DAVID ADAMS reports on the findings of Amnesty International’s latest annual report on the state of human rights around the world…
The numbers tell a grim story of human rights in 2015: war crimes or other “laws of war” violations carried out in at least 19 countries, restricted freedom of the press or expression in at least 113 countries, prisoners of conscience locked up in at least 61 countries, and more than 60 million people displaced from their homes around the world.
Amnesty International’s latest annual report on the state of the world’s human rights – released earlier this week – paints a picture which the organisation describes as a “global assault on people’s basic freedoms”, saying many governments were “brazenly breaking international law and deliberately undermining institutions meant to protect people’s rights”.
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Cover of the Amnesty International report “Millions of people are suffering enormously at the hands of states and armed groups, while governments are shamelessly painting the protection of human rights as a threat to security, law and order or national ‘values’.”– Salil Shetty, secretary general of Amnesty International |
Salil Shetty, secretary general of the human rights organisation, says people’s rights were “being treated with utter contempt by many governments around the world”.
“Millions of people are suffering enormously at the hands of states and armed groups, while governments are shamelessly painting the protection of human rights as a threat to security, law and order or national ‘values’.”
Other figures in the report show people were tortured or “otherwise ill-treated” in at least 122 countries, that at least 156 human rights defenders died in detention or were killed during the year, that armed groups committed abuses in least 36 countries, that unfair trials were conducted in at least 55 per cent of countries and that at least 30 countries forced refugees to return to countries where they would be in danger.
Amnesty have also warned of an “insidious and creeping trend” in which governments are undermining human rights through deliberately attacking, underfunding and neglecting institutions such as the UN human rights bodies, International Criminal Court and regional bodies like the Council of Europe.
“Not only are our rights under threat, so are the laws and the system that protect them,” says Mr Shetty. “More than 70 years of hard work and human progress at at risk.”
Countries across the world were censured for their attacks on human rights, among them Russia for its “repressive use of vague national security and anti-extremism legislation and its concerted attempts to silence civil society in the country” as well as for its “shameful refusal” to acknowledge civilian killings in Syria and moves to block the UN Security Council from taking action on the conflict there.
Thailand was criticised for the arrest of “peaceful critics” and the military authorities’ “dismissal” of international calls not to excessively restrict rights and silence dissent in the name of security, Burundi for “systematic killings” and other violence perpetrated by security forces, Israel for its ongoing military blockade of Gaza, and Venezuela for a continuing lack of justice in cases involving grave human rights violations.
In a country-by-country analysis of human rights, the report also criticises Australia for the “disproportionate” rate at which Indigenous people are jailed and its continued “punitive approach” to asylum seekers including its offshore detention programs and its policies of pushing back boats and returning people to countries of origin without proper assessment.
Amnesty – which points to the ongoing advocacy and activism of civil society, social movements and human rights defenders as “signs of hope” during 2015 – have called for countries to respect human rights and for the “reinvigoration” of the UN and its offices and for governments to support and fully fund systems to uphold international law and people’s rights.
