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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Human Rights Watch World Report 2002 Released |
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by Human Rights Watch
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17 Jan 2002
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The 2002 edition of HRW's World Report on human rights has been released. In addition to English, the report is also available in Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, Portuguese, and Spanish. |
From the Introduction:
In the wake of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the United States government articulated a single overriding goal--defeating terrorism--and sought to build a global alliance committed to that end. Yet determined as this campaign has been, it remains to be seen whether it is merely a fight against a particular set of criminals or also an effort to defeat the logic of terrorism. Is it a struggle only against Osama bin Laden, his al-Qaeda network, and a few like-minded groups? Or is it also an effort to undermine the view that anything goes in the name of a cause, the belief that even a deadly attack on skyscrapers filled with civilians is an acceptable political act?
The September 11 attacks were antithetical to the values of human rights. Indeed, it is the body of international human rights and humanitarian law--the limits placed on permissible conduct--that explains why these attacks were not legitimate acts of war or politics. If the human rights cause stands for anything, it stands for the principle that civilians should never be deliberately slaughtered, regardless of the cause. Whether in time of peace or war, whether the actor is a government or an armed group, certain means are never justified, no matter what the ends.
As many of the world's governments join the fight against al-Qaeda, they face a fundamental choice. They must decide whether this battle provides an opportunity to reaffirm human rights principles or a new reason to ignore them. They must determine whether this is a moment to embrace values governing means as well as ends or an excuse to subordinate means to ends. Their choice will not determine whether any particular perpetrator is captured or killed. But over the long term it will affect the strength of the ends-justify-the-means ideology that led a group of men deliberately to crash civilian passenger planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Unless the global anti-terror coalition firmly rejects this amorality, unless the rules of international human rights and humanitarian law clearly govern all anti-terror actions, the battle against particular terrorists is likely to end up reaffirming the warped instrumentalism of terrorism.
Unfortunately, the coalition's conduct so far has not been auspicious. As this introduction describes, its leading members have violated human rights principles at home and overlooked human rights transgressions among their partners. They have substituted expediency for the firm commitment to human rights that alone can defeat the rationale of terrorism. Whatever its success in pursuing particular terrorists, the coalition risks reinforcing the logic of terrorism unless human rights are given a far more central role.
THIS REPORT
This report is Human Rights Watch's twelfth annual review of human rights practices around the globe. It addresses developments in sixty-six countries, covering the period from November 2000 through November 2001. Most chapters examine significant human rights developments in a particular country; the response of global actors, such as the European Union, Japan, the United States, the United Nations, and various regional organizations; and the freedom of local human rights defenders to conduct their work. Other chapters address important thematic concerns.
Highlights of 2001 include, on the positive side, several strikes against the impunity that so often underwrites severe abuses, including the surrender of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; the indictment in Chile of former President Augusto Pinochet (although the prosecution was then ended on medical grounds); an Argentine judicial decision declaring the country's amnesty laws unconstitutional; and rapid progress toward the establishment of the International Criminal Court, with forty-seven of the needed sixty countries having ratified its treaty by early December. Other milestones include the entry into force of the protocol outlawing the use of child soldiers; the highlighting at the World Conference Against Racism of caste-based discrimination as an issue of global concern; the international community's speed and resolve (for the first time in a decade of Balkan atrocities) in defusing the armed ethnic conflict in Macedonia; and the U.N. Commission on Human Rights' condemnation of ongoing Russian atrocities in Chechnya and the government's persistent failure to hold abusers accountable. On the negative side, the World Trade Organization agreed to launch a new round of talks on reducing barriers to trade without giving the protection of labor rights a significant place on the agenda; efforts to create internationally sponsored tribunals were stalled in the case of Cambodia and proceeding painfully slowly in the case of Sierra Leone, while the principal architects of atrocities in East Timor in 1999 continued to walk free in Indonesia; and abusive wars and political violence continued to claim large numbers of civilian victims in Algeria, Angola, Burundi, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, and Sudan.
This report reflects extensive investigative work undertaken in 2001 by the Human Rights Watch research staff, usually in close partnership with human rights activists in the country in question. It also reflects the work of the Human Rights Watch advocacy team, which monitors the policies of governments and international institutions that have influence to curb human rights abuses. Human Rights Watch publications, issued throughout the year, contain more elaborate accounts of the brief summaries collected in this volume. They can be found on the Human Rights Watch website, http://www.hrw.org/reports98/publctns.htm.
As in past years, this report does not include a chapter on every country where Human Rights Watch works, nor does it discuss every issue of importance. The failure to include a particular country or issue often reflects no more than staffing limitations and should not be taken as commentary on the significance of the problem. There are many serious human rights violations that Human Rights Watch simply lacks the capacity to address.
The factors we considered in determining the focus of our work in 2001 (and hence the content of this volume) included the severity of abuses, access to the country and the availability of information about it, the susceptibility of abusive forces to influence, and the importance of addressing certain thematic concerns and of reinforcing the work of local rights organizations.
HUMAN RIGHTS VALUES AS AN ANTIDOTE TO TERRORISM
Any fight against terrorism is only in part a matter of security. It is also a matter of values. Police, intelligence units, even armies all have a role to play in meeting particular terrorist threats. But terrorism emanates as well from the realm of public morality. Terrorism is less likely when the public embraces the view that civilians should never be targeted--that is, when the public is firmly committed to basic human rights principles.
It is beyond the scope of Human Rights Watch's work to address the political grievances, let alone the pathology, that might lead a group of men to attack thousands of civilians. Our concern is with the mores that would countenance such mass murder as a legitimate political tool. Sympathy for such crimes is the breeding ground for terrorism; sympathizers are the potential recruits. Building a stronger human rights culture--a culture in which any disregard for civilian life is condemned rather than condoned--is essential in the long run for defeating terrorism.
Many of the policies of the major powers, both before and after September 11, have undermined efforts to build a global culture of human rights. These governments often embraced human rights only in theory while subverting them in practice. Reversing these policies is essential to building the strong human rights culture needed to reject terrorism.
The importance of such a policy reappraisal is especially acute in the Middle East and North Africa, where al-Qaeda seems to have attracted many of its adherents. But it is also needed more broadly--in evaluating the policies guiding the new global coalition against terrorism and in assessing the conduct of many of the leading members of that coalition.
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See also:
http://www.hrw.org/wr2k2/
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