Ecuador recently became the first in the world to ratify the “Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.” Amnesty International praises the decision with a new press release yesterday, saying the protocol will allow “individuals and groups within the country to seek justice from the United Nations should these rights – which include the rights to adequate housing, food, water, health, work, social security and education - be violated by their government.” The human rights group is now urging others to “follow Ecuador’s example,” as part of the organization’s “Demand Dignity” campaign which seeks to “end human rights violations that drive and deepen global poverty.” Here’s Windy Brown, Amnesty’s Senior Director of International Law and Policy:
"Access to justice is an essential right for victims of all human rights violations. We encourage all countries to follow Ecuador's positive example and ratify within the shortest possible time (…) States that ratify the Optional Protocol will establish a vital tool for people, in particular for those living in poverty, to hold their governments accountable. They should also follow through on this commitment by strengthening national mechanisms for the enforcement of economic, social and cultural rights."
In many ways, Ecuador’s lead follows in a long history of Latin American commitment to economic, social, and cultural rights. (Latin American delegations, for example, were the principal advocates of the inclusion of such rights in the Universal Declaration in the late 1940s). But as Amnesty International argues in its press release on the matter, world-wide, “economic, social and cultural rights have historically been neglected and given less emphasis than civil and political rights.” Again, AI:
“States agreed at the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights that ‘The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair an equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis’. The Optional Protocol is a tangible development towards this end.”
Beyond that headline:
· First, mention of a new press release from the Washington Office on Latin America which denounces a series of death threats it and a number of its partner organizations in Colombia have received in the last month. The threats come from individuals claiming to be affiliated with the paramilitary group, the “Black Eagles.” In the most recent email, WOLA says it and 70 organizations were identified as “military targets” by the group. And according to WOLA senior associate Gimena Sanchez, “Since WOLA received the last death threat, two prominent defenders of the rights of victims and internally displaced persons were murdered.” In the WOLA statement Sanchez says:
“WOLA will continue to raise the critical plight of more than 4.5 million internally displaced Colombians. We will continue to bring Afro-Colombian, Indigenous and the internally displaced's voices and proposals for constructing a peaceful Colombia to U.S. policymakers. We will not be stopped by those who believe in resolving differences with a gun.”
Other organization’s which also being targeted by the Black Eagles include: the Jose Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective, the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES), the Institute of the Study of Development and Peace (INDEPAZ), the national victims' movement (MOVICE), the Association for Internally Displaced Afro-Colombians (AFRODES) and Afro-Colombian organizations in the states of Chocó, Nariño and Cauca. WOLA’s demand is for the U.S. State Department to not certify that human rights conditions for military assistance have been met until “the current wave of killings and threats against human rights defenders, Afro-Colombian, Indigenous and internally displaced persons advocates are fully investigated and the perpetrators are brought to justice.”
· Also, from information posted at Just the Facts, a recent piece from Colombia Reports highlights the declining overt US military presence in Colombia over the last three years. “According to the latest available statistics,” says the magazine, “in March 2010 there were 227 U.S. soldiers and 257 contractors in Colombia - 30% of the total permitted (800 military personnel and 600 contractors). But as production of cocaine rises in Colombia’s neighbors, like Peru, a new BBC report examines whether or not Plan Colombia can really be called a “success.” The piece also begins to ask what future US aid to Colombia will look like under a new government – to be elected this weekend.
· In Mexico, meanwhile, the AP says this morning that the US has plans to extend the Mérida Initiative after 2012 Mexican elections in order to “support long-term reforms” of the country’s “security apparatus.” That news comes by way of a Dept. of State proposal sent to the US Congress this week, at the request of the Senate. The AP also got a full copy of the report and says DOS plans to put “more emphasis on institution building and support of local and state governments” while “continuing to combat arms traffickers, money launderers, and cartels” that operate within the US. DOS also says $420 million has currently gone into funding equipment, training, and technical assistance in Mexico.
· A couple of other stories again highlight the tremendous bloodshed the country has experienced in the last week – perhaps the most ever in a single week – as well as the Calderón government’s response.
· From the Latin Americanist, news that a number of Central American migrants were among those killed in a train crash in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico. The event highlights the issue of migration in the sub-region, which an Amnesty International report from late April discusses in-full.
· In Honduras, the IACHR has condemned the murder of journalist Luis Arturo Mondrágon, mentioned here yesterday. Good analysis of the killing can be found at Honduras Culture and Politics, which highlights the on-going state of conflict in the country. In what appears to have been a personal altercation, former Zelaya aide, Roland Valenzuela, was also shot and killed Tuesday night, at a hotel bar in San Pedro Sula.
· The Real News recently sat down with Larry Wilkerson, currently the chair of the New America Foundation’s US Cuba Policy Initiative (the two-part interview is here and here). Wilkerson lays out the state of the US debate over Cuba policy – and the strong case for serious change. [Former Sen. Mel Martinez does the opposite in the Inter-American Dialogue’s Latin American Advisor this week]. He also mentions the need to cooperate with Cuba on issues related to the BP oil disaster, which Rory Carroll looks at with a good piece in The Guardian this morning. Venezuela, Carroll writes, is being called in by the Cubans to help prepare for the arrival of oil on Cuban shores. And, says the report, “Should oil reach Cuba it will be the latest twist to decades of toxic diplomatic relations between Havana and Washington.”
· A handful of reports look at the issue of regional integration which continues atop Latin America’s political agenda this week with UNASUR meetings in Ecuador. Brazil’s Lula da Silva and Peru’s Alan García also entered into a new set of bi-lateral relationships on “scientific and technical cooperation, territorial regulation and border integration, agricultural production and the comprehensive management of water resources” yesterday. And in Paraguay, the issue of Venezuela’s entrance into MERCOSUR has hit opposition from conservative sectors of that country’s parliament.
· In the Washington Post, a report on Hugo Chavez’s and his economic policies – coming out of an interview Chavez gave to the Financial Times. Excerpts here. Chavez on inflation: “Certainly, inflation is still high. But in the previous decade inflation reached 80 percent on average. There was a year when it was 100 percent, in 1996.” Chavez on poverty: “Poverty when we arrived was close to 60 percent … Today, it's 23 percent. Extreme poverty was 25 percent -- today it's 5 percent.” And Chavez on growth: “Venezuela had 22 consecutive quarters of growth in GDP … In the last six years, growth was 7.8 percent. . . . There was a year when growth was 12 percent. Only China was higher.”
· The IACHR’s worries about media freedom in Venezuela, reported on yesterday, may have a somewhat unlikely ally. From El Colombiano: the president of Telesur (and former communications minister), Andres Izarra, called the sentencing of journalist Pancho Perez last week “an indefensible atrocity” on his Twitter page last week.
· And lastly, two recent opinions from the Right – Jaime Daremblum at the Weekly Standard and Frank Perley in yesterday’s Washington Times. Best read with Professor Greg Weeks’s analysis here.
No comments:
Post a Comment