of China’s leading dissidents has been charged with “inciting subversion”, and faces a possible 15-year jail sentence, amid growing international outrage over his detention and forthcoming trial.
Liu Xiaobo was one of 300 democratic activists in China to author a bold call for constitutional reform last December. The manifesto was published under the name Charter 08, and called for greater freedom of expression, multi-party elections and independent courts. Seen as a figurehead for the movement, Liu was taken into detention shortly before the document was published online. Then, in June, he was formally arrested on suspicion of incitement to subvert state power.
In the latest development – which came on International Human Rights Day, a year and a day after the charter’s publication – officials told Liu’s lawyer they would charge him. He will almost certainly be convicted and sentenced to jail, say experts, probably within weeks.
“The timing is not coincidental,” said Joshua Rosenzweig of the Dui Hua Foundation, which supports political prisoners. “It draws attention away from commemorating the document and says: ‘Look, you want to talk about Charter 08? This is what it gets you.’?” [...]
More here.
Debate| “America’s new approach to the UN”
Jacqueline Shire from Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) discusses “America’s new approach to the UN” on Bloggingheads with reporter Matthew Lee from Inner City Press, the unofficial required reading for diplomats at UN Headquarters in New York.
U.K.| It would have been “right” even without WMD to remove Saddam, says Blair
From BBC:
Tony Blair has dropped something of a bombshell by admitting that he would have favoured removing Saddam Hussein regardless of any arguments about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
The admission, in an interview being broadcast on the BBC on Sunday, will convince cynics of British and American policy that they were right all along to say this was always about regime change.
It might also make those who laboured to produce the evidence suddenly seem rather irrelevant.
The former British prime minister’s statement goes beyond simply saying that he did believe at the time that Saddam had such weapons but feels now that the war was right in any case.
That is the conventional approach used by some people who supported the war and who think it produced a worthwhile result, though at a high price.
Others have now changed their minds and say it was a mistake.
Not Tony Blair. Typically, perhaps, he is not repentant. And more than that – he implies he would have gone to war anyway.
(Update: I have had a couple of e-mails contesting two elements of this story. One says that Mr Blair did not actually say he would have gone to war anyway. However, his words are very close to making such a statement. And he went on to say that different arguments would have had to have been used, indicating that this is no idle thought.
The other, from John Rentoul of the Independent who has followed events in detail points out that Mr Blair said the same thing in March 2006 when asked by Adam Boulton of Sky News if, knowing what he knew now, he would do it again. His answer was: “I most certainly would, yes.” It is fair to point this out. However it is also interesting I think that he is saying it again more than three years later and on the eve of appearing at the Iraq inquiry.)
These were his words when asked if he would have “gone on” if he had known then there were no WMDs: “I would still have thought it right to remove him.”
He even suggests in the interview how he would have justified such a war – “the threat to the region.” The argument would have been that with Saddam in power, there was a threat to the wider Middle East and a block on its democratic development.
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