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Human Rights Council Vote Today

The UN General Assembly will vote on the 18 members to join (or remain on) the Human Rights Council this morning. One of those will be the United States, a welcome improvement over previous U.S. policy of simply standing on the sidelines of the Council without trying to work with or improve it.

Why is it such a guarantee that the United States will win a seat in this election, its first attempt to join the Council (which came into existence in 2002 2006)? Well, basically, because no one else is running. Elections proceed according to a regional system, and once the United States announced its candidacy, another country running for a spot in the Western Europe and Others Group, New Zealand, agreed to withdraw (possibly in a bit of deal-making). This is unfortunate, because, as Vaclav Havel argued in a forceful NYT op-ed on Sunday, competitive elections were supposed to be a staple of the UN's new human rights body, to both promote democratic principles and try to improve the human rights criteria for membership.

Two seats will see competition, though. Hungary has put forth its name in the Eastern Europe group to challenge Russia and Azerbaijan, each of whose human rights record leaves something to be desired. And in Africa, Kenya is attempting to unseat Cameroon and four other incumbents. We'll let you know the results when we have them.

Sri Lanka: Obama’s First Humanitarian Crisis

I have a piece up on The New Republic's website arguing that the Obama administration's response to the Sri Lanka crisis augurs well for the place of human rights in American foreign policy.

Over the past four months an estimated 6,500 ethnic-Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka have died at the hands of their own government. Tens of thousands more have been injured. Unlike humanitarian crises in places like Darfur, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this outbreak of violence occurred almost entirely during President Obama's first 100 days. It is the first man-made humanitarian crisis of the Obama era. So far, the Obama administration's response to the crisis in Sri Lanka is encouraging to those who believe that human rights--in name and deed--should enjoy a prominent place in American foreign policy.

Keep on reading!

Singer Ayman Udas Allegedly Gunned Down by Her Brothers for Appearing on TV

As Dispatch readers know, I focus a good portion of my posts on the unconscionable crimes perpetrated by humans against humans, and especially on the brutal treatment of women and young girls around the globe.

In a recent piece on Huffington Post, I wrote:

The World Health Organization's World Report on Violence and Health estimates that over a million people lose their lives to violence and millions more are injured and maimed every year. The report states that violence is "among the leading causes of death among people aged 15-44 years worldwide, accounting for 14% of deaths among males and 7% of deaths among females."

What's so disturbing is the myriad forms this violence takes and how deeply pervasive and borderless it is. Across the globe and across the centuries, humans have committed the most barbaric acts, limited only by their imaginations, and the march of civilization has done little to change the grim reality that on any given day, in every corner of our planet, gruesome and ungodly things are done to women, children and men.

In Beirut during the '70s and early '80s, I witnessed terrible acts of violence, car bombs at supermarkets and missile strikes on residential neighborhoods, bloody bodies and corpses in the street, the carnage of urban warfare. It has made me keenly attuned to the darker aspects of human nature, the willingness to brutalize one another. Four decades on this planet and I still cannot fathom how a man can rape a baby, how people can gas, hack, strangle, shoot, smother, burn, and torture their fellow humans. Rather than become dulled and inured from violence overload, I am ever more appalled and horrified by it.

U.S. To Delay Sri Lanka IMF Loan, Putting its Money Where its Mouth Is

Fresh off the wires, Reuters is reporting that the Obama administration is seeking to delay a $1.9 billion loan to Sri Lanka from the International Monetary Fund.  I'm working on a longer piece about this that I do not want to cannibalize, but here is the money quote from an un-named American official. 

"The problem, from our vantage point, is that the Sri Lankans have refused to engage on the humanitarian crisis as a priority," said one U.S. official. Delaying an IMF loan "is an attempt to get their priorities back where they should be."

This is a  VERY forceful policy response to the unfolding crisis in Sri Lanka.  It places the onus of civilian protection in Sri Lanka squarely at the feet of the government in Columbo and comes after two weeks of tough talk by top officials in the Obama administration. Now,  by blocking the loan, the administration is backing tough talk with action, and quite literally putting its money where its mouth is.  Needless to say, it is nice to see this kind of policy and messaging coordination in pursuit of something that is clearly not a top American foreign policy priority, but nevertheless an important matter of human rights.    

Photo from Flickr user Kyrion.

UN Report: “Honor Killings” Rampant in Iraq

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) released a new report on the human rights situation in Iraq.   According to the summary, gender based violence remains one of the "key unaddressed problems throughout  Iraq." Honor killings, female genital mutilation and even female self-immolation have occurred with problematic frequency over the last year. 

UNAMI has reported 139 cases of gender based violence 15 in the last six months of 2008 in five governorates in northern Iraq16. Out of the total number, 77 women were seriously burned, 26 were victims of murder or attempted murder and 25 were cases of questionable suicide.

[snip]

UNAMI... has been alerted by local advocates for women's rights in the [Kurdish Regional Government] of the frequency of the so-called "honour killings" and cases of female self-immolation in the Kurdish region, despite efforts from the KRG to raise public awareness regarding violence against women. In cases reported to UNAMI, women have been attacked, wounded and left to die and the death characterised as "accidental" by family members. For example, in the village of Pangeen Qushtapa sub-district), 16-year-old Kanyaw Maghdid and her sister 22-year-old Lafaw were shot by their father on 23 September. Lafaw told police that her father shot his daughters to "protect their honour" when he found out about the relationship one was having with a boy.Kanyaw died on the spot while Lafaw was admitted to a hospital but later died. At the writing of this report, an investigation has been open but no arrest made yet. It has also been reported to UNAMI that the suspected killer of D'waa Aswad Khalil, a 17-year-old Yezidi girl publicly stoned to death in April 2007 in the village of Bahzan in the Ninawa governorate17 was seeking traditional reconciliation with the victim's family to avoid criminal charges.

Appalling. 

Photo from Flickr user jamesdale10

Sri Lanka Update III

Ban Ki Moon's Chief of Staff Vijay Nambiar returned from Sri Lanka to brief the Security Council  yesterday evening on the unfolding humanitarian crisis there. The briefing occurred behind closed doors, but following the meeting Mexican U.N. Ambassador Claude Heller, speaking on behalf of the entire Council, expressed "deep concern" for the plight of civilians caught in the conflict and "strongly condemned" the LTTE for preventing civilians from leaving the conflict zone.

This is pretty timid response.  True, the LTTE deserve condemnation for holding civilians as human shields.  But so too does the government of Sri Lanka for shelling densly populated areas where these civilians are trapped.  Susan Rice, at least, sounded the right notes.  

U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice criticized the Sri Lanka government for not providing full assistance to all civilians who manage to escape the rebel-held zone.

She also suggested that both the Tamil Tigers and the government might be guilty of violating international law.

"The fact that both sides have been shooting at civilians as they leave the safe zone is one gross manifestation of the apparent violation of international humanitarian law," Rice said.

It is a shame that other members of the Security Council would not endorse these sentiments. Part of the problem is that China and Russia consider this an internal matter to Sri Lanka and are not willing to hold a "formal discussions" about the conflict.

Meanwhile, Doctors Without Borders posts a chilling interview with surgeon Paul McMaster from Vavuniya hospital in Sri Lanka.

What is the situation at the hospital now?

We and our Sri Lankan colleagues have been dealing with casualties brought into us over these last few days from the conflict in the north of us. We've been seeing very severely wounded patients, the numbers of patients have increased rapidly over the last three or four days, so we're seeing a stream of badly wounded people being brought into us.

Our hospital has got about 450 beds, and we've now got more than 1,700 patients in the hospital-on the floor, in the corridors, and even outside. So the hospital is very close to being overwhelmed.

What conditions are the patients arriving in?

About three-quarters of the injured coming in now have suffered from blast injuries, and the rest are gunshot wounds and mine explosions. We're seeing who've survived on the field and actually reached us. We see abdominal injuries, but many of the chest or head injuries we're suspecting don't survive the blasts to get to us.

Sri Lanka Update

Late last week I wrote about how few people were paying attention to the death and destruction taking place in Sri Lanka. The situation was basically this: the Tamil Tiger militia was preventing tens of thousands of civilians from leaving the last sliver of territory it controlled.  Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan government was using heavy artillery to shell that territory,  resulting in the death of a significant number of civilian non-combatants.

In the past few hours, it seems that the situation has become even more fierce as Sri Lankan government forces have begun an incursion into the Tamil Tiger's final stronghold.   The Sri Lankan government is calling this the world's largest ever "hostage rescue" operation and is this circulating footage of thousands of civilians fleeing the war zone.  Apparently, three Tamil suicide bombers blew themselves up in this fleeing crowd, killing dozens.

The International Crisis Group issued a statement on the situation in Sri Lanka this morning that is worth re-posting in full.

A humanitarian tragedy is unfolding in Sri Lanka involving the possible deaths of tens of thousands of civilians trapped between government and insurgent LTTE (Tamil Tiger) forces in a tiny strip of land not much bigger than Central Park in Manhattan.

As many as 150,000 or more1 civilians are so trapped. Their living area is being shelled by the Sri Lankan military, and the Tamil Tigers are using them as human shield hostages. Dozens are dying every day, and there are grave shortages of food, water, and medical treatment. Available reports suggest 5,000 civilians, including at least 500 children, have died since mid-January, and 10,000 have been injured.

With both the government forces and Tamil Tigers abdicating their responsibility to protect civilians from mass atrocity crimes, urgent, determined, and united international action is necessary to ensure their safety - by the United Nations Security Council, other multilateral organisations, and individual countries with relations with Sri Lanka.

The International Crisis Group urges that the following specific steps be taken:

Ban’s Address to the Durban Review Conference

Shortly before Ahmadinejad sucked the oxygen out of the room, Secretary General Ban Ki moon had some elegant words on the need to reach a global consensus in the common fight against racism.

Here's the money quote:

Like Theodore Roosevelt, among others, my allegiance and sympathies have always been with the men and women in the arena, struggling with courage and determination to win the day.

It may be easier to criticize those efforts from afar, but it does not advance the universal cause.

Ban Ki Moon Responds to Ahmadinejad’s Rant

As expected, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took to the stage in Geneva and issued a blustering rant against Israel and Zionism.  Many delegations staged a walkout. 

It is rare for a Secretary General to single out a particular head of state for condemnation.  But Ahmadinejad clearly crossed the line and Ban Ki Moon is obviously quite angry with what transpired.  

Fresh from the UN presses:

Statement by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the remarks by the President of Iran at the Durban Review Conference

I deplore the use of this platform by the Iranian President to accuse, divide and even incite. This is the opposite of what this Conference seeks to achieve. This makes it significantly more difficult to build constructive solutions to the very real problem of racism.

It is deeply regrettable that my plea to look to the future of unity was not heeded by the Iranian President. At my earlier meeting with him, I stressed the importance of the Conference to galvanize the will of the international community toward the common cause of fight against racism.

I further stressed the need to look to the future, not to the past of divisiveness. In this regard, I reminded the President that the UN General Assembly had adopted the resolutions to revoke the equation of Zionism with racism and to reaffirm the historical facts of the Holocaust respectively.

We must all turn away from such a message in both form and substance. We must join hands and work together to achieve a constructive, substantive agenda to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.