AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORT 2010
MILLIONS OF people are suffering fear, hunger and human rights abuses because governments put their political interests above international law, Amnesty International has said.
The Amnesty International Report 2010examines human rights violations in 159 countries.
It found people endured torture or ill-treatment in 111 countries, freedom of expression was restricted in at least 96 countries, unfair trials were held in 55 countries and 81 countries had not signed up to the International Criminal Court.
Prisoners of conscience were held in at least 48 countries and human rights abusers acted with impunity in 61 countries.
Progress had, however, been made in a number of areas. The International Criminal Court prosecutor had opened investigations of three cases where the crimes had been referred by the state in which they occurred, these were in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic. It also began in investigation into the situation in Darfur, Sudan, which had been referred by the UN Security Council.
Landmark judgments in national courts in 2009 included the conviction of former president of Peru Alberto Fujimori for crimes against humanity in relation to three cases of extra-judicial military execution in the early 1990s.
Argentina’s last military president, Reynaldo Bignone, was convicted of kidnapping and torture. In Cambodia former Khmer Rouge commander Kaing Guek Eav faced trial for war crimes against humanity.
However, against these successes there remained two main obstacles to the prosecution of governments and former governments and leaders, Amnesty said.
The first was that powerful states continued to stand above the law and outside international scrutiny. The second was that states manipulated the law to shield their allies.
The US, having excluded itself from the jurisdiction of the ICC, faced far less external pressure to address the “abuses” it committed in the context of its counter-terrorism strategy, the report said.
It noted that President Barack Obama ordered the closure of Guantánamo Bay within a year of taking office, but by the end of 2009 Guantánamo detentions were still ongoing.
China shielded its actions from international scrutiny by restricting access to information.
Following a crackdown on protesters which resulted in death sentences and executions within months of the event, China failed to respond to a request from the UN rapporteur on torture to visit the area.
Despite an EU-commissioned independent inquiry that concluded all sides in the 2008 Russian-Georgian conflict were responsible for violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, neither Russia nor Georgia had brought anyone to account, the report said.
While the principle that war crimes and crimes against humanity had been accepted internationally, there was little accountability for abuses of economic, social and cultural rights, Amnesty said.
Large numbers of countries denied their citizens rights to health and housing. However, in addition to the actions of states, global businesses were increasingly violating these rights.
“Meaningful accountability of corporations remains rare,” the report said. Attempts to secure justice were thwarted by ineffective legal systems, lack of access to information, corporate interference with legal and regulatory systems and the “corruption of powerful state-corporate alliances”.
