Daily Brief Audio Series
As the European Union heads to the polls in a few weeks, and with other key elections on the horizon elsewhere in the world, let’s talk about how we use our votes.
Now, naturally, I’m not going to endorse individual candidates or political parties. That’s not something Human Rights Watch does.
What we do before elections is ask voters to look at some key issues with a human rights lens. For the upcoming European Parliament elections we’ve produced a guide for voters on ten different issues facing Europe today.
To this guide, I would add two points of my own.
First, beware of politicians who blame vulnerable groups for your problems. You can usually spot them easily enough: they’re the ones not talking about making your life better but about making someone else’s life worse.
Their target may be refugees or a religious group or an ethnic group or trans folks. But whoever the vulnerable minority is, the message is basically the same: you’re supposed to believe that denying these people their rights will somehow help you and your family. It won’t, of course. Don’t buy it.
Second, maybe think a bit more long-term when you vote. This can help you see the value of universal human rights. Let me explain with a bit of personal history.
I look back just four generations, and I see my 16 great great-grandparents. All of them spoke a mother tongue different to mine. All of them had religious beliefs different from mine. They were all born in countries different from where I was born.
Now, if you have kids or plan to, think about your descendants, a few generations down the line. You don’t know what they'll look like, what language they’ll speak, what religion they’ll follow, who they’ll marry, where they’ll live and work… Things change, and you have no idea where they’re going to end up.
If you vote for politicians who aim to punish one group in society, and they then make laws to do just that, you may ultimately be putting your own grandchildren at risk.
Taking the long view with your family in mind, it makes sense for you to get behind universal human rights – rights for everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, and so on.
It’s in your own self-interest to vote for politicians and parties that are more likely to support universal human rights. It’s the best bet for the people who come after you.
Oh, and one last thing: remember, the people who come after you will also need a habitable planet to live on.
Yesterday, the International Criminal Court prosecutor, Karim Khan, announced he is seeking arrest warrants for five leading figures in relation to grave international crimes committed in Israel and Palestine since October 7.
It is hopeful news.
For far too long, victims of serious abuses in Israel and Palestine have faced a “wall of impunity,” with perpetrators getting away with their crimes. And as with all crimes everywhere, when people are never punished for them, the same crimes tend to keep happening again and again.
Yesterday’s move at the International Criminal Court (ICC) offers a first step that opens the door to justice through fair trials.
The five leading figures named include three from Hamas and two from the Israeli government.
On the former side, there was Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas in Gaza; Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, head of Hamas’s military wing; and Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’s political bureau.
The prosecutor listed eight separate accusations against these Hamas leaders of war crimes and crimes against humanity. These include extermination, murder, taking hostages, rape, and torture, among others.
On the latter side, the prosecutor named Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister; and Yoav Gallant, Israel’s minister of defence.
The prosecutor listed seven separate accusations against these Israeli leaders of war crimes and crimes against humanity. These include starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, and extermination and/or murder, among others.
Many welcomed the prosecutor’s move, but reaction in some quarters was harsh, perhaps most notably by those US politicians (Republicans and Democrats, including Biden) who want to be seen supporting Israel.
Some argued that, by including individuals from both sides in his request, the prosecutor suggested moral equivalence between Hamas and the government of Israel. Supporters of Hamas and supporters of the Israeli government objected to any moral equivalence, each for their own reasons.
But all authorities and warring parties are obligated by international law and its protections for civilians, no matter what the other side does. Karim Khan was clear on this in his statement yesterday:
“Today we once again underline that international law and the laws of armed conflict apply to all. No foot soldier, no commander, no civilian leader – no one – can act with impunity.”
He went on to say rightly that nothing could justify the taking of hostages or the targeting of civilians, and nothing could justify wilfully depriving civilians, including countless children, the basic necessities of life.
What happens next, as ICC judges decide on these applications for arrest warrants, will be worth watching. Expect more attempts to interfere in the work of the ICC, from the US (not an ICC member, by the way) and elsewhere.
ICC member countries should defend the ICC’s independence against these hostile pressures, including by making clear statements supporting the court’s independence.
The ICC prosecutor’s move yesterday was a step toward much needed justice in the region, ten years after the ICC first began its inquiry into the situation in Palestine. The victims of the region, on all sides, deserve it.
We’ve got an all-too-rare bit of excellent news today: the conviction of a top former official for atrocity crimes.
Yesterday, a Swiss court delivered a guilty verdict against former Gambian Interior Minister Ousman Sonko for his role in crimes against humanity relating to torture, illegal detentions, and unlawful killings between 2000 and 2016. The court sentenced him to 20 years in prison.
These crimes happened under the brutal rule of then-president Yahya Jammeh. For 22 years, Jammeh’s government carried out systematic repression, targetting journalists, human rights defenders, student leaders, religious leaders, and LGBT people, among others.
Many were tortured, subjected to sexual violence, disappeared, and/or murdered.
You may be wondering: Why was a Swiss court trying a former Gambian official for crimes committed in Gambia?
The answer is a legal principle known as “universal jurisdiction.”
Now, a country’s national courts are usually able to deal with a crime if there’s some connection between that country and the crime. That seems obvious enough.
However, national courts are also able to act even if there is no such link for a limited number of international crimes. These include war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture, genocide, and so on.
National courts can investigate and prosecute these crimes even if they were committed abroad, by foreigners against foreigners. The reasoning is, such crimes are considered so serious that ensuring they do not go unpunished concerns humanity as a whole.
This principle of universal jurisdiction is not actually new. It was codified in the 1949 Geneva Conventions on the laws of war. Universal jurisdiction enabled, for example, the state of Israel in 1961 to prosecute senior Nazi official Aldolf Eichmann for his role in the Holocaust.
National courts have started using universal jurisdiction more and more in the last few years. It’s particularly helpful to address serious crimes in places where local justice efforts are stymied or delayed.
Since Jammeh’s fall in 2016, Gambia’s government has brought only two prosecutions for Jammeh-era crimes. There are newly revitalized justice efforts in Gambia today, but still, many victims have been waiting a long time for justice.
The recognition of universal jurisdiction in Swiss law offered a way forward. Sonko was arrested in Switzerland in 2017, after the Swiss nongovernmental group TRIAL International filed a criminal complaint against him.
Yesterday’s news was huge. This was a senior leader – a former interior minister, no less – of an appalling regime. His conviction is a monumental victory for Gambian victims.
And it’s a double victory, because it strengthens a legal principle that can lead to justice for many other victims of atrocity crimes around the world.
Pamela Fabiana Cobas. Mercedes Roxana Figueroa. Andrea Amarante.
These three women died horrific deaths, after a man threw a Molotov cocktail into their boarding house room in Buenos Aires last week. They were all lesbian women.
Cobas was severely burned and died almost immediately. Figueroa, her partner, suffered burns covering 90 percent of her body and died of organ failure two days after the attack. Amarante died in hospital on Sunday. A fourth woman, Sofía Castro Riglos, remains in critical condition.
In the wake of the appalling attack, people have rightly been demanding justice and taking to the streets of Argentina’s capital.
Police have arrested a 62-year-old male suspect. They have not yet announced a motive for the deadly crime, but hatred against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people has been rising in Argentina lately. Prominent politicians, including some who hold high office, have been promoting such hatred.
A 2023 report highlighted anti-LGBT speech by members of President Javier Milei’s political party, as well as on social media and in the streets, during last year’s presidential election campaign. As a candidate, Milei himself railed against gender and sexuality education in apocalyptic terms. The current foreign minister, Diana Mondino, compared marriage equality to head lice.
The report found that rising hate speech in Argentina, “built a climate of segregation, rejection and discrimination; the most fertile ground for violence toward historically vulnerable groups.”
The atmosphere, poisoned by politicians, has been contributing to already high levels of violence against queer communities, well before last week’s attack.
Public demands for justice in the case of this horrific crime are spot on. Authorities should conduct a thorough and transparent investigation into the killings and ensure proper medical care and housing for the surviving woman.
Politicians’ promotion of hatred and their politics of scapegoating vulnerable minorities needs to be comprehensively and repeatedly called out, too.
Government officials and others with large audiences have a particular responsibility here. They should speak out against rhetoric that stigmatizes queer women and contributes to a climate in which they are seen as deserving of violence.
Any reasonably intelligent person knows what hate brings. Any reasonably responsible person knows they must condemn it.
In the past seven months, Israeli forces have carried out strikes on humanitarian aid workers in Gaza – not once, not twice, but over and over.
Israel’s attack on the World Central Kitchen convoy, which killed seven aid workers last month, was far from being an isolated “mistake.” The Israeli military has hit aid workers’ convoys and premises at least eight times, according to a new report, killing or injuring at least 31 aid workers and those with them.
It’s critical to realize here Israel is striking known locations of aid workers on the ground. Aid groups had provided their coordinates to the Israeli authorities through a process used in war zones called “deconfliction.” In humanitarian work, the basic idea is, aid workers tell warring parties where they are, and those warring parties try to avoid hitting them in their military operations.
Communication between warring parties and humanitarians working in the war zone is essential, but when the attacks described in the new report came, Israeli authorities did not issue advance warnings to any of the aid organizations beforehand. Eight strikes on humanitarian aid workers suggests – at the very least – fundamental flaws with the deconfliction system.
If the government of Israel is concerned by this pattern of attacks on aid workers, it should allow international experts to conduct an independent review of the military’s humanitarian deconfliction process.
Israel’s allies ought to pressure Israel to do so and not simply because it’s the right thing to do, but also because they may be connected directly to these military strikes. In at least one of these incidents, Israel apparently made use of weapons and other equipment provided by the US.
Last week, US President Joe Biden announced his administration has “held up” at least one shipment of 3,500 bombs and artillery shells to Israel. This partial pause on weapon transfers didn’t go far enough, but was a step in the right direction.
Other allies have also revised their policies of supplying weapons to Israel. Canada announced it would halt future arms exports. Italy and Spain also stopped new licenses. In the Netherlands, a lawsuit forced the government to pause sales of F-35 fighter jet parts.
All governments should suspend military assistance and arms sales to Israel so long as its forces commit systematic and widespread violations of the laws of war – including using starvation as a weapon of war – against Palestinian civilians.
Remember: governments that continue to provide arms to the Israeli government risk being complicit in war crimes.