Quiet Truth at the United Nations
by Aisha Gawad
At the close of the 61st Session of the United Nations General Assembly, as diplomats and world leaders loosened their ties and returned to their native countries, all anyone seems to remember are the headline-grabbing remarks by controversial figures. Although the speeches of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad make for good tabloid covers, they do not necessarily convey any useful information. The 61st Session did, however, produce meaningful, if perhaps less exciting, work. The Human Rights Council, for example, which held its second session from Sept. 18 to Oct. 6, issued many reports on specific human rights themes, including torture, arbitrary detention and independence of judges and lawyers.
The Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Manfred Nowak, went on a tour of several countries and reported a serious lack of effort on the part of many governments to effectively curb torture. On Sept. 20, Nowak presented his findings to the Human Rights Council. He reported that many states did not legislate against torture, therefore failing to convey the message that torture is a serious humanitarian crime. This in turn created a “climate of impunity and a lack of awareness,” especially among politicians and law enforcement officers. Nowak argued that the most effective way to stop torture was to subject detention centers worldwide to public scrutiny.
Nowak cited several countries as specific examples of contributors to the climate of impunity and the pervasiveness of torture. He characterized torture as systematic in nations such as Uzbekistan, Georgia, Mongolia, and Nepal, and criticized Jordan and China, among others. Nowak also cited Canada as a positive example of the functioning of the rule of law and South Africa for its progress and for the high status of human rights in its constitution.
The report also alluded to cases of extraordinary rendition, which the United States has been criticized for in recent years. Nowak warned against the use of diplomatic assurances as a counterterrorism measure. Diplomatic assurances occur when one nation sends a prisoner to another nation with the assurance that the prisoner will not be tortured or mistreated once transferred. Human rights organizations see these assurances as meaningless when it comes to stopping the practice or torture.
The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention also issued a report that mentioned rendition sites, calling them “clandestine prisons where individuals were secretly detained,” and said that the prisons did not follow international humanitarian law.
Another theme of the Council was the “right to truth.” Leandro Despouy, Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, characterized it as the “right to know the truth regarding human rights violations and important infringements of human rights…” Despouy reported that many countries, especially those in armed conflict, were failing to ensure the right to truth by judicial and extrajudicial means.
Despouy also mentioned concerns over the Iraq judiciary system and the trial of former President Saddam Hussein. He raised questions over the legitimacy and the independence of the High Tribunal in Iraq, which is trying Hussein. He also cited Iraq as an example of civilians being tried by military tribunals, which may conflict with civilians’ rights to due process.
The Human Rights Council examined the value placed on human rights by countries around the world, and found some startling results: torture is still quite pervasive in many places and governments are not treating it as a serious crime, prisoners are being denied their rights, and trials are being conducted without true legitimacy and independence. These broad violations do not just involve small non-Western nations like Nepal and Mongolia. The Western superpowers such as the United States are inextricably tied to each violation. Chavez and Ahmadinejad
may have made the papers, but the quiet Human Rights Council is what
really deserves our attention.
