Monthly update from Salil Shetty
Amnestys internasjonale generalsekretær, Salil Shetty, oppsummerer året og oppdaterer bevegelsen på sine aktitivteter.
Publisert:
31. Jan 2017, kl. 11:09
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Sist oppdatert:
31. Jan 2017, kl. 11:42
Dear all,
As we reach the end of 2016, I am sure we are all reflecting on a bleak year which has been epitomised in the recent horrors in Aleppo. Taking up on Edmund Burke’s famous provocation that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good [people] to do nothing”, we mobilised our own act of resistance.As Syrian government forces and their allies took almost all of East Aleppo in mid-December, creating serious concerns of revenge attacks, including executions, we launched a campaign action calling on the international community to support the rapid deployment of UN monitors, and on the Syrian, Iranian and Russian governments to ensure the safe evacuation of civilians and allow unfettered humanitarian access to assess and respond to the needs of the civilian population. These calls were put out in the press release and campaign action with active section engagement. This led to a strong media attention, including a CNN interview, and over 300,000 people took action. The UN Security Council’s resolution this week to establish an independent international mechanism to ensure accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity, after years of paralysis, is a landmark decision, which we will no doubt track closely to enforce compliance and implementation.
Meanwhile in Iraq, the bloody battle for Mosul continued to rage, and we are documenting the grave human rights abuses there as well.
Amnesty’s presence and my presentation for the second time running at the International Anti-Corruption Conference, this year in Panama, was warmly welcomed by the major organisations and leaders of the global anti-corruption movement. For most poor countries and poor people, corruption is a big driver of impunity in relation to human rights violations.
I am now writing from India, where a few days ago I spoke at Techfest Bombay at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology. I was speaking on the potential for technology to be used for good or ill, focusing particularly on how, if used properly, technology could be a huge positive force for freedom, dignity, equity and inclusion, and peace and justice. For those of you who follow this topic, the full text is here.
This gave me an opportunity to meet with some of the Amnesty India team in Bombay and most of the staff in the main office in Bangalore. Earlier this month, I was also in Brazil to finalise the appointment of Jurema Werneck, a key feminist Afro-Brazilian leader, as the new National Office Director. I spent a couple of days with the Amnistia Brasil team. Spending time in both of them, five years after they were set up, I can report with great confidence that the first two national offices have really done the movement proud. The National Office review we have just completed will give you much more detail. There are many lessons to learn as we now establish national offices in Nigeria and Indonesia but what Amnesty India and Brazil have been able to achieve in a relatively short period, against all odds, is truly commendable. Whether it is building a strong public presence through the media and campaigns, or taking on the national governments on very sensitive issues like discrimination on grounds of religion, gender or ethnicity, or holding security forces to account, or building up a significant base of activists and donors, the results are very impressive indeed. We now have a proof of concept of the model for how, with the right investment of people and money and the right bottom-up strategy adapting to the ground reality in each context, we can establish a strong Amnesty in key countries in the global south. This approach will be key to our success in achieving Goal 5 particularly in the South.
We have seen some relatively good news on the death penalty front as the UN General Assembly adopted its sixth resolution calling for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty. 117 states voted in favour and only 40 against, with several states voting in favour for the first time. Thanks to the many Amnesty sections and offices which tirelessly lobbied to consolidate support for the call.
This month also saw a concerted effort on our part to defend the ICC against politicised attacks, particularly in Africa, delivering letters to governments, issuing public statements and publishing op-eds in papers across the world. I am sure we made an important contribution in persuading many countries, including especially many African countries, which made statements at the Assembly of States Parties in November in support of the ICC.
Our work to stop the arms sales fuelling serious violations in Yemen saw some successes. On 19 December, the British and Saudi Arabian governments finally admitted that the Saudi-led coalition had used UK-made cluster munitions in Yemen, explicitly confirming the findings that we published in May and which the coalition had repeatedly denied. Saudi Arabia now says that it will cease its use of UK-made cluster munitions.
Earlier in the month the US government stopped the sale of certain arms, including bombs, to Saudi Arabia. But anything short of ceasing all arms transfers that could be used by any of the warring parties in Yemen is simply not enough.
The Qatari government, under pressure over worker abuse ahead of the 2022 World Cup, brought a new law into force that it claimed would abolish the notorious sponsorship system. We released a briefing exposing the law’s deep flaws in an effort to counter the PR offensive around the law. Despite rejecting our analysis, the government publicly acknowledged that it needed to keep reforming. Our intervention has made it much more difficult for FIFA and Qatar’s international partners who are pushing for World Cup construction contracts to use the new law to claim that migrant labour abuse in Qatar is a problem that has been “solved”.
The African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child informed us earlier this month that it had decided to undertake an on-site investigation into the situation of children in South Kordofan and Blue Nile regions of Sudan. This decision was made in direct response to our request and lobbying efforts during the 28th ordinary session of the Committee.
Meanwhile there has been much talk in the media of “fake news”, but this month we worked alongside investigative journalists from Le Monde and Forbes to expose a “fake NGO” calling itself Voiceless Victims and posing as an ally of migrant workers in the Gulf. The group, which had made efforts to establish itself online as a credible campaigning organisation, sent the IS, AI France and several of our partners plausible emails containing links to suspicious servers that would have profiled our IT infrastructure and potentially enabled whoever is behind Voiceless Victims to target our systems more effectively. The case is a vital reminder of the time and money that some states appear willing to invest in order to infiltrate and undermine the work that we and our partners do. You can read the full investigation here. Please share it with partners to alert them to the risks.
Large multinational companies in the palm oil industry, including the world’s largest trader, Wilmar, nine of its global buyers (including Nestlé, Unilever, P&G, Kellogg’s) as well as the palm oil certification body (RSPO) felt the heat with the launch of our report “The Great Palm Oil Scandal”. The report exposed severe labour abuses, including forced labour, worst forms of child labour, failure to pay minimum wages, and endemic discrimination against women workers, on Wilmar’s and its suppliers’ plantations in Indonesia. The report and its accompanying audio-visual materials received strong media coverage and section support. Our local partners advised that it was well received in Indonesia. None of the companies, not even Wilmar, were able to challenge any of our findings and KitKat (Nestlé) and Ben & Jerry’s (Unilever) were forced to respond publicly on Twitter to accusations that palm oil in their products involved severe labour rights abuses. The Indonesian Ministry of Manpower is putting together a taskforce to investigate our findings, and so are Wilmar and most of the buyers. In 2017, the movement will escalate public action to keep pressure on the companies. We will continue to push for concrete improvements to workers’ lives and lobby the Indonesian government to enforce its own laws.
Also this month, we released a report on the blasphemy laws in Pakistan, which provide carte blanche for a whole range of human rights abuses, and are frequently exploited to target religious minorities and justify vigilante violence, often with impunity or official collusion. It is an important piece of our work on discrimination, and how it relates to identity politics and violence.
The Write for Rights campaign is in full swing, with almost two million actions already. We have seen huge section participation, from Senegal to Sweden – with many sections reporting their biggest year yet. The campaign founders, AI Poland, have had over 400 events in the country. The IS website has hugely outperformed previous years, with over 30,000 more actions than last year already!
We also saw the first ever successful Global Day of Action of Human Rights Day. This year we created an agile Twitter action which has been a big success. We have also had great media engagement with more TV interviews and in depth press coverage than ever, and excellent support from celebrities, including Sting, Richard Branson and Ai Weiwei. This is undoubtedly in part due to the inclusion of Edward Snowden in the campaign – Snowden himself was able to take part in a number of section events. I especially enjoyed the chain letter video in which he took part.
As 2016 draws to an end, I would like to thank you for your tireless and inspiring work across the world. When we look back on the year, there are too many highlights to mention – a testament to all that we have achieved.
But it hardly needs saying that these are dark times, and our work is needed more than ever. We are also now a quarter of the way through the strategic goals period, and have some way to go to bring about the change we want to see. We enter 2017 with a strong sense of determination and resolve to stand up for justice, equality and dignity for every human being.
Let me end with this video, which encapsulates some of our key successes and our commitment to taking injustice personally.
Best,
Salil
As we reach the end of 2016, I am sure we are all reflecting on a bleak year which has been epitomised in the recent horrors in Aleppo. Taking up on Edmund Burke’s famous provocation that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good [people] to do nothing”, we mobilised our own act of resistance.As Syrian government forces and their allies took almost all of East Aleppo in mid-December, creating serious concerns of revenge attacks, including executions, we launched a campaign action calling on the international community to support the rapid deployment of UN monitors, and on the Syrian, Iranian and Russian governments to ensure the safe evacuation of civilians and allow unfettered humanitarian access to assess and respond to the needs of the civilian population. These calls were put out in the press release and campaign action with active section engagement. This led to a strong media attention, including a CNN interview, and over 300,000 people took action. The UN Security Council’s resolution this week to establish an independent international mechanism to ensure accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity, after years of paralysis, is a landmark decision, which we will no doubt track closely to enforce compliance and implementation.
Meanwhile in Iraq, the bloody battle for Mosul continued to rage, and we are documenting the grave human rights abuses there as well.
Amnesty’s presence and my presentation for the second time running at the International Anti-Corruption Conference, this year in Panama, was warmly welcomed by the major organisations and leaders of the global anti-corruption movement. For most poor countries and poor people, corruption is a big driver of impunity in relation to human rights violations.
I am now writing from India, where a few days ago I spoke at Techfest Bombay at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology. I was speaking on the potential for technology to be used for good or ill, focusing particularly on how, if used properly, technology could be a huge positive force for freedom, dignity, equity and inclusion, and peace and justice. For those of you who follow this topic, the full text is here.
This gave me an opportunity to meet with some of the Amnesty India team in Bombay and most of the staff in the main office in Bangalore. Earlier this month, I was also in Brazil to finalise the appointment of Jurema Werneck, a key feminist Afro-Brazilian leader, as the new National Office Director. I spent a couple of days with the Amnistia Brasil team. Spending time in both of them, five years after they were set up, I can report with great confidence that the first two national offices have really done the movement proud. The National Office review we have just completed will give you much more detail. There are many lessons to learn as we now establish national offices in Nigeria and Indonesia but what Amnesty India and Brazil have been able to achieve in a relatively short period, against all odds, is truly commendable. Whether it is building a strong public presence through the media and campaigns, or taking on the national governments on very sensitive issues like discrimination on grounds of religion, gender or ethnicity, or holding security forces to account, or building up a significant base of activists and donors, the results are very impressive indeed. We now have a proof of concept of the model for how, with the right investment of people and money and the right bottom-up strategy adapting to the ground reality in each context, we can establish a strong Amnesty in key countries in the global south. This approach will be key to our success in achieving Goal 5 particularly in the South.
We have seen some relatively good news on the death penalty front as the UN General Assembly adopted its sixth resolution calling for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty. 117 states voted in favour and only 40 against, with several states voting in favour for the first time. Thanks to the many Amnesty sections and offices which tirelessly lobbied to consolidate support for the call.
This month also saw a concerted effort on our part to defend the ICC against politicised attacks, particularly in Africa, delivering letters to governments, issuing public statements and publishing op-eds in papers across the world. I am sure we made an important contribution in persuading many countries, including especially many African countries, which made statements at the Assembly of States Parties in November in support of the ICC.
Our work to stop the arms sales fuelling serious violations in Yemen saw some successes. On 19 December, the British and Saudi Arabian governments finally admitted that the Saudi-led coalition had used UK-made cluster munitions in Yemen, explicitly confirming the findings that we published in May and which the coalition had repeatedly denied. Saudi Arabia now says that it will cease its use of UK-made cluster munitions.
Earlier in the month the US government stopped the sale of certain arms, including bombs, to Saudi Arabia. But anything short of ceasing all arms transfers that could be used by any of the warring parties in Yemen is simply not enough.
The Qatari government, under pressure over worker abuse ahead of the 2022 World Cup, brought a new law into force that it claimed would abolish the notorious sponsorship system. We released a briefing exposing the law’s deep flaws in an effort to counter the PR offensive around the law. Despite rejecting our analysis, the government publicly acknowledged that it needed to keep reforming. Our intervention has made it much more difficult for FIFA and Qatar’s international partners who are pushing for World Cup construction contracts to use the new law to claim that migrant labour abuse in Qatar is a problem that has been “solved”.
The African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child informed us earlier this month that it had decided to undertake an on-site investigation into the situation of children in South Kordofan and Blue Nile regions of Sudan. This decision was made in direct response to our request and lobbying efforts during the 28th ordinary session of the Committee.
Meanwhile there has been much talk in the media of “fake news”, but this month we worked alongside investigative journalists from Le Monde and Forbes to expose a “fake NGO” calling itself Voiceless Victims and posing as an ally of migrant workers in the Gulf. The group, which had made efforts to establish itself online as a credible campaigning organisation, sent the IS, AI France and several of our partners plausible emails containing links to suspicious servers that would have profiled our IT infrastructure and potentially enabled whoever is behind Voiceless Victims to target our systems more effectively. The case is a vital reminder of the time and money that some states appear willing to invest in order to infiltrate and undermine the work that we and our partners do. You can read the full investigation here. Please share it with partners to alert them to the risks.
Large multinational companies in the palm oil industry, including the world’s largest trader, Wilmar, nine of its global buyers (including Nestlé, Unilever, P&G, Kellogg’s) as well as the palm oil certification body (RSPO) felt the heat with the launch of our report “The Great Palm Oil Scandal”. The report exposed severe labour abuses, including forced labour, worst forms of child labour, failure to pay minimum wages, and endemic discrimination against women workers, on Wilmar’s and its suppliers’ plantations in Indonesia. The report and its accompanying audio-visual materials received strong media coverage and section support. Our local partners advised that it was well received in Indonesia. None of the companies, not even Wilmar, were able to challenge any of our findings and KitKat (Nestlé) and Ben & Jerry’s (Unilever) were forced to respond publicly on Twitter to accusations that palm oil in their products involved severe labour rights abuses. The Indonesian Ministry of Manpower is putting together a taskforce to investigate our findings, and so are Wilmar and most of the buyers. In 2017, the movement will escalate public action to keep pressure on the companies. We will continue to push for concrete improvements to workers’ lives and lobby the Indonesian government to enforce its own laws.
Also this month, we released a report on the blasphemy laws in Pakistan, which provide carte blanche for a whole range of human rights abuses, and are frequently exploited to target religious minorities and justify vigilante violence, often with impunity or official collusion. It is an important piece of our work on discrimination, and how it relates to identity politics and violence.
The Write for Rights campaign is in full swing, with almost two million actions already. We have seen huge section participation, from Senegal to Sweden – with many sections reporting their biggest year yet. The campaign founders, AI Poland, have had over 400 events in the country. The IS website has hugely outperformed previous years, with over 30,000 more actions than last year already!
We also saw the first ever successful Global Day of Action of Human Rights Day. This year we created an agile Twitter action which has been a big success. We have also had great media engagement with more TV interviews and in depth press coverage than ever, and excellent support from celebrities, including Sting, Richard Branson and Ai Weiwei. This is undoubtedly in part due to the inclusion of Edward Snowden in the campaign – Snowden himself was able to take part in a number of section events. I especially enjoyed the chain letter video in which he took part.
As 2016 draws to an end, I would like to thank you for your tireless and inspiring work across the world. When we look back on the year, there are too many highlights to mention – a testament to all that we have achieved.
But it hardly needs saying that these are dark times, and our work is needed more than ever. We are also now a quarter of the way through the strategic goals period, and have some way to go to bring about the change we want to see. We enter 2017 with a strong sense of determination and resolve to stand up for justice, equality and dignity for every human being.
Let me end with this video, which encapsulates some of our key successes and our commitment to taking injustice personally.
Best,
Salil