Human Rights For All

(Part I of a series on disability human rights)

The entry into force on 3 May 2008 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Optional Protocol is a landmark event for the estimated 650 million persons with disabilities (PWD) around the world. Described by UN Enable as signalling a “paradigm shift” in approaches to PWD, the new treaty is also a promising development in the promotion of human rights culture for all.

“We the Peoples of the United Nations”
International human rights instruments are sometimes criticized as top-down rhetorical statements created by diplomatic elites who rarely engage with those most affected. Reflecting a trend toward partnerships among international organizations, states, and civil society, the new disability convention was negotiated and drafted with the significant input of the International Disability Caucus on the Convention (a coalition of disability rights NGOs) as well as governmental representatives.

The process involved the usual political and strategic tensions associated with creating a “universal” instrument. The IDC and the government negotiators had to address the different political, economic, cultural, racial, and gender dynamics among and within states and NGOs. Representatives also contended with the hierarchies and divisions that can exist even among PWD who have different disabilities and different approaches to disability status, accommodations, and even terminology.

Those with intellectual or emotional disabilities are subject to different forms of discrimination than those with physical disabilities. Some who are blind, vision-impaired, deaf, or hearing-impaired may regard themselves as belonging to a different linguistic and social culture in which Braille or American Sign Language is to be considered a language like any other rather than a “special” intervention.

Nevertheless, the disability rights advocates, who used the theme “nothing about us, without us,” developed a collaborative process in which those disability constituencies most directly affected by a specific provision could take the lead in providing input, suggested draft language, and strategy. (See panel discussions on process at an American University Washington College of Law conference in April 2007.)

Among the dozens of NGOs and individual advocates involved was Professor Gerard Quinn, Director of the Disability Law & Policy Research Centre, Faculty of Law, National University of Ireland, Galway. Quinn (photo left), and Theresia Degener, Professor of Law, Administration and Organization, Protestant University of Applied Sciences in Bochum, Germany (photo below left) co-authored a ground-breaking UN report in 2002 (Human Rights and Disability: The Current Use and Future Potential of United Nations Human Rights Instruments in the Context of Disability).

The report helped set the stage for the convention by outlining the relevance and applicability of international human rights standards to PWD and the need for instruments that more directly addressed their needs.

PWD were among the NGO representatives and state representatives who participated. Ironically, their presence often revealed the degree to which even a venue like the UN headquarters building in New York was not fully accessible—a lesson even the most well-intentioned actors can fail to learn unless they engage directly with those living with disabilities.

A Multidimensional Approach
The treaty emphasizes that all of the previously recognized fundamental human rights in the core human rights treaties fully apply to persons with disabilities. Like race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, class, and migration status, disability is one more aspect of the complex and shifting dimensions that help form our individual identities, but which does not separate us from our common humanity. It was therefore necessary first to make persons with disabilities “visible” to the international community as human beings with the same inherent rights that are recognized for others.

The Convention (CRPWD) sets forth 8 guiding principles:

► Respect for inherent dignity, individual autonomy including the freedom to make one's own choices, and independence of persons
► Non-discrimination
► Full and effective participation and inclusion in society
► Respect for difference and acceptance of persons with disabilities as part of human diversity and humanity
► Equality of opportunity
► Accessibility
► Equality between men and women
► Respect for the evolving capacities of children with disabilities and respect for the right of children with disabilities to preserve their identities.

As the guidelines indicate, advocates moved beyond the universals to argue successfully for provisions that focused on the specific human rights issues that affect persons with disabilities, such as accessibility and personal autonomy. The treaty also recognizes the rights and needs linked to specific disability and intersectional status, such as the rights of children with disabilities and the rights of women with disabilities. As in all core human rights treaties, the CRPWD prohibits discrimination, including on the basis of race or ethnicity.

Rapid Recognition

The CRPWD, negotiated between 2002 and 2006, was the most quickly adopted of the major human rights treaties. As a member of a Jamaican-American family, I was also proud to see that Jamaica was the first country to ratify the new treaty on the first day it was opened for signature (see Diane Marie Amann’s post on the treaty’s adoption here).

The CRPWD entered into force only a little more than a year after being opened for signature. According to the UN Enable website,

the main treaty has now been signed by 129 states and ratified by 28. The Optional Protocol, which provides for individual or group complaints, has been signed by 71 countries and ratified by 17. One can only hope that continued activism will lead to equally rapid efforts to implement the treaty’s provisions.

No surprise, the United States, relying on domestic law (such as the Americans with Disabilities Act) refused to sign or ratify the treaty. Nevertheless, U.S. State Department officials cooperated in and contributed to some aspects of the drafting process. (For a Department of State list of web resources click here.)
As Amann reports, the recent favorable federal court decision on accessible currency in American Council of the Blind v. Paulson, may help expand the domestic civil rights of PWD in the U.S.

(Forthcoming in Part II of this series: Disability Human Rights: Only a “First World” Concern?)

Two years after the earthquake, members of Haitian civil society want human rights respected

(Our thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this introductory post)

On the two-year anniversary of the devastating January 12, 2010, earthquake in Haiti, conditions in the remaining 800 earthquake displacement camps are deteriorating.
The country faces the worst cholera epidemic in the world, as Amy Senier's post above details. Women and girls living in camps fear for their safety as they search for food, water and latrines in the day and as they fall asleep at night.
For two years now, Haitians have been urging their government and the international community to view earthquake survivors as rights holders, not charity cases, and to integrate a rights-based approach to recovery. Instead, Haitians at all levels have found themselves left out of the decision-making processes on aid distribution – from top government officials, overwhelmed by the “republic of NGOs” operating in their country, to the communities left homeless by the earthquake and struggling to survive.
A coalition of 57 grassroots groups, internally displaced persons camps, nongovernmental organizations, and academic institutions took their grievances against the Haitian government and the international community to the United Nations Human Rights Council on October 13, 2011, when Haiti was reviewed under the Universal Periodic Review.
Established in 2006, the Universal Periodic Review is a process that all UN member countries undergo every four years, during which the Council reviews each country’s human rights record in light of its obligations under the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, other human rights instruments, and the country’s own stated commitments. (Prior IntLawGrrls posts.) Haiti’s review was postponed due to the earthquake, and it was the last country to be reviewed in the Universal Periodic Review’s four-year cycle.
In preparation for the October hearing in Geneva, Switzerland, the coalition, with the help of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti and its Haitian affiliate, the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, submitted thirteen written reports to the Human Rights Council on issues ranging from violations of the right to housing, violence against women and prison conditions to the responsibility to implement a rights-based approach throughout Haiti’s rebuilding after the earthquake. Collectively, the reports made 147 recommendations to the Government of Haiti and members of the international community active in Haiti on concrete steps they should take to improve human rights over the next four years, when Haiti will be reviewed under the Universal Periodic Review again.
Though influence of the final government recommendations is important, one of the primary goals of the Universal Periodic Review work has been to foster sustained grassroots advocacy.

The Future of Human Rights in the Americas: Update on the Inter-American Reform Process

Today, on Human Rights Day, as we mark the 64th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the inter-American human rights system – guardian of the world’s first international human rights agreement – faces an unprecedented threat to its independence and authority.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights – which oversees implementation of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, adopted in April, 1948, eight months prior to the Universal Declaration – is undergoing a state-initiated “reform” process that may lead to controversial changes in the Commission's practices and procedures, without the consent of the Commission.
As IntLawGrrl Alexandra Harrington posted in February, since it came into existence in 1960, the Inter-American Commission has promoted and protected human rights in the 35 member states of the Organization of American States. It does so through reporting, country visits, precautionary measures, and the individual complaints mechanism. The Commission's exercise of its functions has motivated criticism and objections in recent years from some states that disagreed with specific decisions – as have Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru – or accused it of bias – as has Venezuela.
In June of 2011, the OAS Permanent Council created a Special Working Group with a mandate to study the Commission’s work and propose any reforms deemed necessary. The Special Working Group’s proposals, which the OAS Permanent Council approved this past January, focused on both the Commission’s institutional practices and its substantive mandate.
Among the most controversial proposed reforms were those that would:
► Restrict the Commission’s discretion in deciding requests for precautionary measures,
► Significantly alter Chapter IV of the Commission’s Annual Report, in which it highlights countries with particularly troublesome human rights practices,
► Reduce the autonomy of the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, and
► Impose additional restrictions on the processing of individual complaints in ways that could favor states at the expense of victims.
Civil society has criticized the proposed reforms, and the reform process itself, as lacking in transparency and input from advocates and victims.
A joint statement coordinated by CEJIL, the Center for Justice and International Law, and signed by over 90 organizations, called on the OAS and its individual member states to ensure that the process is truly aimed at strengthening the inter-American system and includes the input of advocates and victims. Representatives of nongovernmental organizations, academia, and the judiciary have also signed on to the “Bogota Declaration,” which echoes this call.
A politically motivated, state-imposed reform of the Commission’s authority and procedures is a unique and pressing cause for concern to all those invested in the protection of human rights in the Americas.
In the words of the Commission's chair, José de Jesús Orozco:

Go On! Beyond National Security: Immigrant Communities and Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest) It seems we’re seeing reactionary responses to cross-border migration everywhere —in the United States, Europe, Australia, and South Africa. But the positions of governments, employers, and non-foreign-born citizens seem to be cyclical or ambivalent, shifting with internal perceptions and misperceptions about competition over available resources and racial or ethnic cultural difference. Migration policy is also influenced by deliberate manipulation of gender and other class disparities that place downward pressure on wages and benefits, as well as environmental, economic, armed conflict, and political disasters that force migration from the home country. Finally, of course, migration flows can be shaped by the availability of unique opportunities in the host country or by the impact of unsustainable transnational trade and development policies affecting the home country.
Whatever the causes and macro- consequences of cross-border migration, immigrants and refugees are often among those who experience serious and continuing violations of economic, social, and cultural human rights . An upcoming “institute” at Northeastern University School of Law, co-chaired by Assistant Professor of Law Rachel Rosenbloom and IntLawGrrl and Professor of Law Hope Lewis, will examine economic, social, and cultural rights violations in U.S. immigrant communities. Here’s the summary:
"Beyond National Security: Immigrant Communities and Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights"

Two significant trends in the treatment of noncitizens in the United States are the focus of this two-day institute. Beginning in the mid-1990s and gaining momentum after September 11, 2001, the federal government imposed increasingly harsh deportation policies, dramatically expanded the enforcement of immigration laws, and delegated more and more immigration enforcement power to state and local police — all in the name of national security. Similarly, a wave of state and local laws has been taking aim at the rights of noncitizens in areas such as employment, housing, health, family life, and education. During the same period, however, immigrant communities and their supporters throughout the U.S. are increasingly turning to human rights approaches in response.
On October 14-15, 2010, Northeastern University School of Law's Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy (PHRGE) will bring together a core group of leading immigration and human rights advocates, scholars, jurists and activists for a two-day intensive institute to address these developments within a human rights framework. What effects have harsh deportation policies and increased immigration enforcement had on the economic, social, and cultural rights of immigrants? What roles have discrimination and minority status played in undermining economic and social rights in immigrant communities? What can be learned from community-based or cross-cultural anti-discrimination strategies? What can be learned from administrative, academic, or judicial strategies? How are encroachments on such rights increasingly being used at the sub-national level as a tool of immigration enforcement? How can human rights strategies best be used to counter those effects?
Public Events
Public Roundtables will be held on Thursday, October 14,2010, at 11:45 a.m. and on Friday, October 15, 2010 at noon.
Confirmed institute participants include Ana Avendano (AFL-CIO), Jacqueline Bhabha (Harvard University), Arlene Brock (Ombudsman of Bermuda), Margaret Burnham (Northeastern University School of Law), Muzaffar Chishti (Migration Policy Institute, New York University), Ellen Gallagher (U.S. Department of Homeland Security), Wade Henderson (Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and Human Rights), Marielena Hincapie (National Immigration Law Center), Nancy Kelly (Greater Boston Legal Services), Anjana Malhotra (Seton Hall School of Law), Susan Ostrander (Tufts University), Janis Roshuevel (Families for Freedom), Rinku Sen (Applied Research Center & ColorLines), Aarti Shahani (journalist), Jonathan Todres (University of Georgia School of Law), Paul Watanabe (University of Massachusetts, Boston), John Willshire-Carrera (Greater Boston Legal Services).

The institute will be followed by a workshop on "Bringing Human Rights Home to Immigrant Communities in Massachusetts" on Saturday, October 16, 2010, organized by Northeastern's Human Rights Caucus and other student groups. The Saturday workshop is also open to the public. For further information and questions about disability access, please contact events coordinator Jackie Davis.

Go On! Human Rights Council review

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest) From our colleague John P. Cerone, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for International Law and Policy at New England Law School in Boston (also the home institution of IntLawGrrls' own Dina Francesca Haynes), comes news of a conference entitled Reviewing the UN Human Rights Council: Looking backward and moving forward, to be held on Friday, April 9, at the W Boston, 110 Stuart Street.
Here's the invite:

Join experts from around the globe in a discussion of the history, efficacy, and future of the UN’s Human Rights Council. Participants will critically examine the work of the council with a view toward generating recommendations for the upcoming General Assembly review of the council. The diverse range of experts includes prominent representatives from the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations, the U.S. Department of State, diplomatic representatives from other council member states, civil society, and the academy.

The day will begin with an address by Kyung-Wha Kang (left), U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights; featured at a special luncheon will be these ambassadors: Juan José Gómez Camacho, Mexico's Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva; Eileen Donahoe (right), U.S. Representative to the Human Rights Council; Mohammed Loulichki, Morocco's Permanent Representative to the United Nations; and Ali Treki, President of the 64th Session of the U.N. General Assembly.

Joining John -- who's Special Advisor to the U.S. Delegation to the Human Rights Council -- as panelists will be:
► Christina Cerna, Principal Human Rights Specialist, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
► Juliette De Rivero, Human Rights Watch
► Kate Gorove, Office of the Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State
► Professor Hurst Hannum, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
► Andrew Hudson, Human Rights First
► Melanie Khanna, Legal Adviser, U.S. Mission to the U.N. and Other International Organizations
► Andrew Loewenstein, a Partner at Foley Hoag and Chair of the Committee on Public International Law and Human Rights of the Boston Bar Association
► Craig Mokhiber, Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights

► Suzanne Nossel, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs
► Ted Piccone, Brookings Institution
► Bertram Ramcharan, former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights ad interim
► Yvonne Terlingen, Amnesty International

Details and registration here.

Monitoring rights abuses in Western Sahara

(Thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post)

In January, a delegation from the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights, led by prominent Sahrawi activist Aminatou Haidar, 2008 recipient of the RFK Center's Human Rights Award, found evidence of human rights abuses that Moroccan government forces have inflicted on civilians in Western Sahara. (credit for 2009 Borja Suarez/Reuters photo of Haidar) Regularly referred to as the "Sahrawi Gandhi," Aminatou is one of the most prominent human rights defenders in Western Sahara -- as IntLawGrrls have posted, a region in northwest Africa (below left) occupied by Morocco.
Our delegation comprised Lynn Delaney, Executive Director of the RFK Center, Advocacy Officer Mary Beth Gallagher, and myself, the Director of the Center for Human Rights.
Many of our meetings focused on abuses that ensued from last November's dismantling of the Gdaim Izik protest camp, which houses 12,000 displaced Sahrawis, and the aftermath in the following weeks and months. We interviewed dozens of people who were victims of abuse, torture, and imprisonment, along with witnesses and family members.
We also met with representatives of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, which has operated in the region since 1991. MINURSO was created to oversee the ceasefire between Morocco and the Polisario Front (the representative of the Sahrawi people) and to implement a referendum on self-determination. Two decades later, this referendum has not occurred, and widespread human rights abuses by the Moroccan government persist. MINURSO remains the only modern-day peacekeeping mission in the world without a human rights mandate.
Our accounts have been compiled into a new report. Entitled Western Sahara: Accounts of Human Rights Abuses Persist in Wake of November Unrest, it is available, in English, French, and Spanish, here.
The report reinforces the need for international human rights monitoring in West Sahara.
It includes several stories of human rights violations, including that of 15 young men who disappeared in 2005 and have yet to be accounted for. Their families told us that repeated complaints to government officials have led nowhere. When we inquired about the case, the government told us that their family members had "drowned in the sea."
We were told about human rights defenders who were sent to a military prison hundreds of miles away from their homes and brutally beaten. Lawyers and recently released detainees spoke about the use of fraudulent evidence and forced confessions, and about the failure to treat serious medical conditions in prisons -- all acts that violate Morocco's own laws.
Looking for all sides of the story, we spoke to the Moroccan government as well. We were told unequivocally that the government does not use torture and that any reports of torture would be duly investigated. But defense lawyers told us they have repeatedly lodged complaints, only to have them ignored.
This report will be disseminated to lawmakers, advocates, and civil society in order to encourage greater protection of human rights in Western Sahara.

Takin' It to the Council

There's been a flurry of activity over the past week as immigrants' rights organizations have finalized their submissions to the United Nations Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review of the United States of America, scheduled for November 22 - December 3 of this year. While the reports make for grim reading, it's inspiring to see groups ranging from the Chaldean Federation of America to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers embracing a human rights approach to the protection of migrants in the United States. In the words of the Advocates for Human Rights report, endorsed by dozens of national and state organizations from Human Rights First to the UFCW Local 789, "International law recognizes that while the United States has the right to control immigration that right is tempered by its obligations to respect the fundamental human rights of all persons." Given the limitations of constitutional protections for non-citizens and the inherently transnational nature of immigration law, the turn to international human rights law makes ample sense.
The four reports that I've seen so far focus on different aspects of the U.S. immigration system. The Advocates for Human Rights report, focusing on the cluster of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, presents three proposals for reform: protecting due process and family unity in the immigration system, ending blanket and arbitrary detention of immigrants, and ensuring compliance with the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. A few shocking facts -- the Department of Homeland Security will spend nearly $17 billion on immigration enforcement in FY 2011; over 1 million family members are estimated to have been separated by deportation between 1997 and 2007; 1-2 migrants die per day crossing the border from Mexico to the U.S.; and nearly 100 migrants in DHS custody died between 2003 and 2009. A total of 26 reports were published between 2007 and 2009 highlighting the failures of the U.S. immigration detention system.
A second report, submitted by the Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the Global Workers Justice Alliance, and the Transnational Legal Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, focuses on the cluster group of migrant laborers. Noting that "the migrant worker experience is marred by systemic failures of the United States to protect their human rights," the report highlights human rights violations from recruitment through the conclusion of the employment relationship: rising border deaths, exploitation of migrant workers, and legal and practical barriers to accessing justice for migrant workers. The report discusses the exclusion of migrant workers from the protections of federal labor laws, such as the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act, that fail to cover domestic workers and agricultural workers. It estimates that anywhere from 300,000 to 800,000 children work in the agriculture industry, often earning less than $2 an hour, risking pesticide poisoning, heat illness, and life-long disabilities, not to mention a 50% drop-out rate from school.
A third report submitted by a long list of stakeholders including the Heartland Alliance National Immigrant Justice Center, the American Friends Service Committee, and the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, exposes human rights violations in the immigration detention system. The report recommends that, in order to comply with the UDHR and the ICCPR, the United States must provide individual custody determinations for immigration detention, provide judicial review over custody decisions, and ensure that conditions in immigration detention facilities reflect the civil nature of the government's detention authority. The report highlights the specific problems faced by women and girls in immigration detention, including separation from family members and rape and other forms of sexual assault. It also discusses the challenges faced by LGBT detainees, who are often the target of harassment and abuse because of their sexual orientation, and as a result may be segregated into solitary confinement.
Last but not least, the Seton Hall University School of Law Center for Social Justice and New York Lawyers for the Public Interest submitted a report focused on the extrajudicial involuntary deportation of immigrant patients by U.S. hospitals. The report argues that U.S. laws and policies that severely restrict immigrant eligibility for publicly supported health care have led to this practice of extrajudicial medical repatriation of seriously ill or injured indigent immigrant patients to countries lacking medical care, in violation of U.S. obligation under the UDHR, the ICCPR, CERD, and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. While data on medical deportations are not reliable, over 100 such removals have been documented, including one case in which Atlanta's Grady Hospital repatriated 10 to 13 dialysis patients to Mexico, four of whom died after their transfer. The report recommends ending this practice of involuntary extrajudicial deportation, enforcing federal hospital discharge laws, imposing more stringent reporting requirements on adverse consequences to patients following discharge, and the provision of universal health care regardless of immigration status.
Though the latter may be the most quixotic of all of the recommendations, there's still hope that we may see some of the other changes made under the Obama Administration. In any case, it's a strong showing from the immigrants' rights community, and one that will surely be considered seriously by the Human Rights Council this fall.

Syrian state responsibility

An assessment of state responsibility preceded that of individual criminal responsibility in the expert report on Syria released yesterday.
Released was the 39-page report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, a body appointed in September by the U.N. Human Rights Council and comprising a Chairperson, Dr. Paulo Pinheiro, a Brazilian law professor emeritus and veteran of many U.N. inquiry posts, along with 2 members, Dr. Yakin Ertürk (left) (photo credit), who's a sociology professor in Turkey and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, and Karen Koning AbuZayd (right) (photo credit), who's long been active in U.N. human rights endeavors.
To begin its discussion of responsibility for the many atrocities enumerated, the report states at paragraph 109:

The Syrian Arab Republic has failed its obligations under international human rights law. Every internationally wrongful act of a State incurs the international responsibility of that State. Similarly, customary international law provides that a State is responsible for all acts committed by members of its military and security forces. The State is therefore responsible for wrongful acts, including crimes against humanity, committed by members of its military and security forces as documented in the present report.

Only then does it turn to the question of individual criminal responsibility -- a question it leaves for the most part unanswered, noting that Syria is not a party to the International Criminal Court and that its national laws likely would immunize from prosecution persons most responsible.
The order of responsibility set forth seems significant, and not just because this report -- unlike an analogous 2005 report on Darfur -- falls short of recommending U.N. Security Council referral to the ICC of the situation in Syria. The closest it came was to recommend that the U.N. Human Rights Council "[t]ake urgent steps, including through the General Assembly, the Secretary-General and the Security Council, to implement the recommendations made in the present report." (The report also prompted others to renew calls for a Security Council referral; in an earlier post, I voiced concerns about the possibility.)
The decision to discuss state responsibility also stands as a reaffirmation that states bear primary responsibility to protect their own civilians from harm. That has not always been a given, as our colleague William Burke-White explains in part I of a new survey chapter, Adoption of the Responsibility to Protect. General acceptance of a state's primary responsibility is an essential prerequisite of the second aspect of the responsibility to protect doctrine; that is, that a state's failure to shoulder its responsibility gives rise to the responsibility of the international community to act.

Entrenching the concept of primary responsibility in international documents promotes a culture of collective responsibility and embeds prevention as a normative goal. It is a notable feature not only of this report, but also of Article 1 of the Proposed International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity that IntLawGrrl Leila Nadya Sadat spearheaded and to which others of us contributed. One day, perhaps, such entrenchment will give rise before-the-fact actions that eliminate the need for after-the-fact intervention and adjudication.

The inquiry commission did conclude its report with a host of recommendations directed at various actors related to Syria. (map credit) All recommendations appear in the full report, beginning at paragraph 112. Paraphrased and excerpted, recommendations include:

To the Syrian government
► End gross human rights violations.
► Initiate investigations under domestic and international law, and while investigation is pending suspend security personnel alleged to have violated human rights.
► Ratify the Rome Statute of the ICC and enact national implementing legislation.
► End arbitrary detention and allow international monitoring of detention centers, as well as overall in-country access for human rights monitors, aid agencies, and journalists.
► Replace immunity laws with laws governing security forces according to international standards.
► Establish a mechanism for investigation of disappearances, as well as a reparations fund for victims of a range of human rights violations.
► Facilitate voluntary return of refugees.

To Syrian opposition groups
► Ensure respect for and act according to international human rights law.

To the U.N. Human Rights Council
► In addition to the "urgent steps" recommendation quoted above, establish a special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Syria.

To the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights
► Establish in Syria an in-the-field protection and promotion mandate.

To U.N. members, particularly those in the Arab League
► Aid various measures recommended above, "and suspend the provision of arms and other military material to all parties".
► Aid Syria to address weaknesses in its judicial and security sectors.
► Give refuge to Syrian asylum seekers -- a recommendation that resonates with Jaya Ramji-Nogales' excellent post yesterday.

Honor Elena Bonner 1923-2011

(Delighted to welcome back IntLawGrrls guest/alumna Felice Gaer, who contributes this tribute)

Elena Bonner was a remarkable woman and human rights defender, widely eulogized in the week since she died at 88 following heart surgery in Massachusetts. Bonner was, since 1972 the wife and after 1989, the widow of famed Soviet Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Andrei D. Sakharov – the moral giant who stood for human rights, peace and telling the truth.
Elena was herself a major public figure, as well as a demanding mother and doting grandmother – and a wonderful interlocutor, and a great role model. Her loss is huge.
She had many years of activism as well as repeated bouts of illness and infirmity. But it was her ability to rise again and again from infirmity to activism, to speak up and demand change, to exhibit courage when others were wilting from the repression that was directed against the tiny dissident/human rights community, for which we will always remember her. And of course, for the many institutions she created and preserved, so the message and moral views of Andrei Sakharov will live on in Russia and beyond.
I first met Elena Bonner when she came to New York for heart surgery in 1986 – we even took this photo together, standing on Sakharov-Bonner Corner, just down the block from the Soviet Mission to the United Nations. Before and in the years in between, I helped carry out the rapid-fire demands and requests that Mrs. Bonner conveyed when she was able to get through on a rare, closely controlled international phone line out of Russia. Her requests, frankly, were endless. Or so it seemed. When I learned that her eye trouble stemmed from being wounded at the front in World War Two, I thought – how ironic – she could have been a great General! She understood the need to combine strategy with action – to fight on several fronts, and never to give up.
In a New Yorker tribute, David Remnick recalls how Bonner was slandered by Soviet spokesmen as a “sexual brigand” and “predatory Jew” who somehow led Sakharov astray, but he reflects on how she served as Sakharov’s protector, his ‘lion at the gate’ – and that she was “unafraid” and resilient.
Former New York Times reporter Serge Schmemann simply describes her as “formidable,” “imposing”, “peremptory” and a “sergeant –major.”
Let’s be clear: Elena Bonner was not a minor player, not a “sergeant-major”-- she was courageous, demanding, and effective. And that is why she was one of the great human rights defenders of our time.
She was well aware of who she was and, of course, of the worldwide renown which her husband Sakharov had gained since his famous 1968 essay on human rights, “Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom."
I recall vividly visiting her in Newton, Massachusetts, in 1990 – about 6 months after Sakharov's untimely death, but well before the collapse of the Soviet Union had even been contemplated. It was the day of the Wellesley College graduation, just one town away, and the Soviet 1st Lady Raisa Gorbachev was the commencement speaker alongside U.S. 1st Lady Barbara Bush. There was a media frenzy around this – the first time that Mrs. Gorbachev, who was accompanying her husband, President Mikhail Gorbachev, on a state visit, was given such a platform in the United States.
When I arrived, Elena’s first question was, “What do you think of Raisa’s planned speech?”
I said I thought it was disgraceful, since the only reason Raisa Gorbachev was asked to be the commencement speaker at Wellesley was because she was the wife of a famous man.
Well, Elena responded immediately, “You could say the same thing about me..."
When I recovered my balance, I protested to the contrary – all the things she had done herself, the causes she championed, the organizations like the Moscow Helsinki Group and a fund for the children of political prisoner that she founded, among others. She was no mere reflection of a powerful man.
Still, Elena insisted that her ability to be heard – not to speak, but to be heard – depended in large measure on having been the wife of Andrei Sakharov, and that was now, well, a thing of the past. She remained the widow of Sakharov, but on her own, would anyone pay attention?
Bonner was devoted to Sakharov and his ideals, but he was just as devoted to her. (credit for photo of Sakharov and Bonner)
In the early 1980s, Sakharov was snatched on a Moscow street and exiled (we later learned he was in the Soviet city of Gorky), without charges or trial, and kept from communication with outsiders – both scientific colleagues and all others. Bonner became his sole link with the outside world, until she, too, was “detained”, tried, and sentenced to internal exile in Gorky. Sakharov warned that Bonner was at greater risk than himself:

‘This article is being taken to Moscow by my wife, my constant helper, who shares my exile and willingly takes upon herself the heavy burdens of traveling back and forth, handling my communications with the outside world, coping with the growing hatred of the KGB. Earlier she withstood the poison of slander and insinuation, focused more on her than on me. The fact that I am Russian and my wife is half-Jewish has proved useful for the purposes of the KGB.
‘Every time my wife leaves, I do not know whether she will be allowed to travel without hindrance and to return safely. My wife, although not formally under detention, is in greater danger than I am. I urge those who speak out on my behalf to keep this in mind. It is impossible to foresee what awaits us. Our only protection is the spotlight of public attention on our fate by friends around the world.’

After Sakharov’s death, Bonner spoke often, and was commonly controversial, challenging her hosts and looking to the future. She expressed concern about the direction of the modern human rights movement – concerned that too many had forgotten Sakharov and forgotten Russia.
She asked pointedly on her 2009 return to Oslo, where she had received Sakharov's Nobel Peace Prize in 1975 (left) (credit), about the reason for the silence of the world human rights community when it came to the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier abducted in 2006 by Hamas fighters and held incommunicado since then. Why doesn’t the treatment of this prisoner of war trouble you, she asked human rights defenders, in the same way as the fate of the GTMO prisoners? You fought over that and got results. She called for Shalit’s release, and remarked that the only reason she could find for the way the NGO community ignored him was that he is a Jew. Bonner used the occasion to remark that Norwegian views on Israel had evolved strangely. In so doing, she crisply spoke truth to power, now calling herself “a public figure and member of the movement for democratic change.”
Her views were not always negative, as her remarks to the Institute that I direct indicates:

‘In the early ’70s, the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights (JBI) was one of the very few, if not the only one, among the Jewish organizations concerned with the general state of human rights in the Soviet Union, not limiting it to the issues of Jewish emigration, understanding that an injustice anywhere on the face of this earth is a threat to justice everywhere. This recognition drew common cause with the Soviet movement for democratic change in the 70s, lending it the authority and credibility much needed in what was then a climate of official malice, slander, and persecution. …
‘Among the people closely associated with JBI are those I am happy to call my friends. They have shared the same beliefs with me and Andrei Sakharov, they have stood up for us when we were in danger, they helped us in our efforts to make human rights ideals a reality. ...
‘It is hard to imagine or to remember today that these words 'human rights' were not always the accepted, respectable, almost commonplace words we take them for now. Yet it is true that they were the dangerous, impertinent and disturbing words many a state head could not bear hearing! It is thanks to individuals … and institutions like the JBI, who had the courage to be impertinent, that today it is more and more difficult for the rights-violating governments to challenge the universality of human rights and to ignore human rights concerns. This indeed is a sign of how much can be done by commitment and humanity to safeguard human life and dignity.'

Let us all remember to honor Elena Bonner’s memory by being impertinent, by working to defend human rights as she did – relentlessly.

State's "IDEA" on Global Diaspora

A Global Diaspora within the U.S.
Sixty-two million Americans are part of a first or second generation diaspora.
Among the most significant transnational connections maintained by such U.S. immigrant communities are the $48 billion in remittances sent home each year to countries throughout the globe. These monies and goods help raise children, feed families, build homes, provide healthcare and education, and respond to environmental and military disasters.
Further, as discussed here in the article Lionheart Gals Facing the Dragon and other pieces I’ve written on Jamaican migrant women, many maintain important transnational social and cultural ties as well.
But in addition to this massive “informal” flow of resources, many also start or develop businesses that employ thousands of workers in the U.S. or their countries of origin.

The International Diaspora Engagement Alliance (IDEA)
Now, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has launched an initiative that recognizes the important foreign and domestic policy implications of migration. At a May 17-19, 2011, “Secretary’s Global Diaspora Forum,” in Washington, DC, Secretary Clinton announced the creation of “IDEA”—the International Diaspora Engagement Alliance.

The Secretary’s Global Diaspora Forum
The Global Diaspora Forum (photo above, by Hope Lewis), co-sponsored by the Migration Policy Institute, the US Agency for International Development, the U.S. Department of State, and others, was attended by diplomats, development professionals, immigrants’ rights and human rights advocates, journalists, educators (including yours truly, IntLawGrrl Hope Lewis), and business leaders. The meeting highlighted ways that the global diaspora contributes to U.S. and international development.
Many diasporas were represented, including those from Barbados, China, Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Greece, Haiti, India, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Korea, Uganda, and Vietnam, to name only a few. To the organizers’ credit, the historical African Diaspora was represented as well by the Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, Dr. Johnnetta Cole (photo, right, source here) and other African-Americans.
State signaled its commitment to diaspora issues through the presence of many high-level representatives such as Secretary of State Clinton, Undersecretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Maria Otero, Dr. Rajiv Shah, M.D., Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Leocardia Zak, Director of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, and Gustavo Arnavat, U.S. Executive Director, Inter-American Development Bank, Fred Hochberg, Chairman and President of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, Mimi Alemayehou, Executive Vice President of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and Daniel Yohannes, Chief Executive Officer of the Millennium Challenge Corporation. Representation of U.S. Immigration, Customs, and Enforcement (ICE) were noticeably absent from the formal program, however, (as some participants pointed out in discussion sessions).
Topics covered during the three-day meeting included panel discussions on
►Diaspora News and Social Media
►Diplomacy
►Education
►Entrepreneurship
►Innovation and Technology
►Philanthropy
►Volunteerism

U.S.-Caribbean Partnerships
“Miss Lou” (my IntLawGrrls alter ego) was quite interested to learn that Secretary Clinton announced this week that the Caribbean will be the first focus of the IDEA initiative. During a June 22 High-Level Meeting between the Foreign Ministers of CARICOM (the Caribbean regional community) and the United States in Montego Bay, Jamaica, she announced several new efforts in U.S. foreign policy toward the Caribbean.
Security. Clinton announced $77 million in additional funds for the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative aimed at international and regional organized crime control.
Energy and Climate Change. She also announced Caribbean-focused projects to further the Obama administration’s 2009 Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas. A new Caribbean Climate Change Adaptation Initiative will establish research links on climate change between the University of the West Indies (UWI) and U.S.-based universities.
A Caribbean IDEA. Finally, Clinton noted a Caribbean-focused project would be the first to test the IDEA initiative:

[A] new partnership … will enlist the Caribbean diaspora to contribute to long-term economic growth. We believe that the people of Caribbean descent can be a major asset for their countries of origins and not just because of the money that is sent home in remittances, but they can put their talent and their energy and their entrepreneurial spirit to work as well. To tap this potential, the State Department recently launched the International Diaspora Engagement Alliance…, which is intended to bridge the gap between diaspora communities and entrepreneurs in their countries of origin. We want to promote trade, help start businesses and develop other ways of spurring economic growth.
We have chosen the Caribbean to be the first region in the world to demonstrate the impact of this alliance. We are launching the Caribbean IDEA Marketplace, which will foster collaboration between local entrepreneurs and members of the Caribbean diaspora. And we hope that this marketplace, which will offer access to capital as well as technical assistance, will begin bearing results next year.

A public-private partnership, the Caribbean IDEA Marketplace is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, the Inter-American Development Bank, Digicel (a telecommunications company), and Scotiabank. (See coverage by Jamaican news media here.)

Opportunities and Cautionary Tales
Although I have long called for greater attention to the roles of non-state actors, including business enterprises in addressing the status of people in and from the Caribbean, caution is required in assessing this new venture.
Markets, marketplaces, and the entrepreneurs who run them, are no strangers to Caribbean history and socio-economic context. The islands were key sites in the notorious and continuing crimes of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and the related trade in sugar, rum, and spices. Subsequent colonial and neo-colonial arrangements led to the exploitation of everything from bauxite to oil to illegal drugs and the trade in small arms. International trade policies have had devastating impacts on small banana and coffee farmers. Human trafficking and export processing zones have exploited the availability of low-wage labor and the limited job opportunities available to young people in small countries.
Nevertheless, the islands are also rich in traditions of African agricultural methods, marketwomen networks, cultural exchanges in literature, music, and other arts, beautiful environments for sustainable tourism, trained health care workers, high literacy rates, and strong labor unions. Let’s hope that the new U.S.-Caribbean initiative emphasizes those positive traditions in ways that benefit the majority of people who need them most.

Governments and Human Rights
So, amid celebrations of global diaspora's tremendous potential, government and civil society must exercise caution as well as enthusiasm. The desired “development” and “growth” must never sacrifice a state's obligation to protect the human rights of the people over which it has jurisdiction. (That includes the human rights of noncitizens within its borders as we note in a post on migrants rights in the U.S. here. )
True development must center human development--and is not possible unless each state fulfills its obligation to respect, protect, promote, and fulfill human rights for all.
As a responsible international and transnational actor, the U.S. has taken on legal, political, and moral obligations to observe and promote human rights and fundamental freedoms both externally and internally. If recent rhetorical pronouncements are to be further realized, these must also include the economic, social, and cultural rights so important to migrant and diaspora communities (see IntLawGrrl and Huffington Post comments here and here.)

Business and Human Rights
There's also reason for caution and vigilance about the roles of business enterprises in the new initiative. Banks and wire transfer services profit handsomely from those billions of dollars in remittances moved between the U.S. and sending countries. What are they doing to promote human development where most needed?
Diaspora business leaders can help to develop new enterprises that create decent jobs and working conditions in countries of origin, but they can also try to take advantage of lax labor or environmental regulations back home in order to exploit low-wage workers and the environment.
As noted in a recent guest post by Nadine Bernaz, the UN Human Rights Council has just endorsed Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights prepared by Professor John Ruggie, UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights. The “respect, protect, remedy” framework provided was influenced and commented on by many business leaders, diplomats, and members of civil society. Human rights NGOs such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International remain critical that stronger accountability measures are needed to implement the Guiding Principles so as to make businesses accountable.
All relevant actors—the U.S. government, sending countries, the business sector, other private actors, and migrants themselves—must help to make human rights a reality for everyone. That would be the best “idea” of all.

Struggle continues in post-quake Haiti

It is two years to the day since a 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, leveling much of Port-au-Prince, killing tens of thousands, and displacing well over 500,000. (map credit)
As indicated in the post below by IntLawGrrls contributors Sarah Paoletti and Nicole Phillips, despite pledges of $10 billion in aid, many Haitians struggle to survive in the face of forced evictions, a raging cholera epidemic, and rampant gender-based violence.
For example, even after two years:
► Half a million people continue to live in camps, some without running water or electricity. Moreover, many of these people are fighting to remain in even these substandard conditions. In the year following the earthquake, 34% of people living in camps were forced to leave those shelters as the result of evictions.
The right to housing is guaranteed by several human rights instruments, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (art. 25) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (art. 11). While these instruments often recognize that housing rights may be subject to State resources, they do proscribe the kinds of evictions – often by force and without adequate notice or compensation – seen in the years following the earthquake. Indeed, on November 15, 2010, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights granted precautionary measures for residents of camps located on private and public property in Haiti. The Commission called for the Government of Haiti to, inter alia, halt evictions pending the inauguration of a new government and ensure that those who had been evicted obtained remedies in court and were relocated to places with minimum sanitary and security.
► Fully 7,000 people have died and another 520,000 have become ill from cholera.
On November 3, 2011, 5,000 cholera victims filed a claim for reparations with the Claims Unit of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti, or MINUSTAH. Represented by the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, for which Nicole is a staff attorney, claimants alleged that the outbreak was triggered by the Mission's negligent, reckless, and deliberately indifferent mismanagement of its own sanitation facilities, which were used by Nepalese peacekeepers who harbored the virus.
► Women and girls face a near-constant threat of sexual violence due to insecurity in camps and impunity from the criminal justice system.
These conditions implicate women's rights to life, humane treatment, personal liberty and security as enshrined in human rights instruments such as the American Convention on Human Rights. Indeed, on December 22, 2010, the Inter-American Commission granted precautionary measures for all displaced women and girls living in Haiti's camps. The Commission called upon the Government of Haiti to, inter alia, ensure the availability of adequate medical and mental health care to survivors of sexual violence, increase security in camps, and train law enforcement to investigate incidents of sexual violence. Despite this grant, women and girls in Haiti continued to suffer sexual and other forms of gender-based violence at alarming rates last year.
Immediately following the earthquake, the international community vowed to help Haiti "build back better."

Juárez: Women’s rights as human rights

(My thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post)

Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, has been named one of the most dangerous cities in the world. More than 4,000 people have been killed in the city since January 2008, following a declaration of war between two drug cartels. Three persons with ties to the U.S. consulate were killed on the same day just last week. Federal troops have been called in to attempt to quell the latest round of violence.

But before the official drug war, there was a war on women, which Mexican authorities all but ignored.
According to the Rapporteurship on the Rights of Women of the Inter-American Commission, from 1993 to 2003 an estimated 268 women and girls were murdered, with only 20 percent of these crimes ending in trials and convictions, while the disappearances of an additional 250 women and girls also remained unsolved. (image credit) The number of women killed in Ciudad Juárez throughout the 1990s increased at twice the rate for men; the homicide rate for women in Juárez is reportedly more than three times as great as that in Tijuana, a border city of comparable size. The disappearances and murders have continued unchecked.

And the women’s deaths are brutal.

Many young women are found days or months after their disappearances, their bodies abandoned in vacant lots and bearing signs of torture, sexual assault, and, in some cases, mutilation. Mexican authorities’ investigations of these crimes have been said to be negligent and ineffective. And now, a human rights court has declared Mexico’s inaction to be a violation of Mexico’s international obligations to protect women and girls.

Last December 10, on World Human Rights Day, the November 16 decision of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights was made public. It held Mexico responsible for failing to respond to the disappearances of three of these young women. The seven-member Court, composed of “jurists of the highest moral authority and of recognized competence in the field of human rights” from member states of the Organization of American States, found that Mexico had violated human rights laws by failing to investigate these killings diligently and failing to punish officials who mishandled the murder investigations. The Court ordered the Mexican government to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages to the families of the three victims. The case, Campo Algodonero, is named for the abandoned cotton fields in which the young women's three bodies were found.
In addition to damage awards, the Court provided an array of holistic remedies:
► a memorial in the field which gave the case its name,
► public recognition by Mexico of its fault in a ceremony and in print,
► a website listing all of the women who have disappeared since 1993,
► payment of money to the families, and
► a requirement that Mexico properly and fully investigate the murders and disappearances.
(Para. 602, subdivisions 1-26.) The Court will monitor Mexico’s progress on these remedies in a year. (Para. 602, subd. 26.)
Professor Caroline Bettinger-López' IntLawGrrls guest post summarized the decision. And Professor Regina Austin provided a take on the burgeoning filmography on the crimes.

The Court’s decision is a landmark.

It interprets not only the American Convention on Human Rights but also, for the first time, asserts its jurisdiction to consider violations of Article 7 of the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence Against Women (“Convention Belém do Pará”). (Paras. 37, 75-77.) The Court found Mexico violated provisions of both Conventions through its indifferent investigation and prosecution of the crimes.

The Court also found -- based in part on Mexico’s admissions in response to reports filed to comply with its obligations as a member state of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women -- that the indifference to the violence against women here was part of a larger pattern of discrimination. The Court observed:

[T]he subordination of women can be associated with practices based on persistent socially-dominant gender stereotypes, a situation that is exacerbated when the stereotypes are reflected, implicitly or explicitly, in policies and practices and, particularly, in the reasoning and language of the judicial police authorities, as in this case. The creation and use of stereotypes becomes one of the causes and consequences of gender-based violence against women.

(Para. 401.)

The Court further concluded that

when investigating this violence, some authorities mentioned that the victims were ‘flighty’ or that ‘they had run away with their boyfriends . . . this indifference reproduces the violence that it claims to be trying to counter . . . [and] it alone constitutes discrimination regarding access to justice. The impunity of the crimes committed sends the message that violence against women is tolerated; this leads to their perpetuation, together with social acceptance of the phenomenon, the feeling women have that they are not safe, and their persistent mistrust in the system of the administration of justice.

(Para. 400.)

Given this context of structural discrimination, the Court ordered permanent education and training of public officials on human rights and gender with a gender-based perspective as well as educational programs for the general population. (Para. 602, subds. 22, 23.) The Court explained that

training with a gender perspective involves not only learning about laws and regulations, but also developing the capacity to recognize the discrimination that women suffer in their daily life. In particular, the training should enable officials to recognize the effect on women of stereotyped ideas and opinions in relation to the meaning and scope of human rights.

(Para. 540.)

In short, as Judge Diego García Sayán (below left) of Peru, Vice President of the Court, observed in a concurring opinion in the case:

Violence against women is a tragedy with different dimensions and symptoms. Without doubt, it is one of [the] most extended and persistent expressions of discrimination throughout the world, and it is reflected in conduct ranging from subtle and veiled manifestations to inhuman and abusive situations” like those experienced by the women in Juárez.

(García Sayán Conc. Opn., Para. 1.)

Aside from the implications of the decision for international law, however, the decision also provides a helpful barometer of domestic attitudes toward, and perceptions of, international human rights law.

In the United States, the decision frequently prompted three questions from American lawyers and journalists:

► Will the Court’s decision make a difference?

Days after the Court’s decision was announced, the Editorial Board of the El Paso Times, the newspaper of the sister city across the border from Juárez, opined that the decision, while of symbolic importance, was unlikely to make any real difference in the lives of the women in Juárez. At bottom, what the newspaper was openly wondering was: With dubious or untested enforcement powers, can an international court accomplish what Mexico could not – or would not – do alone? From the perspective of American law, this was an obvious question: in the United States, what good is a judgment if you cannot enforce it?

In the international realm, however, which relies on a pastiche of jurisprudence, diplomacy, and moral force, that is not quite the right question to ask.

International condemnation can be a powerful force in effecting change, provided a sense of social pressure and urgency is maintained. The Inter-American Commission (which, like the Inter-American Court, is charged with interpreting the American Convention) previously concluded that Brazil had violated human rights treaties by delaying for more than 15 years the prosecution of Maria da Penha’s abusive husband for her attempted murder. In response to the decision, and after advocates continued to lobby for change, Brazil enacted the Maria da Penha law to provide protection from and remedies for domestic violence at the national level.

► What significance are the non-monetary remedies?

American lawyers and courts focus not just on the enforceability of judgments, but on how much money the judgments allow a plaintiff to collect. Understandably, then, many lawyers asked me how much money the court had awarded. When I elaborated on the other remedies the Court had ordered, the reaction was decidedly less enthusiastic: what use is an apology, and how much could it matter? When a government has repeatedly denied either that there is a problem or that it can or should be responsible for its misconduct, a court-ordered apology is a healing act. Indeed, as the Campo Algodonero Court observed:

International case law has established repeatedly that a judgment declaring a violation of rights constitutes, per se, a form of reparation.

(Para. 582.) The society will have an opportunity to heal further when Mexican newspapers and the country’s government records publish the designated portions of the Court’s decision, when a memorial is placed in the cotton field site, and when Mexico acknowledges responsibility for its apathy and mishandling of the investigations of the girls’ killers at a public ceremony. And, when effective legislation and police procedures are in place, broader-based societal change will be possible. The remedies provided by the Court will then become tangible.

Indeed, Juárez' mayor has already responded to the portion of the Court’s decision requiring the placement of a monument in honor of all women and girls whose deaths went unredressed in the region. On January 30, the Las Cruces Sun-News reported that Juárez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz has called for artists nationwide to submit proposals for the memorial’s design on land donated by the city. According to the Sun-News, the victims’ families will be asked to review and approve the final design, which the mayor said

'must be something that represents what we feel about the deaths and that acknowledges our past errors, which were real and caused us pain. It must also demonstrate our commitment to never let this happen again in Juárez.'

► Why focus on violence against women and girls when Ciudad Juárez is now riddled with widespread violence?

Journalists to whom I spoke about the decision frequently asked why they should focus on violence against women and girls when violence was now so widespread in the city. Violence against women and girls deserves special attention for a number of reasons. First, as Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn persuasively argue in the book Half the Sky (recent review by IntLawGrrl Karen E. Bravo), empowering women and girls is the fastest way to lift the developing world out of poverty. The young women murdered in Juárez were students and workers drawn to the factories that had sprung up throughout the town in response to NAFTA. These were women who were killed while trying to improve their economic condition.

Moreover, how a society treats its most vulnerable members -- and low-income women and girls are especially vulnerable, particularly in developing countries – can provide an overall barometer of that society.

In Ciudad Juárez, violence against women and girls was a harbinger of things to come. Over fifteen years ago, women and girls began to be killed with brutality and impunity. Today thousands of people are killed indiscriminately in the city. A city that has been declared the most dangerous in the world. For both men and women.