Human rights

1 March 2003Feature

Human rights and antimilitarist groups in Georgia face a range of specific challenges. Ucha Nanuashvili reports.

Our society is undergoing a period of serious transition. Transformations are occurring that are having a negative impact not only on socially vulnerable groups, but on the entire population.

 

Our society does not currently have enough knowledge, nor the mechanisms, that would allow it to solve its numerous problems through nonviolent means. The consequences are tragic: almost 33% of Georgia's population has been forced to leave their permanent residences, thousands have been…

1 March 2003News

On 15 January 2003, gunmen shot and beat Marcus Veron, a leader of the Guarani-Kaiowatribe in Brazil, after he attempted to reoccupy ancestral land. Veron, 70, was the third BrazilianIndian to be killed in two weeks.

Marcos Veron, chief of the evicted community of Caarapu village, Brazil. PHOTO: J RIPPER/SURVIVAL

In 2000, Veron toured Europe with tribal advocates' group Survival to publicise the history of his people, who have been forced off their land by ranchers. Now armed…

1 March 2003News in Brief

While the world noted the international day against female genital mutilation (FGM) on 6 February, African women are making their own stand against the practice.

In Kenya, hundreds of girls ran away from home to escape FGM and are now in hiding. In Ethiopia, the wives of four African presidents led hundreds of women in Addis Ababa in a protest against FGM.

FGM is banned in many parts of Africa, but many families practise it in secret. The United Nations estimates that two…

1 December 2002Feature

With more than 20 years' experience, Peace Brigades International have built a reputation for effective nonviolent interventions in trouble-spots around the world. Perhaps best known for their protective accompaniment work with threatened human rights defenders, trade union activists and peace campaigners, the organisation now has 21 national offices in countries throughout Europe, North America and the South Pacific, with current field projects in Mexico, Indonesia and Colombia.

Peace Brigades International (PBI) is a non-governmental organisation working with communities world-wide to address conflicts in nonviolent ways. We send teams of volunteers into areas of conflict to “make space for peace”.

PBI only enters countries where our international presence has been requested, and after a thorough study of the specific conflict. After that, we assess whether PBI's presence would be effective in dissuading violence, or in persuading parties to address their…

1 December 2002Feature

Peace Brigades volunteer Peter Clark sends a message home from the frontline in the war waged on peaceful civilians.

Greetings from the front lines in the battle for democracy in Colombia. I'm not referring to a war waged between the Colombian military, right-wing paramilitaries and left-wing guerrilla groups, but rather the war waged on peaceful civilians who dare to raise their voices or organise politically.

Colombia is often referred to as “the oldest democracy in Latin America” because of its nearly uninterrupted series of elections during the last century. However, civil society and the…

1 December 2002Feature

Colombia has become a model of the extreme use of violence to impose neoliberal globalisation. Every form of social organisation that resists is being eliminated: indigenous people, peasants, workers are assassinated for opposing the objectives of investors. Each year more trade unionists are assassinated in this country than in the whole of the rest of the world.

Coca-Cola and its Colombian subsidiary, Panamco SA participate in this dirty war against social movements. So it is that…

1 December 2002Feature

The San José de Apartadó Peace Community See page 23. The “Nunca Más” (“Never again”) Project This group works in the area of recovering historical truths regarding national human rights violations. The Women's Organisation of the People (OFP)See page 28. The Committee for Solidarity with Political Prisoners (CSPP) This committee, based in Medellín and Bogotá and in the Chocó and Urabá areas, provides legal advice and defence work for prisoners belonging to social organisations or members of…

1 March 2002News

While international attention is focused on prisoners transferred by US from Afghanistan to Camp X-Ray, elsewhere in the world the US government is using peace-keeping forces to arrest, unlawfully detain, and in some cases effectively kidnap, people.

After encouraging states such as Bosnia-Herzegovina to adopt international human rights standards, there is a certain irony in the US acting in such clear violation of both domestic legal systems and of those same international human…

1 March 2002News

Both independent and foreign journalists, and the lesbian and gay community, have again been under attack in Zimbabwe during January and February.

With the build-up to the presidential election - due to be held on 9 March - a combination of new legislation and political policing is attempting to prevent dissent, through restricting press freedom and banning public demonstrations and opposition party election rallies.

At the end of January the restrictive new media bill and…

1 December 2001Feature

When we think about prison we usually imagine the loss of physical liberty - of a life behind bars. But what about our minds? Roberta Bacic discusses the practical and political impact the practice of torture has on people in detention and within the wider community.

I have been invited to write about torture for this issue on prisons and really, much or nothing could be said, the topic simply does not allow for neutrality or impartiality.

It has not been easy to find a way of approaching the subject in such a way that allows us to enter - even superficially - into the paradoxes, the emotions, dilemmas and the rationality provoked by this human manifestation: something which is painful, hard, and even tortuous to communicate. So why examine this…

1 December 2001Feature

According to the Washington Post "FBI and Justice Department investigators are increasingly frustrated by the silence of jailed suspected associates of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, and some are beginning to that say that traditional civil liberties may have to be cast aside if they are to extract information about the 11 September attacks and terrorist plans".

So far more than 150 people have been detained in the US in connection with the World…

1 September 2001Review

Pluto Press 2001. ISBN 0 7453 1452.135 pages

Though a relatively short book, this is a dense and scholarly work. It attempts to contextualise human rights within a three-fold setting - the philosophical, the legal and the political - with the emphasis on the latter, and usually least acknowledged, area.

It is a book which needs careful reading since it condenses many of the current and past theories in international relations, and critiques them in the light of the new era of globalisation, whilst never losing sight of what…

1 January 2001Review

Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000. ISBN 0 275 96516 3, 193pp

Genocide, according to the UN Convention of 1948, is defined as any acts committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. This book represents a review of the various dimensions of a strategy that might lead to a genocide-free world.

The key strands identified include 1) Strengthening the institutions and actors like the UN and NGOs that are dedicated to the monitoring and the protection of human rights - including the…