Reflections on events and ideas with significant consequences on the discourse and the standing of institutions of rights Share Your Thoughts! (authors may submit their essay or provide a link if already published and they wish to republish it here).
On the Release of Political Prisoners in Syria and Human Rights
by Ahmed E. Souaiaia There are good reasons for cheering the freeing of political prisoners held in Syria after the fall of the Baath rule. Indeed, no one should be imprisoned for political expression or for belonging to a political trend that disagrees with the ruling party. Therefore, probing evidence of torture and holding those responsible should be the most urgent action, but it must be done independently and transparently. The collapsed Syrian government, like all other governments around the world, created a “label” for social groups it wants to target, legislate a law that criminalize the “label”, and use the law to justify all its abuses. In the last 24 years alone, the Syrian government attached the label “terrorism” to all groups that have opposed its rule, and in many cases, even to those who called for political reform, and used the designation to justify exclusion, imprisonment, and torture of political opponents. The swift and relatively “peaceful” collapse of the Baath government this time, spared the Syrian people much death and destruction that they are all very familiar with. However, the political change is rooted in extreme violence that persisted for more than 14 years, a time during which all armed entities committed human rights abuses. It is unlikely that human rights abuses will end with the fall of Baath government. Earlier this year, for weeks, Syrians in Idlib took to the streets to protest the rule and practices of some of the groups that governed northwest Syrian. Read more
Towards a global alliance to compensate for colonialism and its crimes
by Muhammed Khalil Al-Mousa * The idea of colonialism has historically been based on the practice of imposing political, economic, social, cultural and legal domination by a foreign state, often a Western state, over a foreign territory and its inhabitants. Colonialism, which extended from the sixteenth century until the middle of the twentieth century, was a practice not prohibited under traditional international law, but it became prohibited since the middle of the twentieth century, when the United Nations decolonized the world. Colonial practices and policies were built on plundering the wealth of the colonial peoples, accumulating wealth and capital at their expense, impoverishing, marginalizing, enslaving and trading them, destroying their industries and agricultural and commercial activities, as well as the oppression, oppression and brutality practiced by the colonial powers in the lands under their control. Those colonial policies and practices led to structural imbalances between colonial and colonial states, manifested in historical injustice and inequality.
UN: “Stop denying racism, start dismantling it”
UN Human Rights Chief urges immediate, transformative action to uproot systemic racism GENEVA (28 June 2021) – UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet on Monday issued an urgent call for States to adopt a “transformative agenda” to uproot systemic racism, as she published a report casting a spotlight on the litany of violations of economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights suffered by people of African descent – on a daily basis and across different States and jurisdictions. The report states that the worldwide mobilization of people calling for racial justice has forced a long-delayed reckoning with racism and shifted debates towards a focus on the systemic nature of racism and the institutions that perpetrate it.
The human right that benefits…
This provocative article’s main thesis is succinctly captured by the title, the human right that benefits nature. While informative with the level of details and timelines that chronicle the struggle of community organizers to secure livable clean spaces, it nonetheless perpetuates the idea that human rights are claims for specific rights independent of whatever else is happening in the world. The piece, however, highlights the need for the reframing human rights discourse. It reveals human rights as outcomes of plurality of intra- and interconnected systems with direct and indirect effects. To have a fuller grasp of the causes, motives, and effects of human rights abuses, we must adopt the systems thinking framework. Such a paradigm shift will allow us to account for determinant and affluent systems that directly and indirectly produce the human wrongs that has devastated and continue to devastate communities and the environment. The systems thinking paradigm, when applied to human rights, reveals the deliberate designs that connect the smallest single cell organism to the planet earth and beyond; it underscores the fact that human rights, in the end, benefit humans. …Read the human right that benefits nature
Impact of Sovereign and Absolute Immunity on Human Rights
by Ahmed E. Souaiaia Those who believe in top-down paradigm for the promotion of human rights norms are given another good example of the misplaced expectations as the new US administration tackles the legacy of abuse and human rights violations. I have consistently argued that legislating through executive order does not necessarily promote the long-term health of a human rights regime. When considering the fact that human rights abuses are primarily carried out by governments, it becomes evident that entrusting the protection of human rights to a government amounts to asking violators to look after the wellbeing of the victims: individuals, minority, and vulnerable groups. Although the Obama administration, through a series of executive orders, intended to end the abusive and illegal practices such as torture and indefinite detention of suspects: In Guantanamo prison alone, a total of 779 people were detained for years, only to release 538 of these people without ever being charged of crime. Additionally, the extrajudicial spying on citizens conceived and practiced by the Bush administration was never fully addressed. Ultimately, the Obama’s executive orders rendered many pending or future court interventions in many of these matters moot. Not giving the courts an opportunity to issue a legal ruling regarding the extent of executive authority will deprive future victims from a powerful legal precedent on the one hand, and leave the door open for future administrations to reverse these executive orders or initiate a new regime of abusive and illegal practices.
Comments on Rights
- On the Release of Political Prisoners in Syria and Human Rights
by Ahmed E. Souaiaia There are good reasons for cheering the freeing of political prisoners held in Syria after the fall of the Baath rule. Indeed, no one should be imprisoned for political expression or for belonging to a political trend that disagrees with the ruling party. Therefore, probing evidence of torture and holding those Read - Towards a global alliance to compensate for colonialism and its crimes
by Muhammed Khalil Al-Mousa * The idea of colonialism has historically been based on the practice of imposing political, economic, social, cultural and legal domination by a foreign state, often a Western state, over a foreign territory and its inhabitants. Colonialism, which extended from the sixteenth century until the middle of the twentieth century, was Read - UN: “Stop denying racism, start dismantling it”
UN Human Rights Chief urges immediate, transformative action to uproot systemic racism GENEVA (28 June 2021) – UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet on Monday issued an urgent call for States to adopt a “transformative agenda” to uproot systemic racism, as she published a report casting a spotlight on the litany of violations Read - The human right that benefits…
This provocative article’s main thesis is succinctly captured by the title, the human right that benefits nature. While informative with the level of details and timelines that chronicle the struggle of community organizers to secure livable clean spaces, it nonetheless perpetuates the idea that human rights are claims for specific rights independent of whatever else Read - Impact of Sovereign and Absolute Immunity on Human Rights
by Ahmed E. Souaiaia Those who believe in top-down paradigm for the promotion of human rights norms are given another good example of the misplaced expectations as the new US administration tackles the legacy of abuse and human rights violations. I have consistently argued that legislating through executive order does not necessarily promote the long-term Read