HR Watch Paper: Human Rights Mechanisms Under Attack

Date: Thu, 29 Jan 98 09:05:14 -0500
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: HR Watch Paper: Human Rights Mechanisms Under Attack

From: MINELRES moderator       <[email protected]>

Original sender: Britt Elliott            \ Internet:    ([email protected])

Cross-posted to:  [email protected] \ Internet: ([email protected])

HR Watch Paper: Human Rights Mechanisms Under Attack


To all interested:

This is an abstract from a paper by Human Rights Watch, titled "Human Rights
Mechanisms Under Attack."  The full paper, which I am sending as an
attachment, also contains a statement by Mary Robinson, the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights.

Best wishes,

Britt Elliott
Human Rights Internet
Ottawa
-------------------

Human Rights Mechanisms Under Attack A Call to Action by Human Rights Watch

Human rights mechanisms of the United Nations have recently found themselves
under threat from some U.N. member states which want to see them weakened
and marginalized. We believe that with a concerted and coordinated effort
NGOs can reverse some of these very disturbing trends.

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights over the years has created a
rich and often very effective system of  mechanisms designed to protect
victims of human rights abuses and to publicly identify governments that
commit them. However, largely due to its effectiveness,  this system of
special rapporteur and working groups or so called "special procedures" has
recently found itself under attack by countries that themselves have seen
their human rights records examined by these mechanisms. This attack has
become so advanced that it is now necessary to mobilize political and
popular support to prevent any further weakening of  these mechanisms and in
fact to encourage changes that would make them stronger and would enable
them to better serve victims of  human rights abuses worldwide.

(From the moderator: The full text of the statement - 64 Kb in Word for
Windows format - can be obtained from the MINELRES moderator by request.
Could you please indicate which encoding (and compression, if any) suits you
better. Boris)
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