Universal Declaration of Human Rights: 60 years on
In 1948, Europe lay devastated by the Second World War. Soon it was to be further divided by the Cold War. Over the next 60 years, these experiences had a deep influence on collective and individual responses to the need for common ground, as the region sought to build prosperity, ensure security and embed the rule of law.
In fact, within a decade western Europe had laid the foundations of what would become a pan-European regional institutional architecture – set to create a human rights system unrivalled elsewhere in the world, and transform what began as a localized coal and steel community into a union with global economic and political power.
In that time, the Council of Europe drew up the first international legal instrument to protect human rights, created the European Court of Human Rights to enforce it, and established a Parliamentary Assembly. Now comprising 47 member states, the Council’s system has been augmented by a Commissioner for Human Rights and various monitoring bodies. The vision for human rights, pluralist democracy and the rule of law remains.
The economic communities established in the 1950s have evolved today into the European Union. The EU has expanded in range – to embrace new member states from the former Communist bloc – and in vision – to a “union of values”, aspiring to place human rights at the centre of its internal and external policies.
The post-war political configuration of Europe was also behind the formation of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). This is the world’s largest regional security organization, with 56 participating states, including those of Central Asia. It traces its origins to the détente phase of the early 1970s, when it served as a multilateral forum for dialogue and negotiation between East and West. One of the key results of the OSCE was the “Helsinki Process”, which in turn inspired the creation of a range of NGOs to monitor the key human rights commitments states had made to their citizens.
The path to this point has not been smooth, however. The intervening 60 years have seen military dictatorships in Greece, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, and repressive states of the Soviet bloc. Armed groups have sought to advance the cause of a particular minority or ideology by force. Savage conflicts have convulsed parts of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia as they fell apart. New states emerged, but so did entities with unresolved status still unrecognized by the international community.
Major challenges remain. Much of the region is stable, but impunity endures for crimes committed in recent conflicts, with hundreds of thousands of people still displaced and with little prospect of imminent return. Much of the region has grown in prosperity, but not for those excluded from fundamental economic and social rights, either through racism or other forms of discrimination.
Europe remains a magnet for those seeking to escape persecution, violence or poverty, but still fails them with repressive approaches to irregular migration. Security is a paramount concern of states across the region, yet it is consistently undermined by those who privilege it over human rights in the name of counter-terrorism, or blatantly abuse it to stifle dissent or resist a challenge to the status quo.
The region is still unsafe territory for the countless victims of domestic violence.
It is also sadly true that this region, which regards itself as a beacon of human rights, still embraces a yawning gap between rhetoric and reality, standards and application, principles and performance.
States that entered voluntarily into the various commitments of the regional institutions, have equally voluntarily evaded their obligations – attacking and eroding human rights, and failing to find the political will needed to address key abuses.
Within a decade western Europe had laid the foundations of what would become a pan-European regional institutional architecture - set to create a human rights system unrivalled elsewhere in the world
It is also sadly true that this region, which regards itself as a beacon of human rights, still embraces a yawning gap between rhetoric and reality, standards and application, principles and performance
2007 under review
Security and human rights
One of the most striking cases in point is that of renditions. Evidence emerged during 2007 that finally placed the complicity of European states in the US-led programme of secret and unlawful detentions beyond dispute. It also proved governments had been complicit in transfering people to foreign countries outside the rule of law, in enforced disappearances, and in the torture and other ill-treatment of those subjected to these renditions and secret detentions.
The gaps in legislation which facilitated foreign and European national intelligences’ unlawful conduct, and shielded them from accountability, have also been clearly identified – but the signature response of states has continued to be silence and inaction.
In many other areas, security was privileged over fundamental human rights; to the detriment of both. Kazakstan, Russia and Uzbekistan continued to co-operate, between themselves and with China, in the name of regional security and the “war on terror”, in ways that breached obligations under international human rights and refugee law – including forcibly returning people despite them being at risk of torture and other severe violations.
The UK government continued to undermine the universal ban on torture by deporting people it deemed a threat to national security to states where they would face a real risk of grave human rights abuses on the strength of unenforceable “diplomatic assurances”. It also attempted to persuade other European states, and indeed the European Court of Human Rights, that such assurances were legitimate.
In Turkey and Tajikistan there were concerns over the lack of fair trials in cases prosecuted under anti-terror laws.
Refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants
Foreign nationals, including those seeking international protection, continued to face a consistent pattern of human rights violations. Men, women and children were blocked from easy access to asylum procedures; some were unlawfully detained, others were denied the necessary guidance and legal support. Many were unlawfully expelled before their claims could be heard, and some were sent to countries where they were at risk of human rights violations. In some places rejected asylum-seekers were forced into destitution.
New legislation in countries such as Belgium, France and Switzerland further restricted the rights of asylum-seekers and migrants.
Racism and discrimination
Across the region identity-based discrimination remained rife against Roma, who continued to be largely excluded from public life and unable to enjoy full access to housing, employment and health services. In some countries, the authorities failed to ensure Romani children’s access to education without discrimination. They tolerated, and often promoted, the creation of special classes or schools, including those where a reduced curriculum was taught. Roma were also among those subjected to hate crimes, as were Jews and Muslims. In Russia, violent racist attacks occurred with alarming regularity.
Many people faced discrimination on account of their legal status, including those displaced by conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Soviet Union, whose access to a range of rights was restricted or outright denied, linked with issues of their registration and residency.
Authorities in Lithuania, Moldova, Poland and Russia continued to foster a climate of intolerance against lesbian, gay, bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) communities. Some highly placed politicians used openly homophobic language, for example, and public events were obstructed. In Latvia, however, unlike in two previous years, an LGBT march was permitted and adequately protected by the police against counter-demonstrators.
In July, the European Court of Human Rights delivered its judgment in the 1996 racial killing of Angel Dimitrov Iliev, a Romani man, by a group of six teenagers in the town of Shumen, Bulgaria. The Court noted that the authorities recognized the heinous nature of the crime yet failed to conduct a prompt and effective investigation into the incident.
Impunity and accountability
Although some progress was made in tackling impunity for crimes committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s, many perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity continued to evade justice. This was due to a lack of co-operation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, as well as insufficient efforts by domestic courts.
Torture and other ill-treatment continued to be used across the region, frequently as a means to extract confessions, and often in a race-related context. Obstacles to tackling impunity for such violations included police circumvention of safeguards, lack of prompt access to a lawyer, victims’ fear of reprisals, lack of a properly resourced and independent system for monitoring complaints, and corruption in law enforcement and the judiciary. In places such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Moldova, Spain, Russia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, a failure to conduct prompt, thorough and impartial investigations perpetuated the culture of impunity.
In November, 10 police officers were found not guilty of the torture of two women in police custody in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2002. The two women, "Y" and "C", reportedly suffered torture including beatings, being stripped naked and then sprayed with cold water from a high pressure hose, and attempted rape. The verdicts followed a new medical report requested by the defendants that did not show "definite evidence that the crime of torture had been committed."
Death penalty
Significant progress continued towards abolition of the death penalty throughout the region. In May Kazakstan reduced the number of capital crimes to one terrorism-related offence and maintained its moratorium on executions, as did Tajikistan. In June Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan signed into law amendments which replaced the death penalty with life or long-term imprisonment. However, Uzbekistan refused to impose a moratorium on executions pending the entry into force of the changes, from the beginning of 2008.
Bucking the trend, Belarus remained steadfast in its role as Europe’s last actual executioner. There, as in all the other countries, secrecy remained an issue. Relatives were not given the body of the executed person or told the burial site; no statistics on the use of the death penalty were made public.
Violence against women
Violence against women and girls in the home remained pervasive across the region for all ages and social groups. It was manifested through a range of verbal and psychological abuse, sexual and other violence, economic control and murder. Commonly, only a small proportion of women reported this abuse, deterred among other things by fear of reprisals from abusive partners; fear of prosecution for other offences; self-blame; fear of bringing “shame” on their family; financial insecurity; insecure immigration status; or lack of shelters or other effective measures such as restraining orders to ensure protection for them and their children. But above all, by the widespread impunity enjoyed by perpetrators.
Women also frequently lacked confidence that the relevant authorities would regard the abuse as a crime, rather than a private matter, and deal with it effectively as such. Failure to bridge that confidence gap in reporting not only hampered justice in individual cases but also impeded efforts to tackle such abuses across society by hiding the full extent and nature of the problem.
While there were some positive moves on legislative protection in this area, other crucial gaps remained. Some countries had no laws specifically criminalizing domestic violence, and some failed to collect comprehensive statistical data; thus hampering the provision of appropriate services or the prevention of abuse, and failing women further.
Since the 2006 new law in Georgia on domestic violence, police and the courts have issued or approved protection and restraint orders in many cases. However, some key provisions of the law were not implemented swiftly or fully and the number of shelters for victims of domestic violence remained insufficient. In Spain, positive measures introduced included a protocol for health workers dealing with victims of domestic violence. However, migrant women remained particularly vulnerable to violence as they continued to suffer discrimination in law and practice when trying to access justice and essential resources such as financial assistance, psychological treatment and access to shelters.
Trafficking
Within and across Europe, women, men and children continued to be trafficked for exploitation in informal sectors such as domestic work, farming, manufacturing, construction, hospitality and forced sexual exploitation. Such trafficking was widespread, and thrived on poverty, corruption, lack of education and social breakdown.
Rather than being treated as victims of heinous crimes, as was their right, when trafficked people came to the attention of the authorities they were typically treated as criminals, unlawful aliens, or merely as a useful tool in the criminal justice system. Assistance, when offered to trafficked people to recover from their ordeal, was frequently made conditional on their agreement to co-operate in prosecutions against their traffickers. Such co-operation frequently placed trafficked persons and members of their families in further danger.
Access to justice including redress, compensation, restitution and rehabilitation for the abuses was rare. Non-nationals without rights to residence in the country in which they were found were frequently deported without consideration of the risks that they may face on return, be they re-trafficking, retribution or other violence.
Many states failed to ensure that their focus in this area be on respect for and protection of the rights of trafficked persons. In Greece the vast majority of trafficked women remained unidentified as such by the authorities and therefore unable to exercise their rights to protection and assistance. In Switzerland survivors of human trafficking could be given a temporary residence permit for the duration of any criminal procedure in which they testified, but they lost the right to remain when the procedure ended.
However, in a positive development, in 2007 the number of countries ratifying the Council of Europe’s Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings reached 10, meaning that it will come into force for those countries as of February 2008. In Portugal, survivors of trafficking were no longer classed as irregular migrants.
In January, the Serious Crimes Court in Albania sentenced Fatos Kapllani and Arben Osmani to 16 and 15 years' imprisonment respectively for trafficking children to Greece and forcing them to work as prostitutes or beggars. Witness protection remained problematic in Albania. Employees at the Department for the Protection of Witnesses at the Ministry of the Interior received training on witness protection and in April the government approved standards for the treatment of victims. Nonetheless, in November, police reportedly initiated proceedings against a 17-year-old girl for "failing to report a crime" after she refused to identify the people who had trafficked her to Italy for forced prostitution at the age of 14.
The number of countries ratifying the Council of Europe's Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings reached 10, meaning it will come into force.
Repression of dissent
In many areas across the region, the space for independent voices and civil society shrunk, as freedom of expression and association remained under attack. In Turkey laws that muzzled peaceful dissenting opinion remained in force, with lawyers, journalists and human rights defenders among the victims of harassment, threats, unjust prosecutions and violent attacks. An atmosphere of intolerance prevailed following the shooting in January of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.
In Uzbekistan, freedom of expression and assembly continued to deteriorate and pressure on human rights defenders, activists, and independent journalists showed no sign of abating. The clampdown on civil society continued in Belarus, where any form of public activity not sanctioned by the state, including religious worship, was liable to prosecution and rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly were disregarded. Although the new President in Turkmenistan reversed some of his predecessors’ policies, there was no fundamental improvement in the realization of human rights.
Dissidents, independent journalists, civil society activists and members of religious minorities were among those reportedly harassed, detained or imprisoned. In Azerbaijan independent and opposition journalists faced imprisonment on libel charges, harassment by law enforcement officials and in some cases, physical assault by unknown assailants. Two widely read opposition newspapers were shut down, and editions of opposition newspapers carrying politically sensitive reporting were confiscated or banned from sale by local government bodies.
The Russian authorities were increasingly intolerant of dissent or criticism, branding it “unpatriotic”. A crackdown on civil and political rights was evident throughout the year and particularly in the run-up to parliamentary elections in December. NGOs continued to be weighed down by burdensome reporting requirements imposed by changes to legislation. In Chechnya and the wider North Caucasus region, people seeking justice faced intimidation and reprisals.
In spite of threats, intimidation and detention, however, human rights defenders across Europe held onto the vision of 1948. They remained resolute in their work, and in inspiring others to join them in their quest for lasting change and respect for the human rights of all.
76-year-old Sumaia Abzueva was allegedly beaten up on the way to the market in Argun, Chechnya, on 9 January by a group of young men. She had been seeking an investigation into the killing of her son in 2005. She said she had been threatened more than once by the men who had detained and taken her son away from the family home, and who were suspected to be members of Chechen security forces.
Events that have occurred in 2008
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