Author: Human Rights Watch

(Taipei) – Taiwan’s top court on September 20, 2024, ruled that the death penalty was constitutional with greater protections, Human Rights Watch said today. The ruling addressed some concerns with the country’s death penalty, but permits the continued use of the inherently cruel punishment.

Following a legal challenge by all 37 inmates currently on Taiwan’s death row, the Taiwan Constitutional Court held that the death penalty was constitutional with greater restrictions on its use. The court’s new judgment aimed to strengthen due process rights, including by requiring unanimous sentencing by a panel of judges and prohibiting the death penalty for people with psychosocial disabilities (mental health conditions). The current death row inmates may appeal if they were sentenced without a unanimous decision or if they believe their crime does not fall into the category of “most serious” offenses, already a requirement.

“Taiwan’s new judicial restrictions should mean fewer people are sentenced to death, but the court missed a major opportunity to abolish this inherently cruel practice,” said Simon Henderson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Taiwan’s government should take the next step and immediately place a moratorium on death penalty use.”

Under the new ruling, the court strengthened protection during criminal proceedings, with a new requirement that the suspect or the accused must be represented by a lawyer during the investigation and police inquiry stages for the “most serious” crimes.

The ruling also expands protections under the Code of Criminal Procedure by mandating oral arguments on sentencing and the right to counsel for defense in third, and final, instance trials. In accordance with the ruling, the judgment is effective immediately and the legislature is now tasked with amending provisions of the law within two years.

In line with the new ruling, the Taiwanese government should ensure that all special appeals for current death row inmates uphold the right to due process enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), with sufficient time and resources. 

Although the ICCPR permits the death penalty in limited circumstances, its Second Optional Protocol declares that “abolition of the death penalty contributes to enhancement of human dignity and progressive development of human rights” and commits nations to ending capital punishment. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has also stated that the use of the death penalty is not consistent with the right to life and the right to live free from torture and or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. 

Taiwan abolished the mandatory death penalty for all crimes in 2006, but previously retained the death penalty for 50 crimes. Since 2002, all executions carried out have been for the crime of murder, most recently in 2020. The court has previously issued three rulings on the death penalty, in 1985, 1990, and 1999, retaining it each time.

“Taiwan could cement its reputation as a regional leader on human rights issues by abolishing the death penalty,” Henderson said. “The risks of a wrongful, irreversible punishment should be off the table entirely.”

(Baku) – Governments participating in the 29th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) should fulfill their human rights obligations, Human Rights Watch said in a question-and-answer document released today. This includes transitioning away from fossil fuels in an equitable, time-bound, and rights-respecting manner. The conference will take place in Baku, Azerbaijan, from November 11 to 22, 2024.

Governments preparing their national climate plans with emissions reductions targets in 2025 should ensure that they are consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Any plans for increased production of fossil fuels are inconsistent with this target, Human Rights Watch said.

“This is the third straight year that COP takes place in a repressive state that severely limits free speech and peaceful assembly,” said Myrto Tilianaki, senior environmental advocate at Human Rights Watch. “Governments attending COP29 in Azerbaijan need to be prepared to deliver a clear message that equitable and ambitious climate action needs the meaningful participation of independent voices.”

Azerbaijan has an authoritarian government that does not tolerate dissent and in recent months has cracked down on independent journalists and civic activists. Those arbitrarily detained include an anti-corruption activist critical of Azerbaijan’s oil and gas sector and a human rights defender who co-founded an initiative that advocated for civic freedoms and environmental justice in Azerbaijan ahead of COP29.

The Azerbaijani government’s hostility toward independent activism raises concerns about whether civil society groups will be able to participate meaningfully at COP29 and the extent to which environmental activism will take place in Azerbaijan following the conference, Human Rights Watch said.  

Oil and gas revenues accounted for 52 percent of Azerbaijan’s state budget in 2022 and about 90 percent of its export revenue. During a high-level meeting in April to prepare for COP29, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced plans to expand gas production, mainly in response to European Union market demands. 

“Governments shouldn’t allow Azerbaijan to use its position as COP29 host to continue to push the expansion of fossil fuels and undermine efforts to confront the climate crisis and protect human rights,” Tilianaki said. 

(Sydney) – The Australian government’s human rights sanctions process should be strengthened through better civil society engagement and bolder steps to sanction corrupt or rights-violating individuals and entities in Asia, Human Rights Watch said in a recent submission to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee. The Committee is currently reviewing the Australian government’s sanctions regime.

During the past decade, more than a dozen jurisdictions – including Australia – that actively promote human rights as part of their foreign policy have passed legislation that authorizes targeted sanctions, including visa bans and asset freezes, against individuals and entities implicated in serious human rights violations or corruption. Targeted sanctions are an appropriate and useful foreign policy tool to press for accountability for serious abuses. Targeted sanctions raise the cost of committing human rights violations by denying abusers both entry to, and assets in, foreign countries where they seek to travel or do business. However, Australia has only used such sanctions to target individuals in a small number of countries.

“There are glaring omissions in Australia’s sanctions list, notably Chinese officials responsible for crimes against humanity in Xinjiang or for the massive assault on democratic freedoms in Hong Kong,” said Daniela Gavshon, Australia director at Human Rights Watch. “Targeted sanctions are an effective tool, particularly against people from the region when other diplomatic avenues are having little effect.”

Another major gap in Australia’s implementation of its sanctions process is the government’s engagement with civil society, which plays a significant role by pulling together dossiers to propose sanctions. In some cases, civil society groups may have access to credible and relevant information that the Australian government will not be able to obtain through its diplomatic and intelligence networks. However, while the government hosts roundtable discussions about its sanctions process, it provides no direct feedback to groups on the value of the information they have provided.

Giving feedback to civil society groups about whether the information they are providing is useful and sufficient can help improve the process. While there may be policy or security reasons for withholding this information, without it, civil society groups are left guessing.

“An effective sanctions regime needs strong collaboration between government and civil society, including providing robust feedback about their impact,” Gavshon said. “While Australia took an important step when it adopted this legislation, it needs to make this law as effective as possible.”

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has outlined concrete steps governments should take to address racial discrimination in health care. 

Racism and prejudice have a global impact on health rights. Racism can shape the social determinants of health, such as income, employment, education, food, and housing; the benefits and burdens of financing and distributing healthcare resources; whether a person has access to vital health information; and interactions with healthcare personnel, who may be quick to dismiss the health concerns of patients of color, and especially women. 

The Covid-19 pandemic only made this clearer, as many governments’ public health responses further entrenched institutional racism.

For many of these reasons, the UN’s anti-racism body, CERD, decided to provide governments with clearer guidance on what measures to take to comply with their obligation to guarantee the equal enjoyment of the right to health for all. 

Much of this new guidance aligns with suggestions that Human Rights Watch provided to CERD, drawing from our research. 

Human Rights Watch has joined other civil society organizations in repeated calls to European governments to collect so-called equality data that is disaggregated by multiple grounds of discrimination, including race and ethnic origin, to address systemic racism, including in health care. CERD’s new guidance stresses the importance of collecting this type of data to address racial inequalities and discrimination.

We have also documented the failure of the US federal and state governments to address structural racism and discrimination and eliminate barriers contributing to high rates of preventable cervical cancer deaths for Black women. CERD’s new guidance urges governments to take steps to remove these barriers, including unequal access to health-related information.

The general recommendation is a roadmap for an anti-racist approach to health care that acknowledges the impacts of ongoing legacies of colonialism and enslavement, which governments should implement in their respective national systems.

South Korea’s commitment to equal rights has suffered a dangerous setback with the appointment of Ahn Chang-ho as chairperson of the government’s National Human Rights Commission of Korea.

A former Constitutional Court justice, Ahn has drawn widespread criticism for his opposition to antidiscrimination protections, particularly for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.

Ahn has taken several deeply troubling positions over the years, including opposing comprehensive sexuality education in public schools, claiming antidiscrimination protections spread HIV/AIDS and anal cancer, and suggesting that homosexuality could lead to a communist revolution.

At his confirmation hearing, Ahn reiterated many of these views, casting minority rights as a threat to the viewpoints of the majority.

President Yoon Suk-yeol appointed Ahn despite strong opposition from civil society groups and his concerning confirmation hearing, bypassing the National Assembly’s approval process. Ahn’s confirmation is part of a worrying trend under Yoon’s administration, which has now appointed 29 officials without the National Assembly’s approval.

This appointment is particularly disappointing given South Korea’s already weak record on minority rights. South Korea and Japan are the only two countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) without a comprehensive nondiscrimination law. In 2023, the United Nations Human Rights Committee urged South Korea to pass such a law and expressed concern about ongoing discrimination against various minority groups.

As Human Rights Watch and civil society partners have documented, antidiscrimination protections are urgently needed in South Korea to address unfair treatment based on race, sex, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, and other characteristics.

For over two decades, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea has been a crucial defender of minority rights, investigating discrimination, developing research, and advocating for an antidiscrimination law. Yet despite widespread public support for antidiscrimination legislation, the National Assembly has repeatedly failed to enact such a law.

As Ahn assumes his new role, it is critical that the commission resist any erosion of its mission and uphold South Korea’s human rights obligations. Any retreat from its commitment to nondiscrimination would be a devastating setback for the country’s progress on equality.

Vietnam’s new president, To Lam, is one of many world leaders with poor human rights records visiting New York City this week for the United Nations General Assembly high-level meeting. He will meet with United States President Joe Biden on Wednesday and is expected to meet with Meta and Google executives.

As minister of public security, Lam oversaw a massive crackdown on dissent, with hundreds of journalists and rights defenders arrested and detained. Among them was environmental activist Hoang Thi Minh Hong, who had attended Columbia University as an Obama Scholar. An outcry within the Columbia community apparently compelled Vietnamese authorities to release Hong on September 20, right before Lam left for New York.

A longstanding political prisoner, Tran Huynh Duy Thuc, was also given an amnesty and released, eight months shy of completing his 16-year sentence. Thuc reportedly refused to comply with the amnesty, noting he had not applied for it. “Since I was innocent, there was no reason for me to be amnestied,” he wrote, saying it was done to burnish Lam’s image ahead of his New York trip. In what Thuc decried as “absurd,” guards stormed his cell, saying he had “no right to remain in prison,” and put him on a flight home to Ho Chi Minh City.

Such autocratic absurdity surrounds Lam. In 2021, a video went viral of him eating a US$2,000 gold leaf encrusted steak at a London restaurant. After long-time satirist Bui Tuan Lam posted a parody of the meal on social media, authorities arrested and sentenced him to five and a half years in prison.

Vietnamese authorities have frequently detained and prosecuted dissidents for using social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube to engage in free speech, including Pham Van Bach and Nguyen Vu Binh, PEN award winner Pham Doan Trang, and many others. The prominent investigative reporter Huy Duc remains jailed since his arrest in June.

Biden and the Meta and Google executives who meet Lam this week should not assume that freeing two critics is evidence of reform. They should raise concerns about all those wrongfully prosecuted for their online posts, publicly call for their release, and seek action that demonstrates that freedom of expression online in Vietnam will be protected.

(New York) – World leaders gathering for the United Nations General Assembly’s annual General Debate should call for action to end the global human rights crises, Human Rights Watch said.

During the sessions from September 20 to 30, 2024, the situations in Palestine, Sudan, Ukraine, Haiti, Myanmar, Venezuela, and Afghanistan should top the agenda. At the UN Summit of the Future, leaders should also seek systemic changes to tackle economic injustice and promote the right to a healthy environment.

“World leaders at the UN General Assembly should commit to bold steps to end atrocity crimes in the world’s worst crises and hold those responsible accountable,” said Louis Charbonneau, UN director at Human Rights Watch. “They should endorse concrete proposals at the Summit of the Future to address poverty, economic injustice, and the climate crisis, and the threats they pose to humanity. The world’s leaders need to demonstrate that they are willing to act to uphold human rights.”

On September 22 to 23, world leaders will participate in the Summit of the Future and are expected to endorse a “Pact for the Future,” which delegations have been negotiating for months. The nonbinding declaration is intended to be a roadmap for the future of the UN and international cooperation among the 193 UN member states. The latest draft includes language on the centrality of human rights and the need for global economic policy reforms. It calls for a transition away from fossil fuels in a just and equitable way, showing the need for urgent government action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent the worst impacts of climate change.

Diplomats working on the pact have expressed concern that Russia, China, Pakistan, and some other delegations have sought to weaken or even remove the language on human rights, including on women’s rights and gender.

The draft pact includes important commitments on economic justice and reforming the international financial architecture. Leaders should promote the concept of a human rights economy, which would anchor economic, fiscal, and policy decisions in existing human rights obligations. Some Global North governments have sought to dilute commitments critical to a human rights economy, such as support for a proposed UN treaty on international tax cooperation.

The draft pact’s failure to call for a new international treaty to prohibit autonomous weapons systems is a missed opportunity to energize negotiations for a treaty by 2026, even though it has broad international support.

The Pact for the Future also calls for reforming the UN Security Council, notably by limiting the scope and use of the veto by its five permanent members. Russia, China, and the United States have often used their veto power to block council action aimed at preventing atrocity crimes. Limiting the use of the veto would allow for timely and decisive Security Council action.

In New York, leaders should press for actions in Israel and Palestine that would end the widespread suffering. They should urge Israel, and all states, to abide by the General Assembly’s recent resolution calling for the full implementation of the International Court of Justice ruling on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel’s policies toward Palestinians living there.

They should accept Palestinian evacuees needing medical care, and press for Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups to comply with the court’s repeated orders to open Gaza’s crossings for humanitarian aid and allow access to all hostages and detainees.

Leaders should endorse suspending arms transfers to Israel and to Palestinian armed groups because of the risk that the weapons would be used in unlawful attacks on civilians. They should support UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ demand for accountability for the deaths of hundreds of UN staff and aid workers in Gaza.

World leaders, as well as the UN leadership, have failed to confront the conflict in Sudan, including the warring parties’ obstruction and pillaging of aid, even as part of the country is already enduring famine. They have also failed to prevent ongoing violations of the existing arms embargo, including by the United Arab Emirates, or to stop the warring parties from acquiring new weapons likely to be used to commit further atrocity crimes.

The secretary-general should propose to the Security Council detailed options to protect Sudanese civilians, which the council should urgently adopt and carry out. A civilian protection mission in Sudan is needed in areas where civilians are at particular risk of further atrocities, notably in Darfur, where ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity have been documented.

With respect to Myanmar, leaders should press for international action in the face of Security Council paralysis in addressing junta abuses. They should end the global neglect of the situation in Afghanistan, where the Taliban have deprived women and girls of nearly all their rights three years after regaining power.

In Haiti, the Security Council authorized the deployment of a Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support Mission in 2023 to help restore security, but it remains under-resourced. Criminal groups commit widespread abuses, depriving Haitians access to essential goods and services, leaving nearly half the population in need of humanitarian aid.

World leaders should call upon Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to end repression of protesters and other rights violations. Maduro should immediately publish precinct-level tally sheets from the July 28 election, permit independent verification of the results, and respect the will of the Venezuelan people as expressed at the polls.

Leaders should not ignore rights violations by powerful governments. They need to support action to address Russia’s widespread war crimes against Ukrainian civilians. They should seek to address China’s continued crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang, and heightened repression in Hong Kong, Tibet, and throughout China. Two years on, the UN leadership has not followed up on the recommendations of the high commissioner for human rights, who in Xinjiang found possible crimes against humanity.

Broad support is needed for action on a treaty for crimes against humanity, which unlike for genocide and apartheid, has no specific international treaty.

“The world is overwhelmed with human rights crises, but leaders often fail to take advantage of the tools they have to pressure governments to end human rights violations and hold those responsible to account,” Charbonneau said. “World leaders should use General Debate events to kick-start new approaches grounded in international law for all countries, whether friend or foe.”

 

The United Kingdom Labour Party is about to meet for its annual conference. Now that Labour is in government, with their leader Keir Starmer as prime minister, it should act to strengthen social security, and tackle poverty and inequality. The first concrete step should be immediately ending the cruel “two-child limit” policy.

The “two-child limit” is an arbitrary social security policy introduced by the Conservative government in 2017, in its austerity-motivated shake-up of social security. It cuts off child-related social security support to low-income households after the second child. Larger families are left with fewer resources as their need increases. 

The latest official data show that 440,000 families are affected, losing out on £3,455 per child per year. The Labour government has so far refused to scrap the policy, citing fiscal constraints, despite mounting pressure. Evidence shows that the two-child rule is driving increasing child poverty; it is a needless, cruel rule that harms children and society, and should end now.

Repealing the two-child limit should also be the springboard for broader UK social security reform.

The “benefit cap,” established in 2013, is an arbitrary financial limit on the amount of total social security benefits a household can receive, designed to ostensibly reduce reliance on welfare and drive people into employment. It largely hasn’t worked. And absurdly, the benefit cap, affecting 123,000 households, is lower in real and nominal terms today than it was in 2013.

Current levels of social security support are inadequate to meet people’s right to a decent standard of living in the UK. The government should listen to the Guarantee Our Essentials campaign, set up an independent evaluation of the adequacy of social security payment levels, and pass legislation to ensure no one is left below this level.

To demonstrate it takes its human rights obligations seriously, the government should also go a step further and make key programs universal, rather than means-tested.

Labour has committed to a child poverty strategy, reviewing how the Universal Credit social security system works, and enacting a socioeconomic equality duty that was first agreed 14 years ago. These are positives, but do not obviate the need for broader social security policy reform aligned with human rights, starting with immediately ending the two-child limit.

A September 9 internal report by the United Nations Population Fund, the UN agency tasked with improving reproductive and maternal health, found that 268 out of the 348 women held in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Makala prison – nearly 80 percent – were victims of rape and other sexual violence when an attempted prison break earlier this month turned deadly. The report, seen by Human Rights Watch and first reported on by Reuters, notes that 17 of the survivors of sexual violence were younger than 19.

Following the violence at the prison on September 2, Congolese Interior Minister Jacquemain Shabani announced the same day that 129 prisoners died and 59 were injured. He also said there were “some women raped.” On September 4, a female prisoner told Human Rights Watch that she watched women being raped and none had received appropriate health care.

The report notes that while timely post-rape care, such as emergency contraception against pregnancy and HIV post-exposure prophylaxis, was provided to a number of survivors within 72 hours of the assaults, there was no adequate counseling support until September 11.

Sexual violence is a chronic problem in Congo’s prisons. In September 2020, a prison riot at Kasapa Central Prison in Lubumbashi caused a fire in the women’s section that forced the female prisoners into the main prison yard for three days, where the prison failed to provide any protection. For three days, male prisoners repeatedly raped several dozen female prisoners, including a teenage girl. A trial held 16 months later was a missed opportunity to meaningfully investigate what happened and hold those responsible, including direct perpetrators and state officials, to account.

Compounding this is the overcrowding and poor living and sanitation conditions common in Makala and many other Congolese prisons.

On September 2, Shabani said that a mixed commission would be created to establish the facts around the incident at Makala prison. While this commission will face several challenges, it should give special focus to a critical question: What does the government need to do to tackle sexual violence in Congo’s prisons and ensure the dignity and security of women and girls?

The International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) July advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is a landmark ruling. The ICJ’s findings are legally and morally persuasive, and set out obligations on all states, and on the United Nations itself. Two of its important conclusions are with respect to apartheid and reparations.

The court found Israel’s measures in the West Bank that impose and maintain separation between Palestinians and Israeli settlers are a breach of Article 3 of the UN treaty prohibiting racial discrimination. Article 3 obligates governments to prevent, prohibit, and eradicate all racial segregation and apartheid.

Though the court’s language is a compromise, limited to separation, the finding means that Israel is responsible for apartheid. Several judges, including Judge Nawaf Salam, the court’s president, and Judge Dire Tladi, a South African, made this clear in their separate declarations. Two of the ICJ’s 15 judges disagreed and said the court should not find apartheid. One of these, Judge Georg Nolte, asserted a standard of intent for apartheid that would be nearly impossible to prove, and said the court should not find racial segregation either.

The court’s opinion does not address criminal law, only apartheid as a human rights violation. But Salam’s separate opinion sets out the definition of apartheid as a crime and discusses how many jurists and organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have found Israel responsible for this crime against humanity.

Salam’s discussion of the crime should be studied by relevant criminal justice authorities, including the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor, as it outlines the legal framework needed to investigate the crime of apartheid. The ICJ’s finding on apartheid should also help focus discussions about apartheid against Palestinians on the legal definition of apartheid, not limiting it to the historical case of South Africa.

Another key finding was the court’s short and clear statement on reparations. Israel, the court found, should return land and other property seized since the occupation began in 1967. It should also evacuate all settlers, allow all Palestinians displaced during the occupation to return to their original place of residence, and compensate everyone who suffered material damage as a result of Israel’s unlawful acts during the occupation. States and the UN should urgently take up this call, including considering, as Tladi suggested, and the UN General Assembly has now called for, an international mechanism for reparation.