Daily Brief Audio Series
In the devastating conflict that’s been raging in Yemen for years, the warring parties sadly seem to agree on one thing: treating women as second-class citizens.
All authorities across the fractured political landscape that is Yemen today are increasingly restricting women’s freedoms. Primarily, they deny women’s freedom of movement, and this in turn undermines so many other fundamental rights. Movement restrictions harm women’s ability to access work, education, and health care.
It doesn’t matter which side of the conflict you look at, all sides are violating women’s rights. The Houthis, the Yemeni government, and the Southern Transitional Council, are all systematically violating women’s right to freedom of movement.
Authorities throughout the country are barring women from traveling between governorates without a male guardian’s permission or being accompanied by an immediate male relative. In some cases, women are also prevented from traveling abroad without a male guardian’s permission.
The proliferation of roadside checkpoints has allowed for these unjust restrictions to be enforced more frequently. Women interviewed for a new report said they had often been forced to turn around at checkpoints or stopped there and harassed for hours when in a car without an immediate male relative.
The very concept of a woman needing a “male guardian” to move from point A to point B is bad enough, but it gets even worse. How “male guardian” is defined adds further humiliation on top of the discrimination. The new report
details the indignities. For example, a woman in her 50s was forced to get her son’s approval before she could travel. Her son was 14 years old.
What’s more, if a male guardian reports a woman to the police for traveling against his wishes, the Interior Ministry and security offices can arrest her.
The restrictions have made it more difficult for women to access higher education. In some cases, drivers have refused to take women to college campuses because they know the problems they will face at checkpoints.
Some checkpoint officials have specifically targeted women working with nongovernmental groups and humanitarian workers. The movement restrictions have in fact forced many Yemeni women to leave their jobs at aid organizations and UN agencies.
The result is doubly grim. The women lose much-needed income for their families, and a country full of people dependent on international assistance is deprived of these women’s knowledge and experience in the aid sector.
As my expert colleague Niku Jafarnia says, “Instead of focusing their efforts on ensuring that people in Yemen have access to clean water and adequate food and aid, warring parties are spending their energy raising barriers to women’s freedom of movement.”
Carbon Credit Casualties in Cambodia, Daily Brief February 29, 2024
Daily Brief, February 29, 2024
The idea of carbon offsetting originally sounded pretty good to many people concerned with climate change.
With Earth’s temperature rising quickly because of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation, carbon credits were proposed as a way to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Given the critical changes we’re seeing in our environment – like increasingly devastating heat waves and hurricanes – many still support offsetting and credits as part of the solution.
How it’s supposed to work is straightforward enough. A carbon credit is a unit of measurement equal to 1000 kilograms of carbon dioxide theoretically removed from the atmosphere or prevented from reaching it. Companies can buy – or be compelled through regulations to buy – these credits to offset the emissions they create in their business activities.
For example, an airline may purchase carbon credits to claim it offsets the harmful emissions from its planes.
The carbon offsets are supposed to be generated by forest, conservation, or clean energy projects. Trees grow by taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, so, plant some trees, and we’re golden, right?
The problem is, too many carbon offsetting projects are ineffective globally and abusive locally.
First, many carbon credits currently available for purchase stem from offsetting projects that cannot show they generate any savings at all in carbon dioxide emissions. They fail this most basic test.
Second, some carbon offset projects have been linked to serious human rights violations. Indigenous peoples have been displaced from their land, and violent repression has been used against those opposing these projects.
A new report describes some of the human rights harms such efforts can lead to, looking in detail at a major carbon offsetting project in Cambodia.
Carried out by the Cambodian Ministry of Environment and the conservation group Wildlife Alliance, the Southern Cardamom REDD+ Project encompasses half a million hectares in the Cardamom mountains. (That’s about the size of the US state of Delaware or twice the size of Luxembourg.) It’s an area of rainforest that’s been home to the indigenous Chong people for centuries.
Yet, somehow, the nature conservation project operated for more than two years without consulting the local Chong people on whether they agreed to its design or implementation. It is no surprise that when such a massive undertaking is decided without meaningful input from those impacted, it leads to harms. Chong people have faced forced evictions and criminal charges for farming and foraging in their traditional territories.
The situation has evolved over the years, and the good news is, there have been some encouraging – if limited – developments.
Wildlife Alliance has committed to taking positive steps such as giving their rangers human rights training, but it does not recognize that abuses have taken place nor that they’re responsible for remedying them.
Our report triggered an ongoing investigation into alleged abuses by the company that certified the project, Verra, during which no new carbon credits from the project will be issued. However, despite Verra certifying the project met many stringent social and environmental standards, the reality on the ground was quite different. Why did Verra not catch this sooner?
This Cambodian example demonstrates the wider issue and the serious problems seen in numerous carbon offsetting projects around the world. Faced with a worsening climate crisis due to our own actions, humanity desperately needs to lower our carbon dioxide emissions. But not like this.
In my opinion, it’s one of the best pieces of writing ever to appear on our website.
Monday’s closing statement by Russian human rights champion Oleg Orlov to the Moscow court trying him on bogus charges is really that good.
Regular readers will be familiar with Orlov and his work, which we’ve highlighted here before. He’s a prominent, outspoken human rights defender and co-chair of the rights group Memorial, which Russian authorities shut down soon after it became a co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.
The absurd case against Orlov stems from his anti-war pickets and a critical article he wrote. He was charged with “repeated discreditation” of Russia’s armed forces, as if the Russian military had not repeatedly discredited itself by its atrocity-ridden invasion and occupation of Ukraine.
In his final statement to the court on Monday, Orlov not only shredded the farcical case against him, he also dissected the dictatorship at the heart of such injustices. I encourage you to read the whole thing (translated into English on HRW’s website here), but I wanted to share some excerpts with you in this newsletter, as well.
After first noting the recent shocking, if unsurprising, death of Russian political opposition leader Alexei Navalny in prison, Orlov addresses his own case…
I have committed no crime. I am being tried for a media article I wrote in which I called the political regime that’s been put in place in Russia totalitarian and fascist. I wrote it over a year ago. At the time, some of my friends thought I was blowing things out of proportion.
But now it’s blatantly clear. I wasn’t exaggerating at all. The state in our country controls not only public, political, and economic life. It also seeks total control over culture and the sciences and invades private life. The state has become all-pervasive. … there is no more private life.
Orlov lists some of the many recent events in Russia that prove his point, including the banning of books, the persecution of a non-existent “LGBT movement,” and prospective students having to memorize names on the state list of “foreign agents.”
He continues by recalling how he reread Franz Kafka’s The Trial during his hearings…
Our state of affairs really does have a few things in common with the situation Kafka’s protagonist ended up in – absurdity and tyranny dressed up as formal adherence to some pseudo-legal procedures.
We’re accused of discreditation, but no one explains how this is any different from legitimate criticism. We’re accused of spreading knowingly false information, but no one bothers to show what’s false about it. When we try to prove why the information is in fact accurate, these efforts become grounds for criminal prosecution. … We’re convicted for doubting that the goal of attacking a neighboring state is to maintain international peace and security. Absurd.
Through the end of the novel, Kafka’s protagonist has no idea what he is accused of, yet he is convicted and executed. In Russia, we are formally informed of the charges, but it’s impossible to understand them within any framework of law.
However, unlike Kafka’s protagonist, we do know the real reason why we’re being detained, tried, arrested, sentenced, and killed. We are being punished for daring to criticize the authorities. In present-day Russia, this is absolutely prohibited. …
Right now, Alexey Gorinov, Alexandra Skochilenko, Igor Baryshnikov, Vladimir Kara-Murza, and many others are slowly being killed in penal colonies and prisons. They are being killed for protesting against the bloodshed in Ukraine, for wanting Russia to become a democratic, prosperous state that does not pose a threat to the world around it. …
Navalny urged us, “Don’t give up.” We remember that. What I can add is this: do not lose heart, do not lose optimism. Because truth is on our side.
Those who have dragged our country into the abyss where it is now represent the old, decrepit, outdated order. They have no vision for the future – only false narratives of the past, delusions of “imperial greatness.” …
In the final part of his statement – perhaps the most powerful section of the text – Orlov addresses “those who are working to push forward the machine of repression.”
To government officials, law enforcement officers, judges, prosecutors.
In fact, you know exactly what’s going on. And far from all of you are convinced that political repression is necessary. Sometimes you regret what you’re forced to do, but you tell yourself: “What else can I do? I’m just following orders.” …
A word to you, your Honor, and to the prosecution. Aren’t you yourselves afraid? You probably also love our country, aren’t you afraid to witness what it’s turning into? Aren’t you afraid that not only you and your children but, God forbid, your grandchildren also will have to live in this absurdity, in this dystopia?
Doesn’t the obvious occur to you – that sooner or later, the machine of repression may roll over those who launched it and drove it forward? That’s what happened many times throughout history. …
I am not entirely sure whether the creators and enforcers of Russia’s anti-legal, anti-constitutional laws will themselves be held accountable. But they will inevitably be punished. Their children or grandchildren will be ashamed to talk about where their fathers, mothers, grandfathers, and grandmothers worked and what they did. The same will happen to those who, in carrying out orders are committing crimes in Ukraine. In my view, this is the worst punishment. And it is inevitable.
Of course, Orlov’s well-chosen words on Monday did not prevent the judge from sentencing him on Tuesday. He got two and a half years in prison. The Kremlin’s juggernaut of domestic terror and international atrocities won’t change course with one statement.
But Orlov called out tyranny by speaking the truth – a simple act, made heroic by the circumstances. His words will be read and reread for a long time, I believe, no doubt with increasing relevance for Russia’s future generations, who will indeed ask their parents and grandparents about these dark days.
Video Should Spark Reform in Japan, Daily Brief February 27, 2024
Daily Brief, February 27, 2024
“You’re a brat, aren’t you? You’re like a child.”
The public prosecutor’s words fill the stark interrogation room in Yokohama, Japan. Yamato Eguchi sits silently and almost motionless, alone opposite the prosecutor across a plain metal desk, eyes closed and with his back against a blank wall.
“You’re just annoying. You’re just a pain in the ass.”
The prosecutor’s rain of verbal abuse and humiliation continues for 56 hours over 21 days.
At one point, he pulls out Eguchi’s middle school grades.
“It looks like you weren’t very good at math, science, or any science stuff.”
None of this has anything to do with the charge against Eguchi, who in 2018 was a lawyer accused of inducing his client to make a false statement regarding a car accident. The blast of berating and belittling seems to be the point in of itself.
And this is typical in Japan. Regular Daily Brief readers may recall our look at Japan’s “hostage justice system” – hitojichi-shiho – in which you are essentially considered guilty as soon as you’re a suspect in detention, long before any trial even begins.
The authorities undermine your most basic rights. They try to strip you of the right to remain silent, they question you without your lawyer present, and they coerce you to confess by denying you bail. They frequently detain you prior to trial for ages — sometimes for months or even more than a year — to badger confessions out of you, whether you’re guilty or not.
But what is unusual in Eguchi’s case is that there’s a video of the abusive interrogation. Eguchi brought a lawsuit against the government, demanding state redress for what he endured while in custody in 2018. Some of the video recordings of Eguchi’s interrogations were played in court a few weeks ago, and they’re now on YouTube for the world to see (with English subtitles even).
It has sparked public outrage in Japan. And rightly so.
So many of the problems built into Japan’s “hostage justice system” are all there in that short set of video clips. In addition to the harangues and insults against Eguchi, the prosecutor laughs at his right to remain silent (the right against self-incrimination). Eguchi has no lawyer there to represent him – he wasn’t allowed one.
These same abusive practices have resulted in countless wrongful convictions and torn apart so many lives and families across Japan.
Hopefully, the video footage and the public outrage will help bring about the reforms Japan’s criminal justice system desperately demands. Japan’s Diet, the national legislature, should urgently bring it into line with international standards: protecting the right against self-incrimination, for example, and allowing lawyers to be present during questioning.
The whole approach of Japan’s criminal justice system needs to change in a fundamental way. People should be considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. No one should be assumed to be guilty at the outset and then subjected to humiliating abuse for weeks on end.
Israel Defies Court, Starves Gaza, Daily Brief February 26 2024
Daily Brief, February 26, 2024.
Last month, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) told the government of Israel it had to “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian aid” in Gaza. It was a legally binding order, and Israel was to report back on its compliance with the order within one month.
Today, one month later, Israel has failed to comply.
The government of Israel continues to obstruct the provision of basic services and the entry and distribution within Gaza of fuel and lifesaving aid. In fact, Israeli authorities have allowed even fewer trucks into Gaza and fewer aid missions into northern Gaza in recent weeks than in the weeks preceding the World Court order.
As we’ve highlighted before in this newsletter, weaponizing starvation and collective punishment of the population are war crimes.
The court orders came in the context of the “genocide case” against the government of Israel at the ICJ, an independent court based in The Hague. In December, South Africa’s government filed the case, alleging that, in the wake of the Hamas-led October 7 attacks on Israeli civilians, Israel has committed atrocities against the Palestinian people that violate the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Obligations to civilians are nonreciprocal. The fact that Hamas-led fighters committed war crimes against Israeli civilians – does not justify Israeli war crimes against Palestinian civilians.
A final determination on the question of “genocide” may take years, but in January, the court ruled on interim “provisional measures” to address the immediate situation. Citing “catastrophic conditions” in Gaza, the court issued legally binding orders, including an order to enable the provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance.
International humanitarian law is clear here: an occupying power is responsible for the wellbeing of an occupied population. As the occupying power in Gaza, Israel is obliged to provide for the welfare of people in Gaza and ensure their humanitarian needs are met. And in any situation of armed conflict, warring parties are required to facilitate the rapid delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians.
The government of Israel is both ignoring these legal obligations and openly flouting the World Court’s legally binding order. It is a direct challenge to the rules-based international system.
As Israeli authorities continue to flout their obligations to Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, the only real hope is other countries will pressure Israel’s government to not just facilitate, but also to actively provide life-saving aid.
With so many lives at stake, they should use all forms of political and economic leverage, including individual sanctions and suspension of arms transfers, to press the Israeli government to comply with international law.