Universal Declaration of Human Rights: 60 years on
If human rights are today at the heart of the UN project, it is in large part thanks to the efforts of Latin American countries. Human rights ranked low in the list of priorities for the major post-war powers involved in drafting the UN Charter, including the USA. However, in 1945, just before the San Francisco UN founding meeting, the Inter-American Conference met in Mexico City and decided to seek the inclusion of a transnational declaration of rights in the UN Charter which eventually led to the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In May 1948, several months before the adoption of the UDHR, the Inter-American Conference adopted the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, the world’s first general human rights instrument.
This crucial contribution to international human rights has been overshadowed in the intervening years by the military rule which dominated much of the region. From the 1960s to the mid-1980s many Latin American countries endured years of military government characterized by widespread and systematic human rights violations. Some violations, such as enforced disappearances, became emblematic of both the regimes and of Amnesty International’s campaigning focus in the region during those years.
The end of military rule and the return to civilian, constitutionally elected governments have seen an end to the pattern of widespread and systematic enforced disappearances, extrajudicial executions and torture of political opponents. However, the hopes that a new era of respect for human rights had arrived have in many cases proved unfounded.
Most constitutions guarantee fundamental rights and most countries in the region have ratified key international human rights treaties. A notable exception to the latter is the USA, one of only two countries in the world not to have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and one of only a handful of countries not to have ratified the UN Women’s Convention. The US government has also informed the UN of its intention not to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
The legacy of the authoritarian regimes of the past lives on in the institutional weaknesses which continue to bedevil many Latin American countries, particularly in Central America, and in the Caribbean. Corruption, the absence of judicial independence, impunity for state officials, and weak governments have undermined confidence in state institutions. Equal protection may exist in law, but it is often denied in practice, particularly for those in disadvantaged communities.
The gulf that remains between law and practice in many countries in the region has its origins in the historical abuse of law enforcement which successive governments have failed to address. Police and security forces and justice systems have long been used to repress dissent and to sustain corruption and entrenched economic and political interests. This abuse of power persists. The vast majority of those punished or imprisoned by justice systems are powerless and underprivileged. Those responsible for abuses of power and human rights frequently remain unpunished.
Although abusive practices have remained largely unchanged, the rationale for them has shifted. The techniques previously used to repress political dissent, have now been turned on those challenging social injustice and discrimination - such as human rights defenders - and those they seek to support.
A whole range of rights is being championed by these rights defenders in the context of vibrant and increasingly self-confident social movements across the region. A wide variety of organizations, far from the thoughts and experiences of those who adopted the UDHR 60 years ago, are taking forward the continuing struggle to ensure the rights it guaranteed become a reality.
In May 1948, several months before the adoption of the Declaration, the Inter-American Conference adopted the world's first general human rights instrument
2007 under review
‘War on terror’
Six years into the so-called “war on terror”, the USA continued to hold hundreds of people in indefinite military detention without charge or trial in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, in addition to the thousands held in Iraq.
In July, President George W. Bush gave the green light for the CIA’s programme of secret detention and interrogation to continue. One in a long list of unlawful policies adopted by the administration as part of the “war on terror”, the President’s re-authorization of this programme was a clear rejection of the principles underlying the UDHR. Indeed, President Bush issued his executive order a year after two UN treaty-monitoring bodies told the US government in no uncertain terms that secret detention violates the USA’s international obligations.
For those seeking justice for the detainees in Guantánamo, attention during 2007 focused on the US Supreme Court in what was seen as a crucial moment for human rights. In February, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that provisions of the Military Commissions Act stripping the courts of the jurisdiction to consider habeas corpus petitions applied to all detainees held in Guantánamo. An appeal against this ruling was initially dismissed by the Supreme Court. However, in June the Supreme Court took the historically unusual step of vacating its earlier order. On 5 December it heard oral arguments with the government arguing that, even if the detainees did have the right to habeas corpus (which it claims they do not), the limited judicial review to which they have access was an “adequate substitute”.
Habeas corpus – the right to have a judge rule on the lawfulness of one’s detention – is a fundamental principle of the rule of law. Detainees in US custody who have been denied recourse to this procedure have been subjected to enforced disappearance, secret detention and transfer, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and unfair trial procedures. Sixty years after the UDHR, such policies and practices are an affront to the world it envisaged. The Supreme Court is due to rule on the habeas corpus issue by mid-2008.
Ali al-Marri, a Qatari national resident in the USA who was designated an "enemy combatant" in June 2003 by President Bush, remained in indefinite military detention on the US mainland at the end of 2007. In June, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that the Military Commission Act did not apply to Ali al-Marri's case and ruled that his military detention "must cease". However, the US government successfully sought a rehearing in front of the full Fourth Circuit court; a ruling was pending at the end of the year.
Conflict
Civilians continued to bear the brunt of Colombia’s long-running internal armed conflict. Although the number of those killed or kidnapped continued to fall, all parties to the conflict – the security forces, paramilitaries and guerrilla groups – continued to commit serious human rights abuses. Hundreds of thousands of people were again displaced by confrontations between the warring parties.
All parties to the conflict in Colombia continued to commit serious human rights abuses
Death penalty
For many years, US policy on the death penalty has run counter to the abolitionist trend in the rest of the region. While 2007 saw death sentences imposed in the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, and the USA, the USA was the only country to carry out executions. However, even in the USA, there are signs that support for the death penalty is softening.
On 17 December, New Jersey became the first US state since 1965 to abolish capital punishment. The following day, the UN General Assembly passed its landmark resolution calling for a global moratorium on executions. Sixty years after the right to life and the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment were written into the UDHR, and three decades after executions resumed in the USA, advocates of the death penalty are increasingly on the defensive across the world.
In the USA, the abolitionist cause looks far less bleak than it was even a decade ago. A number of factors have contributed to this trend, including the release of more than 100 people from death row since 1977 on grounds of innocence – three of them in 2007. The number of death sentences passed each year continues to decline from its peak in the mid-1990s. Just over 100 death sentences were believed to have been handed down in the USA during 2007. Yet from 1995 to 1999, on average 304 people were sent to US death rows annually.
The 42 executions in the USA during 2007 – while 42 too many – represented the lowest annual judicial death toll in the country since 1994. This was at least in part due to the moratorium on lethal injections since late September 2007 when the US Supreme Court agreed to consider a challenge to the constitutionality of that method of execution.
In Canada, there was widespread concern about a government decision in October to reverse a long-established policy of seeking clemency for all Canadian citizens sentenced to death abroad. Under the new policy, clemency will no longer be sought from “democratic countries that adhere to the rule of law”.
Violence against women
Latin America continued to take important and innovative steps to stamp out violence against women and make gender equality a reality. Mexico and Venezuela, for example, passed new laws to combat violence against women. These laws broaden the definition of violence against women and provide a more comprehensive framework of protection mechanisms. Some initiatives to tackle violence against women – for example the pioneering women’s police stations in Brazil – continued to be hampered by a lack of adequate resources and continuing misconceptions about the nature and extent of the problem. In the USA, following concerted campaigning by a wide coalition of groups, Congress recommended increased funding to implement the Violence Against Women Act, a federal law providing a range of measures at state and local level.
Most of those responsible for violence against women were not held to account, reflecting a continuing lack of political will to address the problem. Many of the difficulties faced by women seeking justice were replicated from country to country. Amnesty International’s research consistently revealed a lack of shelters providing appropriate protection; poor training of law enforcement officials in appropriate investigation techniques, including forensic examinations; and prosecution processes that did not address the needs of women for protection and ensure women’s rights and dignity were promoted. Those women who did manage to get their cases as far as prosecution often faced discriminatory attitudes from the criminal justice system and further intimidation from their abusers.
Gender discrimination was often compounded by other forms of discrimination. If a woman is black, Indigenous, lesbian or poor, she will often face even greater barriers in getting justice. And if abusers know that they can beat, rape and kill women with impunity, then these abuses become both more widespread and more entrenched. For example, Native American and Alaska Native women in the USA who experience sexual violence are regularly met with inaction or indifference. They also experience disproportionately high levels of rape and sexual violence; US Justice Department figures have indicated that American Indian and Alaska Native women are some 2.5 times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than women in the USA in general. In Canada, government statistics demonstrate that Indigenous women are five times more likely than other women to die from violence, highlighting the desperate need for a comprehensive national action plan to address the violence and protect Indigenous women from discrimination.
Latin America continued to take important and innovative steps to stamp out violence against women and make gender equality a reality
In Canada, government statistics demonstrate that Indigenous women are five times more likely than other women to die from violence
Justice and impunity
In April, a federal court of appeals in Buenos Aires, Argentina, ruled that pardons granted to former military ruler Jorge Videla and former Admiral Emilio Massera in 1989 for crimes under international law were unconstitutional and therefore null and void.
In September, the Chilean Supreme Court of Justice delivered a historic decision when it approved the extradition of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori to face charges of corruption and human rights abuses in Peru.
However, in November the Chilean Supreme Court acquitted a retired colonel of the enforced disappearance of three people in 1973 on the basis that the statute of limitations had expired. This judgment flouted international human rights standards and was a setback for all those seeking justice and redress for crimes committed under the military government of former President Augusto Pinochet. The Supreme Court of Panama also ruled that enforced disappearances committed in the late 1960s and early 1970s by state agents were covered by the statute of limitations.
Amnesty laws remained in place in Chile and Uruguay for crimes committed during the military governments of the 1970s and 1980s. However, in Uruguay the appeals court confirmed in September the trial and detention of former President Juan Maria Bordaberry (1971-1976) as co-author of 10 homicides. In December, former President General Gregorio Alvarez (1981-1985) was arrested and charged as co-author of the enforced disappearances of more than 30 people.
In Mexico a federal judge concluded in July that the massacre of students in Tlatelolco square in 1968 constituted a crime of genocide, but that there was insufficient evidence against former President Luis Echeverría to continue the prosecution.
Human rights violations committed by agents of the state continued to be poorly investigated in most countries. In Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Jamaica, for example, human rights violations committed by law enforcement officials were rarely, if ever, prosecuted.
Corruption, inefficiency and lack of clear political will to bring those responsible for human rights violations to account characterized justice systems in many parts of the region. In addition the use of military and police courts to try personnel who commit human rights violations remained a serious concern. In Colombia, for example, many of the more than 200 killings by the security forces reported in 2007 were referred to the military justice system where the military’s assertion that the victims were killed in combat was usually accepted and the cases closed without further scrutiny. In Mexico, the National Human Rights Commission found that military personnel were responsible for committing serious abuses against a number of civilians while participating in policing operations. Despite the consistent failure of military courts to ensure justice in human rights cases, the Commission failed to recommend that such cases be tried in civilian courts.
In the context of US conduct in the “war on terror”, a lack of accountability for human rights violations remains a serious problem, particularly at higher levels in the chain of command.
In March, Rufina Amaya, the last remaining survivor of the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador, died of natural causes. The El Salvadorian Armed Forces reportedly killed 767 people in El Mozote and surrounding areas in an operation carried out in December 1980. To date, nobody has been brought to justice for that massacre or others that occurred during the internal armed conflict.
Universal jurisdiction
In Argentina and Panama new legislation was introduced providing for universal jurisdiction. In December, President Bush signed into law the US Genocide Accountability Act of 2007, which permits the investigation and prosecution of genocide if the alleged offender is brought into, or found in, the USA, even if the crime occurred outside the country.
There was no substantial progress in the cases against former President General José Efraín Ríos Montt and other high-ranking former officers in the Guatemalan military. A ruling by the Constitutional Court, preventing the implementation of warrants for General Ríos Montt’s arrest and a request for his extradition issued by a Spanish judge in 2006, was widely criticized for failing to recognize the principle of universal jurisdiction.
In December, an Italian judge issued arrest warrants for 146 former military and political officials from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. The arrests related to the killing and enforced disappearance of South American citizens of Italian origin during Operation Condor, a joint plan agreed between at least six military governments in the 1970s and 1980s to eliminate political opponents.
Economic and social discrimination
Pressure mounted on new Latin American and Caribbean governments to fulfil their promises to address deep-rooted economic and social inequalities. Some poverty reduction programmes were recognized as having a positive impact, but others were criticized for their emphasis on charity rather than on the realization of human rights and the promotion of equality.
The persistent political exclusion of large sections of the population, particularly Afro-descendants and Indigenous Peoples, was linked to discrimination and barriers to accessing a whole range of services essential for the realization of human rights.
This was coupled with a continuing tendency to treat large sectors of the population as peripheral or to exclude them when defining economic development. A lack of transparency and accountability frequently served to protect vested economic interests and remained a major obstacle to overcoming poverty and discrimination.
However, communities continued to organize to campaign for the realization of their rights, often in the face of threats and intimidation. In Mexico, for example, large numbers of members of Indigenous and peasant communities opposed projects such as the construction of a dam at La Parota. In several South Andean countries, communities organized to oppose mineral extraction activities which threatened to encroach on protected lands or to cause serious environmental damage.
Several states, including Nicaragua and Paraguay, continued to fail to implement decisions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights regarding the land rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Hundreds of activists and community leaders across the region were subject to spurious criminal charges for attempting to protect the lands of poor rural communities from illegal encroachment, often by national and multinational companies. Some were wrongfully convicted and imprisoned.
In countries such as the Dominican Republic, Peru and Guatemala, social exclusion was reinforced by the failure of the authorities to provide sectors of the population with proper birth certificates. Those without documents risked being denied access to a range of services, including education and health. They were also effectively denied the right to vote, to participate in public affairs, the right to security of tenure for housing and land, and regular employment.
In the USA, racial discrimination was characterized by disparities in law enforcement and the criminal justice system, and the treatment of non-US nationals held by the US military in the context of the “war on terror”.
Discriminatory laws criminalizing same-sex relationships remained in force in the Caribbean and Central America. However, in Nicaragua a new Penal Code removed provisions criminalizing gay and lesbian relationships.
HIV/AIDS continued to affect women more than men, with the highest incidence among women in the Caribbean (especially in Haiti and the Dominican Republic); Cuba remained the exception with low reported infection rates. Disproportionate rates of both HIV infection and maternal mortality among Indigenous Peoples across the region also reflected the impact of discrimination in access to health services.
Four countries in the region continue to criminalize abortion in all circumstances: Chile, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. By October, a year after Nicaragua criminalized abortions in all circumstances, women’s rights groups were reporting that women were paying with their lives for this backward step in maternal protection. Their research showed an increase in maternal deaths which could have been prevented if abortion was decriminalized. By contrast, in Mexico City deaths due to unsafe abortions fell after a law decriminalizing abortion was passed in April.
Exposing abuses remained a dangerous activity in many countries. Journalists, reporting on corruption, and environmentalists, reporting on the damage caused by pollution to natural resources on which millions of people depended for their livelihoods, were threatened and attacked.
The UDHR promises freedom from fear and freedom from want, but freedom from want remains illusory for many in the region, both north and south. Despite the astonishing growth in wealth in the past 60 years, entrenched social injustice continues to exclude entire communities from the potential benefits. Millions of people continue to face social exclusion and discrimination. Diverse, multi-faceted and dynamic movements are rising to this challenge, in all parts of the region, and developing a whole new form of activism and empowerment. They are demanding that all the rights set out in the UDHR be made a reality, for all.
Despite a tendency to treat large sectors of the population as peripheral when defining economic development, communities continued to organize to campaign for the realization of their rights, often in the face of threats and intimidation
Diverse, multi-faceted and dynamic movements are rising to this challenge, developing a new form of activism and empowerment. They are demanding that all the rights set out in the Declaration be made a reality, for all
Events that have occurred in 2008
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