A land lease to ensure a rich country's food security at Indonesians' expense?
The Saudi Arabian BinLadin Group has announced it will invest in two million hectares of land in Indonesia for the cultivation of rice and other staples. This would make Indonesia the world's largest rice exporter in 2009 and ensure that Saudi Arabia can continue to obtain rice for its population in the future. The duration of the lease was not disclosed.
In 2008, Saudi Arabia imported over one million tons of rice, Gulf News reported, while Reuters said the country is one of the world's top ten rice importers.
In Indonesia, however, over half of the population lives on under $2 a day, and 28 percent of children under five are malnourished, as measured by being underweight for age, according to the UNDP 2007/2008 Human Development Report.
This trade deal suggests that Saudi Arabia is ensuring the security of its food supply at the expense of local Indonesians who could benefit from the food their own country produces.
Excerpt from a United Nations Special Program for Food Security documentary on its work in Indonesia:
Posted by Shira Stanton on March 23rd, 2009India gets richer, yet more than 40 percent of its children are malnourished
While India's growth rate has been impressive over the years, its failure at lowering child malnutrition is astounding. Its neighbor, China, has managed to lower child malnutrition rates to under seven percent. More than 42 percent of India's children are malnourished.
One-fourth of the world's hungry people live in India, 230 million people in all. Anemia is growing among rural women of childbearing age and gender discrimination persists, with women often being the last to eat in their homes and not getting the proper food and rest needed during pregnancy.
Go here for the link to the full New York Times article.
Kenya Human Rights Activist Assassinated
Mr. Kingara's Oscar Foundation Free Legal Aid Clinic published a report last year criticizing the Kenyan government of executing or torturing to death Kenyans in extra-judicial processes.
His killing led to student clashes with police near the site of his death.The UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitary executions, Philip Alston published a report last week on police abuses of power, saying that Kenyan police act as a law unto themselves.
For more, see BBC News.
Go here for more information on the Oscar Foundation and Mr. Kingara.
La justicia internacional no da inmunidad a gobernantes
La Corte Penal Internacional (CPI) ha emitido una orden de arresto contra el presidente sudanés, Omar Hasan al Bachir, por crímenes de guerra y de lesa humanidad en la región sudanesa de Darfur.
Hoy en el periodico español Público la periodista Isabel Coello escribe que la orden de arresto dictada ayer por la Corte Penal Internacional "consagra en la práctica... el principio de que no hay inmunidad, ni siquiera para jefes de Estado en activo, ante crímenes de la magnitud del genocidio y los crímenes contra la humanidad".
Oxfam: Los mitos sobre la asistencia sanitaria privada en países pobres
Oxfam Internacional acaba de publicar un documento muy interesante: OPTIMISMO CIEGO: Los mitos sobre la asistencia sanitaria privada en países pobres. Ofrece una gran cantidad de argumentos en contra, con datos y hechos, de los servicios privados de atención sanitaria en países pobres.
Resumen: Hacer realidad el derecho a la salud para millones de personas en los países pobres requiere expandir los servicios sanitarios para lograr un acceso universal y equitativo. Son cada vez más los donantes internacionales que promueven una expansión de la asistencia sanitaria privada para alcanzar este objetivo. El sector privado puede cumplir un papel en la prestación de salud, pero este documento demuestra que hay una urgente necesidad de volver a examinar los argumentos utilizados en favor del aumento de la provisión de asistencia sanitaria privadaen países pobres. Los datos muestran que dar prioridad a este enfoque hace extremadamente improbable que se proporcione salud a las personas pobres. Los gobiernos y los donantes de países ricos deben fortalecer las capacidades del Estado para regular y centrarse en extender rápidamente la asistencia sanitaria gratuita y pública, una medida probada para salvar millones de vidas en todo el mundo.
Posted by Shira Stanton on March 3rd, 2009The right to housing and the current financial crisis
The current Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, Raquel Rolnik, just presented this report to the Human Rights Council on the consequences of the current financial situation for the right to adequate housing. She discusses how various economic, financial and housing policies over the past decade may have contributed to the current crisis.
Highlighted in the report is the widely perceived notion that housing is simply a commodity and financial asset, ignoring the need for possible public intervention to ensure this basic human right.
The Special Rappoteur offers some possible suggestions for ways forward, including news ideas for how public housing can help ease the current housing crisis.
Economics and Human Rights: Never the Twain shall meet?
An new report entitled 'Rethinking Macro Economics from a Human Rights Perspective' by Radhika Balakrishnan, Diane Elson, and Raj Patel suggests that a conversation between human rights advocates and economists is not only possible but essential, especially in these times of economic crisis.
Drawing on the lessons learned from a pilot project in the United States and Mexico, this report shows how human rights advocates and economists - especially progressive heterodox economists - can work together.
Learning from both disciplines, the report outlines a methodology for evaluating macroeconomic policies from the perspective of compliance with the obligation of the progressive realization of economic and social rights.
Posted by Sally-Anne Way on February 24th, 2009
Abusos de Wal-Mart contra mujeres y adolescentes en México
Investigadores de organizaciones de derechos económicos y sociales en México han denunciado las violaciones cometidas contra mujeres y adolescentes de la cadena comercial Wal-Mart, así como las transgresiones sistemáticas a la legislación laboral, informa el periódico La Jornada en México D.F.
En la investigación, una investigadora da cuenta de la discriminación y explotación a que son sujetas las trabajadoras de dicha cadena comercial. Para entrar a laborar, se les exige certificado de no embarazo y se les discrimina a la hora de ascender en el escalafón. Además, son sujetas a acoso sexual y algunas han sido violadas por sus supervisores.
La Jornada ha dicho que en el caso de los menores trabajadores (“cerillos” o empacadores) Wal-Mart se aprovecha de sus necesidades económicas y los obliga a firmar contratos de trabajo sin sueldo, prestaciones ni servicio médico. Con 895 tiendas en 141 ciudades de México, dicha trasnacional es "la principal empleadora de mujeres en el país."
Las organizaciones Proyecto de Derechos Económicos, Sociales y Culturales (Prodesc), y Sociedad Mexicana pro Derechos de la Mujer (Semillas), así como la investigadora independiente Shaila Toledo presentaron ayer el informe “Lo barato cuesta caro: violaciones a derechos humanos en Wal-Mart México.”
Chevron wants $500,000 from Nigerian villagers who sought justice in human rights case
Chevron Corp., which prevailed in a human-rights lawsuit seeking to hold it responsible for the shooting of Nigerian protesters at an oil platform, is seeking nearly $500,000 in legal costs from the villagers who brought the suit, the Los Angeles Times reported this week.
Lawyers for the villagers had sought to hold the oil giant responsible for the 1998 shooting and mistreatment of protesters by Nigerian soldiers at the Parabe oil rig off the coast of Nigeria. They have filed an appeal in the case, which is scheduled to be heard next month.
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Advocates and lawyers for the Nigerians said they were outraged by Chevron's attempt to seek money from the plaintiffs, including one who was shot and wounded, another who was arrested and tortured and others whose husbands or fathers were killed.
Laura Livoti, founder of San Francisco Bay Area-based Justice in Nigeria Now, said the $485,000 sought by Chevron, California's largest company, would constitute a fortune for the Nigerians. That sum would be enough to sustain at least four villages in the Niger Delta for a year, she said.
"Chevron's attempt to squeeze nearly half a million dollars out of poor villagers who don't even have access to clean drinking water and who had wanted jobs with the company is a dramatic illustration of Chevron's heartlessness," Livoti told the Los Angeles Times.
In 2002, the Center for Economic and Social Rights and the Social and Economic Rights Action Center prevailed before the African Commission on Human and People's Rights in a legal case against the Nigerian government, for violations of the economic and social rights of the Ogoni people in the Niger Delta committed more than six years earlier.
The Commission acknowledged that the military government of Nigeria was directly involved in oil production through the state oil company, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), the majority shareholder in a consortium with Shell Petroleum Development Corporation (SPDC), and that these operations caused environmental degradation and health problems resulting from the contamination of the environment among the Ogoni People.
Further, the Commission found the Nigerian government guilty of economic, social and cultural rights violations against the Ogoni people in connection with state violence and abuses around oil development in the Niger Delta. The Commission also made recommendations for the current government to take remedial action for those violations.
Posted by Kevin Donegan on February 12th, 2009What is the new U.N. optional protocol on economic, social and cultural rights?
On December 10th, 2008, on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
The adoption of the Optional Protocol represents a historic advance, confirming the equal value and importance of all human rights. Forty-two years after a similar mechanism was adopted for civil and political rights, those who suffer from violations of their economic, social and cultural rights now have a complaints mechanism that is of equal status in the UN human rights system. Their right to an effective remedy is recognized.
"The approval of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is of singular importance by closing a historic gap," Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told the UN General Assembly.
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The Optional Protocol is important because it provides victims of economic, social and cultural rights violations who are not able to get an effective remedy in their domestic legal system with an avenue for redress. The adoption of the OP was the result of decades of advocacy by civil society
organizations from around the world including the OP-ICESCR Coalition, of which the International Network for Economic, Social & Cultural Rights is a member.
Through review of cases, an international complaints mechanism will also contribute to clarifying the content of ESC rights and related states' obligations, as well offer guidance to national courts and human rights institutions.
What is the Optional Protocol (OP)?
The OP allows individuals to bring complaints about violations of their economic, social, and cultural rights to the attention of the Committee on Economic, Social & Cultural Rights. The Committee is the main monitoring body for the International Covenant on Economic, Social & Cultural Rights.
The Optional Protocol also provides for an inquiry procedure, which will allow the Committee to initiate an investigation if it receives allegations of grave or systematic violations of the ICESCR (although this is subject to an opt-in clause by governments).
Why is it important?
There are three basic reasons why it is important to allow individual complaints under the Covenant:
- First, individuals now have a venue in which to seek justice for ESCR violations. Any individual or group of individuals can now lodge a complaint to allege a violation of their economic, social or cultural rights. As with other individual complaint mechanisms at the international level, individuals would have to exhaust domestic remedies and their government would have to be a party to the ICESCR.
- Second, the OP gives equal value and importance to ESC rights as human rights, equal in status to civil and political rights. Despite a tremendous amount of international rhetoric on the importance of ESC rights, these rights long remained the only group of rights without an international individual complaints mechanism. Introducing such a mechanism puts ESCR on par with civil and political rights, and finally gives meaning to the rhetoric of indivisibility.
- Third, an individual complaints mechanism strengthens the body of law surrounding specific human rights. The value of an OP allowing individual complaints is clear from the experience of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The Human Rights Committee, which monitors the ICCPR, has developed a solid body of jurisprudence relating to specific rights found in the Covenant. That elaboration has strengthened the rights by clearly defining their parameters, and assisted with national advocacy for enforcement of the rights. Economic and social rights have so far been deprived of this opportunity to develop jurisprudence, and an OP provides such an opportunity.
How would the Optional Protocol work?
As its name states, any Optional Protocol is optional. Governments are not forced to become legally obligated to its terms. An Optional Protocol is a treaty and governments that support the OP may choose to sign and ratify (or accede, if the signature period has expired) to its terms. Once a government has ratified a treaty, that treaty is legally binding.
Individuals who are nationals of the governments that ratify or accede to the Optional Protocol would have the option of bringing an individual complaint to the attention of the Committee on Economic, Social & Cultural Rights. The procedure is set out in the OP itself, and includes certain procedural requirements (for example, the requirement that domestic remedies be exhausted before an individual comes to the Committee). The Committee will review complaints received and write an opinion. Under the current individual complaint mechanism available for the ICCPR, these opinions are much like judicial decisions. Although they are not legally enforceable the way a domestic court opinion is, the governments concerned will have agreed to be legally bound by these decisions.
Check back soon
CESR will be following and analysing further developments as the Optional Protocol is implemented in practice.
See also the updates of the International NGO Coalition on the Optional Protocol to the ICESCR.
Posted by Kevin Donegan on February 5th, 2009What are ESC rights? Why are they important? What are some examples of violations of ESC rights?
Looking for answers to these questions?
The UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has just published this factsheet on the "Frequently Asked Questions on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights".
Posted by Sally-Anne Way on January 15th, 2009Daewoo's bid to lease almost half of Madagascar's arable land collapses
South Korea's Daewoo Logistics Corporation bid to sign a 99-year lease with Madagascar for 1.3 million hectares of land has collapsed.
The land would have been used to plant maize and palm oil for export, much of it to South Korea.
A just-released CESR analysis revealed that 44 percent of Madagascar’s arable land would now be used to promote food security in south Korea, with very little benefit for Madagascar.
One of the key issues this story raised is the growing pattern of richer countries buying or leasing land in poorer countries at the expense of food security in those countries.
The Human Consequences of the Financial Crisis
The current financial crisis will have serious impacts on the realization of ESC rights, especially in the poorer developing countries. As unemployment rises, household incomes drop and food prices rise, families will be forced to reduce consumption of food or take their children out of school. Government spending on education and health may contract and the poorest will not be able to afford to go to school or seek health care. Women will bear the brunt.
CESR's Board member, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, recently responded to the UN General Assembly's Interactive Panel on the Global Financial Crisis.
Posted by Sally-Anne Way on December 23rd, 2008
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights turns 60 in 2008. This Campaign calls us each of us to take responsibility for upholding the goals of the Universal Declaration. See CESR's contribution to the Campaign's goal - Freedom From Want is the unfulfilled promise of the UDHR that will only become a reality when poverty is understood as a denial of fundamental human rights.
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