Human Rights Watch
Monthly Email Update
February 2004

1. World Report: Highlighting Human Rights in War
2. Guatemala: Combating Political Violence
3. Angola: Uncovering Missing Oil Revenues
4. Uzbekistan: ‘Decertifying’ Abusive Aid Recipient
5. Australia: Taking U.N. Rights Body Chair to Task
6. Become a Member or Make a Contribution

The Human Rights Watch monthly email update highlights the impact of our work around the world, as well as recent campaigns. It does not list everything we produce or on which we work. For the latest information from Human Rights Watch, visit our home page at http://hrw.org. Past monthly updates are archived at http://hrw.org/update/

World Report: Highlighting Human Rights in War

Just three days after the chief U.S. arms inspector in Iraq announced that Saddam Hussein’s regime did not have weapons of mass destruction, Human Rights Watch released its annual world report on February 26, arguing that coalition leaders were wrong to characterize the invasion of Iraq as a humanitarian intervention.

Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch’s executive director, said in the world report’s keynote essay that removing Saddam Hussein from power brought about the end of one of the world’s most abusive governments. At the time coalition forces invaded Iraq, however, there was no mass killing of the sort that would require the kind of preventive military action that characterizes a genuine humanitarian intervention.

“Saddam Hussein’s atrocities should certainly be punished, and his worst atrocities, such as the 1988 genocide against the Kurds, would have justified humanitarian intervention then,” Roth said. “But such interventions should be reserved for stopping an imminent or ongoing slaughter. They shouldn’t be used belatedly to address atrocities that were ignored in the past.”

Unlike previous world reports, which surveyed human rights issues country-by-country, this year’s edition is an anthology of essays focusing on the overarching theme, “Human Rights and Armed Conflict.” The 407-page book contains 15 essays on a variety of subjects related to war and human rights, from cluster munitions to Chechnya to sexual violence as a weapon of war.

In another departure, Human Rights Watch for the first time launched its annual world report outside the United States. In a press conference at London’s Royal Institute of International Affairs—Britain’s premier foreign affairs think tank, also known as Chatham House—Roth gave a talk on “Why the Iraq war was not a humanitarian intervention,” which was also the subject of his article in Chatham House’s magazine, The World Today.

The report, and particularly the keynote essay on Iraq, gained huge media interest in Europe and beyond, with coverage in media outlets that ranged from the Washington Post to Al-Jazeera. After London, Roth traveled to Madrid, where the director of a new foreign policy think tank offered to help translate and publish Human Rights Watch’s world report in Spanish—yet another first.

Read the Human RIghts Watch World Report 2004 at http://hrw.org/wr2k4/

Guatemala: Combating Political Violence

Photographs of those who “disappeared” during Guatemala's civil war hang in front of the Ministry of Defense in Guatemala City. © 1999 Reuters Limited

A week before Guatemala’s new president took office in February, the Guatemalan government and the United Nations signed a historic agreement that Human Rights Watch helped to facilitate. The agreement will establish a U.N.-operated commission to investigate and prosecute members of clandestine groups that appear to be responsible for numerous acts of political violence in recent years.

Since 2001, a growing number of rights activists, journalists, prosecutors and judges in Guatemala have been threatened, attacked and even killed. The clandestine groups responsible for these political crimes appear to have links both to organized crime and former military officers implicated in past human rights abuses.

“These groups are the number one threat to the rule of law in Guatemala,” said Daniel Wilkinson, the Human Rights Watch researcher who monitors the country. “They pose a serious danger to Guatemalan society as a whole.”

Beginning in February 2003, Human Rights Watch worked closely with the Guatemalan government, local civil society groups and the national human rights ombudsman to develop a proposal for a commission to investigate the political violence.

By March, Human Rights Watch was able to broker an agreement by which the three parties committed themselves to support the commission. At the same time, Human Rights Watch also consulted with donor governments and the United Nations to find ways to fund and operate the commission.

In July the United Nations sent a team of experts to Guatemala to assess the viability of the proposed commission, and in November presented a new version of the proposal which would grant the commission prosecutorial powers within Guatemala.

“This innovative proposal is precisely what Guatemala needs to combat political violence, and it could serve as a model for other countries facing similar situations,” said Wilkinson. “So often, the debate is about national justice versus international justice. This commission will combine features of both.”

For the commission to get underway, however, Guatemala’s Congress must now ratify the agreement and pass legislating granting the commission the legal authority it needs to fulfill its mission.

Read more on human rights in Guatemala at http://hrw.org/doc/?t=americas&c=guatem

Angola: Uncovering Missing Oil Revenues

An woman seeks refuge from fighting during Angola’s civil war. Although the 27-year civil war ended in 2002, an estimated 900,000 Angolans are still internally displaced. © 1998 Reuters Limited

As its 27-year civil war ended in 2002, Angola endured a profound humanitarian crisis, with half the country’s 7.4 million children suffering from malnutrition. As oil production boomed, however, more than $4 billion dollars in state oil revenue simply disappeared from the government coffers from 1997 to 2002.

Human Rights Watch discovered the colossal discrepancy through 15 months of forensic work examining figures from International Monetary Fund to determine exactly how much money was generated by oil—and how much vanished from public coffers through mismanagement and corruption. The missing sum was roughly equal to total social spending in the country—including funds from international donors.

“The Angolan government says the international community should do more to fund schools, hospitals and courts, but it refuses to explain where billions of dollars of government revenue went,” said Arvind Ganesan, director of the Business and Human Rights Program at Human Rights Watch and author of the report.

As Human Rights Watch released its findings on February 13, the Angolan government was planning to hold an international aid financing conference later in the year. Not only did the report further damage the government’s standing with international donors, but opposition legislators even began raising questions about the report in parliament.

The Angolan government denounced Human Rights Watch’s report as part of a “campaign of defamation.” The finance ministry also denied the validity of the report’s figures—which Angola itself had provided to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“If they’re saying our figures are false, they’re saying the IMF’s figures are false, which means they either didn’t give the IMF the right figures or they misled them in some way,” Ganesan said.

Following the report, Western government officials advised the Angolan government that an aid conference has little chance of success without greater accountability for government revenues. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch is urging the government to fulfill its obligations to make a good faith effort to use its revenues to ensure its citizens’ social and economic rights.

Read Some Transparency, No Accountability: The Use of Oil Revenue in Angola and Its Impact on Human Rights at http://hrw.org/reports/2004/angola0104/

Read more on human rights in Angola at http://hrw.org/doc/?t=africa&c=angola

Uzbekistan: ‘Decertifying’ Abusive Aid Recipient

Fatima Mukhadirova shows photographs of her dead son Muzafar Avazov in Tashkent, September 2003. Avazov was apparently tortured to death while in custody in Jaslyk prison outside Tashkent. Mukhadirova was convicted to six years hard labor for "religious extremism" on February 12, 2004 after speaking out about the torture and death of her son. © 2003 Reuters Limited

Every year, the U.S. State Department is required to “certify” that governments receiving U.S. aid are sufficiently supportive of human rights. But last month, the State Department “decertified” Uzbekistan for a U.S. aid program, saying the Central Asian country had made no progress towards ending police torture and other abuses.

The unprecedented move came during a routine evaluation of all participant countries in the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which helps former Soviet republics destroy and avoid proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Despite Human Rights Watch objections, the United States had routinely certified countries like Uzbekistan in the past.

“This is the first time any country in Central Asia has been ‘decertified,’” said Tom Malinowski, Human Rights Watch’s Washington director. “The Uzbek government has sold itself to the United States as a partner against terror. But real partners in that fight give people peaceful avenues for expressing themselves, rather than shutting them down.”

Uzbekistan will still receive the designated U.S. funds as part of a national interest waiver that recognizes the need to safeguard weapons and materials in the region, where Uzbekistan is a major source of uranium.

“Later this year the U.S. government will have to make another human rights certification decision tied to other aid to Uzbekistan, for which there is no national interest waiver,” Malinowski said. “After this decision, it will be hard to certify progress again soon unless they can point to real results in the interim. I hope, and believe, that this is the message they are conveying to the Uzbeks now. If so, this could have some real impact.”

Read more on human rights in Uzbekistan at http://hrw.org/doc/?t=europe&c=uzbeki

Australia: Taking U.N. Rights Body Chair to Task

A building inside the Woomera Detention Center that had been set on fire by detainees protesting harsh treatment by Australian authorities. © 2001 Reuters Limited

Last month Australia replaced Libya, a country hardly known for its support of human rights, as chair of the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Human Rights Watch welcomed the transition, but also urged Australia to end human rights violations at home, particularly in its mistreatment of asylum seekers.

From March 15 to April 23, the U.N. Human Rights Commission will hold its annual session in Geneva. Under Australia’s chairmanship, the Commission will examine and adopt resolutions on human rights issues in specific countries and on broader thematic issues worldwide. In addition to delegates from member states, participants include non-governmental organizations, among them Human Rights Watch.

“This is a chance for Australia to restore its battered reputation, as well as that of the Commission,” said Rory Mungoven, Human Rights Watch’s global advocacy director.

Specifically, Human Rights Watch has pointed to a number of test issues that will need to be addressed by the Commission under Australia’s leadership: combating violence on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, creating a mechanism to monitor the human rights impact on the war on terrorism, monitoring the human rights situation in military-occupied Iraq, and speaking out against the human rights abuses of powerful governments such as China and Russia.

Another priority for the Commission will be to develop membership criteria ensuring that members are drawn from states that are genuinely supportive of human rights. Such countries should be party to the main human rights treaties, up-to-date with reports to the United Nations on compliance with human rights conventions, and fully cooperative with U.N. investigators.

Such criteria would require change in Australia, which has adopted some of the most radical and draconian measures against refugees and asylum seekers of any industrialized country. Riots at the country’s immigration detention centers have focused international attention on Australia’s harsh treatment of undocumented migrants.

“Australia should take this opportunity to reexamine its own human rights record, and set a positive example during its term as chair,” Mungoven said. “As a first step, Australia should issue an open invitation for U.N. human rights investigators to visit the country, including its immigration detention centers.”

Read more on Human Rights Watch at the United Nations http://hrw.org/doc/?t=united_nations

Read more on human rights in Australia at http://hrw.org/doc/?t=asia&c=austra

Become a Member or Make a Contribution

Your contribution to Human Rights Watch will allow us to continue to investigate human rights conditions in more than 70 countries and to generate pressure to end abuses. Human Rights Watch does not accept financial support from any government or government agency. Every investigation we undertake, every advocacy campaign we embark on, and every report we produce is funded solely by generous private contributions.

To find out more about membership, or to make a donation online, by phone, or by postal mail, visit http://hrw.org/donations/

Home | About Us | News Releases | Publications | About HRW | Info by Country | Global Issues | Campaigns | Free Mailing Lists | Community | Store | Film Festival | Search | Site Map | Contact Us | Press Contacts | Privacy Policy