WASHINGTON, July 13 (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department has invited U.N. experts who investigate racism and minority issues to conduct an official visit to the United States, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday.

“Responsible nations must not shrink from scrutiny of their human rights record; rather, they should acknowledge it with the intent to improve,” Blinken said in a statement.

“I urge all U.N. member states to join the United States in this effort, and confront the scourge of racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia,” he said.

Blinken said the United States welcomed the U.N. Human Rights Council’s adoption on Tuesday of a resolution to address systemic racism against Africans and people of African descent in the context of law enforcement.

The murder of a Black man, George Floyd, by a Minneapolis police officer last year sparked nationwide protests against racism and police brutality.

U.S. President Joe Biden, who won the White House with critical support from Black voters, made fighting racial inequality a key platform of his 2020 campaign.

Blinken said the invitation to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on minority issues was the first step on a plan to issue a standing invitation to all U.N. experts who report on human rights issues.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-state-department-invites-un-racism-investigators-visit-us-2021-07-14/

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United Nations independent experts demanded on Wednesday that the Venezuelan Government take concrete actions to tackle the devastating impact on basic human rights of the country’s economic crisis.

“We are deeply concerned about the spiraling economic crisis, and the effect this has had on people’s ability to subsist from one day to the next”, three UN Special Rapporteurs asserted. “The Government must immediately explain how it intends to support people, many of whom are teetering on the brink of survival”.

Lift sanctions

They acknowledged that while the Government blamed crippling international sanctions for the humanitarian crisis, many of the country’s problems – such as food shortages, hyperinflation, power cuts, and soaring unemployment – preceded the trade restrictions.

“Nevertheless”, they said, “especially in light of the coronavirus pandemic, the United States should immediately lift blanket sanctions, which are having a severe impact on the human rights of the Venezuelan people.”

Collapsing health system

The experts also flagged the country’s collapsing health system, pointing out that many hospitals are struggling to care for patients – with no reliable electricity or even running water.

“Hospitals are reporting a shortage of medical supplies, protective equipment and medicine”, they echoed. “Given the severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on low-income people in even the wealthiest countries, this is alarming”.

The three experts also pushed the Government to “ensure that people have the support they need to safely practice social distancing”.

Education breakdown

Meanwhile, the education system has lost thousands of teachers, and many children no longer make it school because a scarcity of food at home has left them without the energy to attend or they cannot afford transportation.

“This guarantees the crisis will do lasting damage to the next generation,” the experts spelled out.

Citing UN World Food Programme (WFP) estimates, the independent experts revealed that a third of the population is food insecure.

Retaliation and detentions

Moreover, they were alarmed by reports that journalists, lawyers, and medical workers have faced retaliation and even been detained for raising concerns about conditions in the country.

Anyone arbitrarily detained should be released immediately, and the Government should investigate these allegations, they underscored.

“There is no doubt that the Government is facing numerous challenges right now, but human rights cannot be put on hold”, they stressed.

“Even at a time like this, the Government still has an obligation to protect people’s basic rights”, concluded the Special Rapporteurs

The UN experts

The three UN experts are Olivier De Schutter, Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights; Léo Heller, Special Rapporteur on the human rights to water and sanitation; and Kombou Boly Barry, Special Rapporteur on the right to education.

Special Rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a specific human rights theme or a country situation. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.

UNICEF/Velasquez – At a health center on the outskirts of Caracas, Venezuela, a lack of spare parts has rendered mobile health units and ambulances unusable.

Source: https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/05/1063372

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UNITED NATIONS ― In a stunningly stark report on the political and economic conditions in Venezuela, the U.N.’s Human Rights chief Michelle Bachelet outlined a troubling litany of continuing human rights abuses, extrajudicial killings, and economic privations characterizing the besieged Latin American country.

In a groundbreaking report by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, a U.N. human rights team visited Venezuela and conducted over 500 interviews from President Nicolas Maduro to civil and political figures in the democratic opposition such as interim President Juan Guaido. The conclusions were deeply troubling.

According to the U.N., “while previous reports have highlighted arbitrary detentions, ill-treatment, and torture.” The latest publication warns that “if the situation does not improve, the unprecedented outflow of Venezuelan migrants and refugees will continue, and the living conditions of those who remain will worsen.”

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) stated that some 4 million people are believed to have fled the country in the last four years, largely due to food and health care shortages. That’s from a population of 30 million! Venezuelan refugees are pouring into neighboring Colombia and equally going to Peru, Argentina, and Ecuador.

Ms. Bachelet, a former president of Chile stated, “During my visit to Venezuela, I was able to hear the first-hand account of victims of state violence and their demands for justice.”

The 16-page report delivered during Human Rights Council deliberations in Geneva outlines how state institutions have been “steadily militarized” over the past decade and adds that civil and military forces have been “allegedly responsible for arbitrary detentions, ill-treatment, and torture.” It adds, “Successive laws and reforms have facilitated the criminalization of the opposition and of anyone critical of the government.”

Consider the record. Until the end of May this year, 66 people were killed during anti-government protests and another 793 remained in arbitrary detention. Allegations of extrajudicial killings by regime “Special Action Forces” have been “shockingly high.”

In 2018, the government registered 5,287 killings purportedly for “resistance to authority.” Between January and May 19 this year, another 1,569 people were killed according to the government. The most recent case involves the death of retired Navy Captain Rafael Acosta Arevalo who died in government detention after torture.

Regarding the plight of ordinary Venezuelans to get food the report advises, “large sections of the population have no access to food distribution.” Women are particularly hard hit “amid a progressive scarcity and unaffordability of food.” Health care is “dire, with hospitals lacking staff, medicines, and electricity.”

Ironically today’s food shortages and poor health care are mirror opposites of what middle-class Venezuela experienced until the steady privations of Hugo Chavez and his successor Nicolas Maduro’s socialist rule.

Venezuela’s oil-rich economy and democratic political system had secured a middle-class life for most citizens until into the early years of Chavez’s rule. But corruption, hyperinflation and now endemic shortages define a once prosperous country.

Escaped Venezuelan MP Miguel Pizarro addressed the Human Rights Council and made a plea for his persecuted countrymen. “According to figures published by the United Nations itself, seven million Venezuelans today need humanitarian aid. More than four million have migrated because of the humanitarian emergency, and at least 630 political prisoners have been documented.”

Pizarro went into hiding after the Maduro regime accused him and other lawmakers of “treason” and stripped them of parliamentary immunity. The European Union later called the Venezuelan action “part of a pattern of blatant violations of due process,” amounting to “clear measures of intimidation.”

Hillel Neuer, executive director of U.N. Watch who invited MP Pizarro to the hearings added, “Sadly despite our repeated appeals, the U.N. Human Rights Council has refused to establish a commission of inquiry to hold Maduro to account for gross and widespread violations that many experts believe amount to war crimes.”

Cuban security police and military advisors remain Maduro’s enforcers and act as a check upon his own military. Interim President Juan Guaido, despite his democratic credentials, is still barred from office.

Nonetheless, most Latin American countries, the European Union, the U.S., and Canada have diplomatically recognized him as the legitimate government.

In another bid to defuse the dangerous political impasse, Guaido will enter into talks with representatives of the Maduro dictatorship in Barbados to seek a “constitutional solution” to the percolating political crisis.

Venezuela’s cruel misadventure continues as the ruling Maduro regime has turned the once prosperous Latin American land into a socialist dystopia corkscrewing into free fall. Can Venezuela somehow be saved?

John J. Metzler (jjmcolumn@earthlink.net) is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of “Divided Dynamism the Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China.”

Source: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/opinion/2019/07/197_272047.html

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ALESTINIANS PRAY yesterday next to the bodies of Hamas terrorists killed by Israeli tank fire, during their funeral at a mosque in Gaza City.. (photo credit: REUTERS/MOHAMMED SALEM)

With around 140 Palestinians killed by the IDF during the ongoing Gaza border crisis, and almost every incident of death being initially probed, The Jerusalem Post has learned that the volume of reviews is drawing out the process of reaching legal decisions.

How soon the IDF makes decisions about the probes is crucial as it could impact ongoing war-crimes probes of Israel by the International Criminal Court and the UN Human Rights Council.

Although the IDF has two teams performing initial probes of incidents in which Palestinians were killed and some controversial incidents where Palestinians were injured – one led by Brig.-Gen. Moti Baruch and another led by Brig.-Gen. (res.) Nitzan Nuriel – the sheer number of incidents has delayed its ability to reach decisions.

In addition, the Post has learned that the IDF’s probes need to alter their paradigm for investigating and the methods they use to review incidents in light of the unique mixture of civilians and Hamas operatives. For example, the IDF has experience with balancing military goals and potential civilians casualties regarding aerial attacks, but has not found any country facing a similar paradigm of a long border of conflict that mixes combatants and civilians.

The crisis started with mostly civilian-run protests on March 30 – with Hamas operatives mixed in – but over time became more dominated by Hamas and other terrorist groups using increasingly violent methods, sometimes including gunfire or plastic explosives.

While protests, attempts to infiltrate Israel’s border fence, and fire kites have slowed some in recent weeks, no one has declared the crisis over and the IDF still views the situation as ongoing – a third factor in the delay in deciding whether to criminally investigate incidents.

Late Thursday afternoon, Haaretz reported that the two teams probing the incidents are close to turning over a large number of recommendations to military advocate-general Maj.-Gen. Sharon Afek, who has the final word on whether to criminally investigate an incident.

Haaretz reported that the two teams will recommend to Afek not to criminally investigate any of the incidents as the Palestinians killed had either been shot by accident, had died due to other operational errors, or had been shot justifiably.

Even if the two teams send recommendations soon to Afek, the Post has learned that the IDF legal division will likely need to request the gathering of additional evidence, which will draw out the probes further and only Afek makes final decisions.

Moreover, the Post has learned that in many cases, the IDF has been in touch with Palestinians’ lawyers to get information and is waiting for responses or has received initial responses and is in an extended process of dialogue.

The IDF’s open-fire rules during the crisis have been highly controversial and on Wednesday the UN Human Rights Council appointed an official commission, headed by Syracuse professor and war crimes expert David Michael Crane, to probe alleged war-crimes allegations against Israel.

In April, the International Criminal Court issued a warning to both Israel and Hamas that its ongoing war-crimes probe of both sides dating back to the 2014 Gaza war could also include any new crimes committed during the current border conflict.

Even if the IDF puts forth the above reasons justifying its needing more time to make final decisions about criminal investigations and – down the road – whether to indict soldiers or not, there are concerns that the longer the probes run the more global legal problems may build up.

Despite these concerns, the Post has learned the IDF will likely not push to speed up the process.

Regarding the 2014 Gaza war, though the IDF made several announcements about criminal probes in the weeks and months after the war ended, there are still, to this day, no final decisions regarding whether to criminally probe the three largest incidents of Palestinian deaths.

The Post has learned that final decisions regarding those incidents are due in the coming months or by the end of 2018.

It appears that the IDF and top Israeli legal officials have not reached a final decision about whether to put out large public reports about their probes, as they did for the 2014 Gaza war, preferring to wait until the current border crisis has ended and they can view its full scale.

Moreover, many of the government officials and soldiers that the legal officials need information from are still serving on the border as long as the crisis continues – causing a delay in how quickly they can provide documentation.

The 2014 Gaza war led to over 30 criminal investigations out of around 500 initial probes. If none of the current crisis incidents lead to criminal probes, the IDF would likely come under even greater scrutiny by the ICC and the UNHRC.

On the other hand, the IDF is hopeful that a High Court of Justice ruling declaring its open fires rules legal may shield it from outside legal scrutiny.

Source: https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Is-the-IDF-ready-for-its-next-legal-war-563568

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