/report

Meta’s Broken Promises: Systemic Censorship of Palestine Content on Instagram and Facebook | HRW
▻https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/systemic-censorship-palestine-content-instagram-and

https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/styles/opengraph/public/media_2023/12/202312mena_ip_meta_covergraphic.jpg?h=10a9c28e&itok=TA_aUpef

Between October and November 2023, Human Rights Watch documented over 1,050 takedowns and other suppression of content #Instagram and #Facebook that had been posted by Palestinians and their supporters, including about human rights abuses.

#censure #Meta

#Total en #Ouganda : les opposants subissent #arrestations et pressions

https://reporterre.net/local/cache-vignettes/L720xH480/ougandatotal4-9b89c.jpg?1699024225#.jpg

Le projet #Eeacop se retrouve de nouveau sous le feu des critiques. Dans son rapport « Working On Oil is Forbidden : Crackdown Against Environmental Defenders in Uganda » (▻https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/11/02/working-oil-forbidden/crackdown-against-environmental-defenders-uganda), publié le jeudi 2 novembre, l’ONG Human Rights Watch dénonce les pressions et les arrestations arbitraires dont seraient victimes des défenseurs de l’environnement et des activistes ougandais opposés au projet d’oléoduc en Afrique de l’Est. Selon les auteurs du rapport, au moins trente manifestants et défenseurs des droits humains, dont beaucoup d’étudiants, ont été arrêtés à Kampala et dans d’autres régions de l’Ouganda depuis 2021.

Pour réaliser ce travail, l’ONG a collecté les témoignages de 31 personnes, dont 21 activistes anti-Eacop en Ouganda. « [La police] me posait des questions sur le pétrole… À un moment donné, ils me traitaient de terroriste, de saboteur des programmes gouvernementaux…. À la fin, ils ont écrit sur le document de libération sous caution : attroupement illégal », raconte Maxwell Atuhura, défenseur de l’environnement, arrêté à Bullisa en 2021.

Le mégaprojet du groupe français comprend le #forage de 419 #puits dans l’ouest de l’Ouganda, dont un tiers se situent dans le #parc_naturel de #Murchison_Falls. En plus des dégâts sur la #biodiversité du pays, « plus de 100 000 personnes en Ouganda et en #Tanzanie perdront leurs #terres à cause de l’#exploitation_pétrolière », rappelle l’ONG. Dans une lettre du 23 octobre à Human Rights Watch, #TotalÉnergies affirme ne tolérer « aucune attaque ou menace contre ceux qui promeuvent pacifiquement et légalement les #droits_humains dans le cadre de leurs activités ».

▻https://reporterre.net/TotalEnergies-en-Ouganda-HRW-denonce-les-pressions-contre-les-opposants-
#rapport #HRW #pétrole #TotalEnergies

“Like We Were Just Animals”. Pushbacks of People Seeking Protection from Croatia to Bosnia and Herzegovina

https://i.imgur.com/nmeUwDk.png

Laila R. fled Afghanistan with her parents and her two brothers in 2016, when she was 11 or 12 years old. They sought international protection in Iran, then Turkey, and then Greece. Increasingly desperate for stability, they travelled through North Macedonia and arrived in Bosnia and Herzegovina in early 2021. When Laila first spoke to Human Rights Watch in November 2021, she and her family had tried to enter Croatia dozens of times. Croatian police apprehended her and her family each time, ignored their repeated requests for asylum, drove them to the border, and forced them to return to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

When Croatian police carry out such pushbacks—broadly meaning official operations intended to physically prevent people from reaching, entering, or remaining in a territory and which either lack any screening for protection needs or employ summary screening—they do not contact authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina to arrange for people’s formal return. Instead, Croatian police simply order people to wade across one of the rivers that mark the international border.

Laila and many others interviewed by Human Rights Watch said Croatian authorities frequently pushed them back to Bosnia and Herzegovina in the middle of the night. She and others told Human Rights Watch Croatian police sometimes pushed them back near Velika Kladuša or other towns in Bosnia and Herzegovina. But on many occasions, the Croatian police took them somewhere far from populated areas.

Describing the first pushback she experienced, Laila said, “We had no idea where we were. It was the middle of the night, and the police ordered us to go straight ahead until we crossed the river to Bosnia. We spent that night in the forest.”

Croatian police had destroyed the family’s phones, so they had no easy way of navigating to safety. The next morning, she and her family eventually came across a road. They walked some 30 kilometers to reach Velika Kladuša.

As with Laila and her family, many of the people who spoke to Human Rights Watch told us they had first sought asylum in Greece as well as in countries outside the European Union before they attempted to enter Croatia. Laila and her family spent one month in Iran, six months in Turkey, and more than three years in Greece, leaving each country after concluding that authorities in each did not intend to respond to their requests for international protection. They did not seek international protection in Bosnia and Herzegovina because they had heard that the country’s authorities rarely granted asylum.

Croatia became an increasingly important point of entry to the European Union in 2016, after Hungary effectively closed its borders to people seeking asylum. Croatian police have responded to the increase in the number of people entering Croatia irregularly—without visas and at points other than official border crossings—by pushing them back without considering international protection needs or other individual circumstances. In April 2023, for instance, Farooz D. and Hadi A., both 15 years old, told Human Rights Watch Croatian police had apprehended them the night before, driven them to the border, and ordered them to walk into Bosnia and Herzegovina, disregarding their request for protection and their statements that they were under the age of 18.

Pushbacks from Croatia to the non-European Union countries it borders are now common. Between January 2020 and December 2022, the Danish Refugee Council recorded nearly 30,000 pushbacks from Croatia to Bosnia and Herzegovina, almost certainly an underestimate. Approximately 13 percent of pushbacks recorded in 2022 were of children, alone or with families. Human rights groups have also recorded pushbacks from Croatia to Serbia and to Montenegro.

Croatian pushbacks have often included violent police responses, including physical harm and deliberate humiliation. Video images captured by Lighthouse Reports, an investigative journalism group, for a 2021 investigation it conducted in collaboration with Der Spiegel, the Guardian, Libération, and other news outlets showed a group of men in balaclavas forcing a group of people into Bosnia and Herzegovina. Although the men did not wear name tags or police badges, the investigation identified them as Croatian police based on characteristic clothing items, the gear they carried, and the corroboration of other police officers. Der Spiegel recounted, “One of the masked men repeatedly lashes out with his baton, letting it fly at the people’s legs so that they stumble into the border river, where the water is chest-high. Finally, he raises his arm threateningly and shouts, ‘Go! Go to Bosnia!’”[1]

In most of the accounts Human Rights Watch heard, Croatian police wore uniforms, drove marked police vans, and identified themselves as police, leaving no doubt that they were operating in an official capacity.

Men and teenage boys have told Human Rights Watch and other groups that Croatian police made them walk back to Bosnia and Herzegovina barefoot and shirtless. In some cases, Croatian police forced them to strip down to their underwear or, in a few cases, to remove their clothing completely. In one particularly egregious case documented by the Danish Refugee Council, a group of men arrived at a refugee camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina with orange crosses spray-painted on their heads by Croatian police, an instance of humiliating and degrading treatment the Croatian ombudswoman concluded was an act of religious hatred.

Younger children have seen their fathers, older brothers, and other relatives punched, struck with batons, kicked, and shoved. Croatian border police have also discharged firearms close to children or pointed firearms at children. In some cases, Croatian police have also shoved or struck children as young as six.

Croatian police commonly take or destroy mobile phones. Human Rights Watch also heard frequent reports that Croatian police had burned, scattered, or otherwise disposed of people’s backpacks and their contents. In some cases, people reported that police had taken money from them. “The last time we went to Croatia, the police took everyone’s money and all our telephones. Why are they like this?” asked Amira H., a 29-year-old Kurdish woman from Iraq travelling with her husband and 9-year-old son.[2]

Pushbacks inflict abuse on everyone. In particular, many people said pushbacks took a toll on their mental well-being. Hakim F., a 35-year-old Algerian man who said Croatian police had pushed him back four times between December 2022 and January 2023, commented, “These pushbacks are so stressful, so very, very stressful.”[3] Stephanie M., a 35-year-old Cameroonian woman, told Human Rights Watch in May 2022, “These pushbacks have been so traumatizing. I find I cannot sleep. I am always thinking of the things that have happened, replaying them in my head. There are days I cry, when I ask myself why I am even living. I find myself thinking, ‘Let everything just end. Let the world just end.’”[4]

For children and their families, who frequently cannot travel as fast on foot as single adults can, pushbacks may add considerably to the time spent in difficult, often squalid, and potentially unsafe conditions before they are able to make a claim for asylum in an EU country. They increase the time children spend without access to formal schooling. For unaccompanied children in particular, pushbacks can increase the risk that they will be subject to trafficking. Family separation may also result from pushbacks: the nongovernmental organization Are You Syrious has reported cases of women allowed to seek asylum in Croatia with their children while their husbands are pushed back to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Croatian police continued to carry out pushbacks throughout 2022, although in the second half of the year police increasingly employed an alternative tactic of issuing summary expulsion orders directing people to leave the European Economic Area within seven days. These summary expulsion orders did not consider protection needs and did not afford due process protections. By late March 2023, Croatian police appeared to have abandoned this practice and resumed their reliance on pushbacks.

Croatian authorities regularly deny the overwhelming evidence that Croatian police have regularly carried out pushbacks, sometimes inflicting serious injuries, frequently destroying or seizing phones, and nearly always subjecting people to humiliating treatment in the process. The Croatian government did not respond to Human Rights Watch’s request for comment on this report.

On the initiative of and with funding from the European Union, Croatia has established a border monitoring mechanism, with the ostensible purpose of preventing and addressing pushbacks and other abuses at the border. The mechanism’s parameters and track record have so far not been promising. Its members cannot make unannounced visits and cannot go to unofficial border crossing points. It is not clear how the members are appointed and how the mechanism’s priorities are defined. It has had its reports revised to remove criticism of Croatian police and the Croatian Ministry of the Interior.

Croatia’s consistent and persistent use of pushbacks violates several international legal norms, including the prohibitions of torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, collective expulsion, and refoulement—the sending of people to places where they would face ill-treatment or other irreparable harm or would be at risk of return to harm. Pushbacks of children violate the international norm that states take children’s best interests into account, including by taking particular care to ensure that returns of children are in their best interests. Excessive force, other ill-treatment, family separation, and other rights violations may also accompany pushback operations.

Slovenia and other European Union member states are also implicated in the human rights violations committed by Croatian authorities against people transferred to Croatia under “readmission agreements”—arrangements under which states return people to the neighbouring countries through which they have transited, with few, if any, procedural safeguards. For instance, under Slovenia’s readmission agreement with Croatia, Slovenian police summarily transferred irregular migrants to Croatia if they have entered Slovenia from Croatia, regardless of whether they requested asylum in Slovenia. In turn, Croatian authorities generally immediately pushed them on to Bosnia and Herzegovina or to Serbia.

EU institutions have effectively disregarded the human rights violations committed by Croatian border authorities. The European Union has contributed substantial funds to Croatian border management without securing meaningful guarantees that Croatia’s border management practices will adhere to international human rights norms and comply with EU law.

Moreover, the European Union’s decision in December 2022 to permit Croatia to join the Schengen area, the 27-country zone where internal border controls have generally been removed, sends a strong signal that it tolerates pushbacks and other abusive practices.

Croatia should immediately end pushbacks to Bosnia and Herzegovina and to Serbia and instead afford everybody who expresses an intention to seek international protection the opportunity to do so. Croatia should also reform its border monitoring mechanism to ensure that it is a robust and independent safeguard against pushbacks and other official abuse.

Until such time as Croatia definitively ends pushbacks and other collective expulsions, ensures that people in need of international protection are given access to asylum, and protects the rights of children, Slovenia should not seek to carry out returns under its readmission agreement with Croatia. Austria, Italy, and Switzerland, in turn, should not send people to Slovenia under their readmission agreements as long as Slovenia continues to apply its readmission agreement with Croatia.

Through enforcement of EU law and as a condition of funding, the European Commission should require Croatian authorities to end pushbacks and other human rights violations at the border and provide concrete, verifiable information on steps taken to investigate reports of pushbacks and other human rights violations against migrants and asylum seekers.

The European Union and its member states should also fundamentally reorient their migration policy to create pathways for safe, orderly, and regular migration.

▻https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/05/03/we-were-just-animals/pushbacks-people-seeking-protection-croatia-bosnia-and
#renvois #expulsions #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Balkans #route_des_Balkans #frontières #push-backs #refoulements #expulsions_de_masse #Croatie #Bosnie #Bosnie-Herzégovine

Governments Harm Children’s Rights in Online Learning

146 Authorized Products May Have Surveilled Children and Harvested Personal Data
▻https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/05/25/governments-harm-childrens-rights-online-learning

Governments of 49 of the world’s most populous countries harmed children’s rights by endorsing online learning products during Covid-19 school closures without adequately protecting children’s privacy, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The report was released simultaneously with publications by media organizations around the world that had early access to the Human Rights Watch findings and engaged in an independent collaborative investigation.

“‘How Dare They Peep into My Private Life?’: Children’s Rights Violations by Governments that Endorsed Online Learning during the Covid-19 Pandemic,” is grounded in technical and policy analysis conducted by Human Rights Watch on 164 education technology (EdTech) products endorsed by 49 countries. It includes an examination of 290 companies found to have collected, processed, or received children’s data since March 2021, and calls on governments to adopt modern child data protection laws to protect children online.

▻https://www.hrw.org/report/2022/05/25/how-dare-they-peep-my-private-life/childrens-rights-violations-governments
#surveillance #edtech

Des politiques israéliennes abusives constituent des crimes d’apartheid et de persécution | Human Rights Watch
▻https://www.hrw.org/fr/news/2021/04/27/des-politiques-israeliennes-abusives-constituent-des-crimes-dapartheid-et-de

https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/media_2021/04/202104mena_israelpalestine_kufraqab.jpg

Des politiques israéliennes abusives constituent des crimes d’apartheid et de persécution

Ces crimes contre l’humanité devraient déclencher des actions pour mettre fin à la répression envers les Palestiniens

▻https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution

How the Tech-Driven Overhaul of the UK’s Social Security System Worsens Poverty
▻https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/09/29/automated-hardship/how-tech-driven-overhaul-uks-social-security-system-worsens

How the Tech-Driven Overhaul of the UK’s Social Security System Worsens Poverty “Janet R.,” 35, a single mother who works at a college student advice center in London, suddenly found herself on the verge of financial ruin. On January 31, 2020, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the United Kingdom’s ministry for social security, transferred her to a new benefits system known as Universal Credit. In early March, she received her first monthly payment. When she saw that it would only be (...)

#algorithme #technologisme #discrimination #pauvreté #HumanRightsWatch

##pauvreté

https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/media_2020/09/202009eca_uk_universal%20credit_main.jpg

Après presque dix ans de cauchemar, le peuple syrien revient dans la danse des révoltes
| Volte-face ! ▻https://volte-face.info/syrian-revolt-starts-again

https://volte-face.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ibrahim_qashoush.jpg

Celles et ceux qui, dans leur cynisme et leur indifférence, voudraient voir l’Etat islamique anéanti et les réfugié-es syrien-nes rentrer chez elleux par l’opération du saint esprit ou par la seule force brute, devraient comprendre que l’équilibre du monde dépend de la chute des régimes qui portent en eux l’autoritarisme viril et le goût de l’argent, où qu’ils se trouvent. Le menace ne vient pas des révoltes populaires et de l’exil, mais de ces élites qui croient qu’on peut disposer des humain-es comme on dispose de pions sur un échiquier noir et blanc.

Solidarité internationale avec le peuple syrien !!

►https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2013/03/08/les-enfants-de-deraa-l-etincelle-de-l-insurrection_1845327_3210.html

▻https://www.lemonde.fr/proche-orient/article/2012/09/04/allez-degage-bachar-le-chant-revolutionnaire-des-rebelles-syriens_1755193_32

▻https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/715172/Qachouch%252C_le_rossignol_de_la_contestation_syrienne_s%2527est_tu_a

▻https://www.lemonde.fr/disparitions/article/2019/06/10/abdel-basset-al-sarout-voix-des-revoltes-de-homs-mort-au-combat-a-27-ans_547

▻https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/12/16/if-dead-could-speak/mass-deaths-and-torture-syrias-detention-facilities

▻https://sp-today.com/en

▻https://www.facebook.com/104105744468398/videos/624223138176708

#Syrie #Daesh #Etat_Islamique #liberation_populaire

Greece: Move Migrant Children to Safety
276 Unaccompanied Children Behind Bars

(Athens) – Greek authorities should free the 276 unaccompanied migrant children currently detained in police cells and detention centers in Greece, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. Releasing the children is all the more urgent amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The prime minister should act on his pledge to protect unaccompanied children and make sure that hundreds of vulnerable children are freed from dirty, crowded cells, sometimes alongside adults, where they are exposed to the risks of Covid-19 infection,” said Eva Cossé, Greece researcher at Human Rights Watch. “There is no excuse for failing to give these children the care and protection they need.”
According to the National Center for Social Solidarity, a government body, as of April 30, 2020, an estimated 276 children were in police custody awaiting transfer to a shelter. That is 19 more children behind bars than when Mitsotakis announced, in November 2019, the No Child Alone plan to protect unaccompanied children.
Human Rights Watch research has documented the arbitrary and prolonged detention of unaccompanied migrant children [cf. ►https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/09/08/why-are-you-keeping-me-here/unaccompanied-children-detained-greece ]in police cells and other detention centers, in violation of international and Greek law. Under Greek law, unaccompanied children should be transferred to safe accommodation, but Greece has a chronic shortage of space in suitable facilities.
While they wait for placement in a shelter, unaccompanied children can be held for weeks or months in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, sometimes with unrelated adults, in small police station cells and detention centers where following social distancing guidelines is impossible. They often have little access to basic health care and other services, hygiene supplies, or even natural light. In many cases, they do not receive information about their rights or about how to go about seeking asylum, and many experience psychological distress.
The recent decrease in the time that an unaccompanied child can be held in protective custody, from 45 days to 25, is a step in the right direction. But international human rights standards hold that immigration-related detention, including so-called “protective custody,” is never in the best interest of the child and should be prohibited due the harm it causes, Human Rights Watch said.
The detention of children for immigration reasons is prohibited under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. A 2019 UN global study on children deprived of liberty [cf. ▻https://undocs.org/A/74/136 ] reported that even if detention conditions are good, detaining children exacerbates existing health conditions and causes new ones to arise, including anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, and suicidal thoughts.
The study highlighted that governments have found non-custodial solutions for unaccompanied children, such as open and child-friendly accommodation, periodic reporting, and foster families. There are always options available other than detention of children for migration-related reasons, the UN study said, and detaining children for their “protection,” even if alternative care is lacking, “can never be a justification.”
The UN children’s agency UNICEF has said that all governments should release children from detention, specifically including immigration detention, due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
On April 14, Human Rights Watch opened a campaign to #FreeTheKids [cf. ▻https://www.hrw.org/FreeTheKids ], urging people to press Prime Minister Mitsotakis to immediately release unaccompanied migrant children from detention and transfer them to safe, child-friendly facilities. Transitional options could include hotels, foster care, and apartments under a Supported Independent Living program for unaccompanied children ages 16 to 18.
The European Commission should financially support Greece to create additional long-term care placement places for unaccompanied children. Other European Union members should speed up family reunification for children with relatives in other EU countries and should offer to relocate unaccompanied asylum-seeking children – even if they lack family ties.
According to the latest government data, since April 30, only 1,477 out of the 5,099 unaccompanied children in Greece were housed in suitable, long-term facilities. The rest are left to fend for themselves in overcrowded island camps or on the streets or are confined in police cells and detention centers on Greece’s mainland.

▻https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/19/greece-move-migrant-children-safety

#Covid-19 #Migration #Migrant #Balkans #Grèce #Mineursnonaccompagnés #Enfants #Camp #Centrededétention #Cellule #Postedepolice

The Health Risks of Burning Waste in Lebanon | HRW

►https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/12/01/if-youre-inhaling-your-death/health-risks-burning-waste-lebanon

▻https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/styles/open_graph/public/multimedia_images_2017/201711mena_lebanon_main_0.jpg?itok=ueFtb1lq

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PuqK9YJ2-s

“It’s like there’s fog across the whole town. We are coughing all the time, unable to breathe, sometimes we wake up and see ash in our spit. The intensity of the smell would cause us to become dizzy.”

—Othman, Kfar Zabad, February 16, 2017

“When they burn we can’t breathe.... We’ve had to go to the hospital because of this.”

— Mohamed, Kfar Zabad, February 16, 2017

Open burning of waste is a dangerous and avoidable practice that takes place across Lebanon. Because it risks causing a range of short and long-term health problems, it implicates the Lebanese government’s legal obligations to protect the health of its citizens. In Lebanon, open burning is a consequence of the government’s failure to manage solid waste in a way that respects environmental and health laws designed to protect people. Children and older persons are at particular risk.

–--------

Lebanon: Beirut Landfill Near Capacity | Human Rights Watch
▻https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/06/25/lebanon-beirut-landfill-near-capacity
▻https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/styles/open_graph/public/multimedia_images_2019/201906mena_lebanon_garbage.jpg?itok=vZEBY-JE

(Beirut) – The Borj Hammoud landfill, one of two principal landfills serving Beirut, Lebanon, is set to reach capacity by the end of July 2019, Human Rights Watch said today. The government had initially estimated that the landfill would be in operation until 2020.

#liban #beyrouth #waste_management #déchets #pollution #santé

Europe’s deadly migration strategy. Officials knew EU military operation made Mediterranean crossing more dangerous.

https://i.imgur.com/XvoVqY5.png

Since its creation in 2015, Europe’s military operation in the Mediterranean — named “#Operation_Sophia” — has saved some 49,000 people from the sea. But that was never really the main objective.

The goal of the operation — which at its peak involved over a dozen sea and air assets from 27 EU countries, including ships, airplanes, drones and submarines — was to disrupt people-smuggling networks off the coast of Libya and, by extension, stem the tide of people crossing the sea to Europe.

European leaders have hailed the operation as a successful joint effort to address the migration crisis that rocked the bloc starting in 2015, when a spike in arrivals overwhelmed border countries like Greece and Italy and sparked a political fight over who would be responsible for the new arrivals.

But a collection of leaked documents from the European External Action Service, the bloc’s foreign policy arm, obtained by POLITICO (▻https://g8fip1kplyr33r3krz5b97d1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/OperationSophia.pdf), paint a different picture.

In internal memos, the operation’s leaders admit Sophia’s success has been limited by its own mandate — it can only operate in international waters, not in Libyan waters or on land, where smuggling networks operate — and it is underfunded, understaffed and underequipped.

“Sophia is a military operation with a very political agenda" — Barbara Spinelli, Italian MEP

The confidential reports also show the EU is aware that a number of its policies have made the sea crossing more dangerous for migrants, and that it nonetheless chose to continue to pursue those strategies. Officials acknowledge internally that some members of the Libyan coast guard that the EU funds, equips and trains are collaborating with smuggling networks.

For the operation’s critics, the EU’s willingness to turn a blind eye to these shortcomings — as well as serious human rights abuses by the Libyan coast guard and in the country’s migrant detention centers — are symptomatic of what critics call the bloc’s incoherent approach to managing migration and its desire to outsource the problem to non-EU countries.

“Sophia is a military operation with a very political agenda,” said Barbara Spinelli, an Italian MEP and member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs in the European Parliament. “It has become an instrument of refoulement, legitimizing militias with criminal records, dressed up as coast guards.”

Now the operation, which is managed by Italy and has been dogged by political disagreements since it began, is coming under increasing pressure as the deadline for its renewal approaches in March.

Italy’s deputy prime minister, far-right leader Matteo Salvini, has said the operation should only be extended if there are new provisions to resettle rescued people across the bloc. Last month, Germany announced it would be discontinuing its participation in the program, claiming that Italy’s refusal to allow rescued migrants to disembark is undermining the mission.

Named after a baby girl born on an EU rescue ship, Sophia is the uneasy compromise to resolve a deep split across the bloc: between those who pushed for proactive search-and-rescue efforts to save more lives and those who favored pulling resources from the sea to make the crossing more dangerous.

The naval operation sits uncomfortably between the two, rescuing migrants in distress at sea, but insisting its primary focus is to fight smugglers off the coast of Libya. The two activities are frequently in conflict.

The operation has cycled through a number of strategies since its launch: a campaign to destroy boats used by smugglers; law-enforcement interviews with those rescued at sea; extensive aerial surveillance; and training and funding a newly consolidated Libyan coast guard.

But the success of these approaches is highly disputed, and in some cases they have put migrants’ lives at greater risk.

The EU’s policy of destroying the wooden boats used by smugglers to avoid them being reused, for example, has indeed disrupted the Libyan smuggling business, but at a substantial human cost.

As Libyan smugglers lost their wooden boats, many started to rely more heavily on smaller, cheaper rubber boats. The boats, which smugglers often overfill to maximize profit, are not as safe as the wooden vessels and less likely to reach European shores. Instead, Libyan smugglers started to abandon migrants in international waters, leaving them to be pulled out of peril by European rescue ships.

Sophia officials tracked the situation and were aware of the increased risk to migrants as a result of the policy. “Smugglers can no longer recover smuggling vessels on the high seas, effectively rendering them a less economic option for the smuggling business and thereby hampering it,” they wrote in a 2016 status report seen by POLITICO.

The report acknowledged however that the policy has pushed migrants into using rubber boats, putting them in greater danger. “Effectively, with the limited supply and the degree of overloading, the migrant vessels are [distress] cases from the moment they launch,” it said.

These overfilled rubber boats, which officials described as shipwrecks waiting to happen, also present a problem for the EU operation.

International maritime law compels vessels to respond to people in distress at sea and bring the rescued to a nearby safe port. And because European courts have held that Libya has no safe port, that means bringing migrants found at sea to Europe — in most cases, Italy.

This has exacerbated political tensions in the country, where far-right leader Salvini has responded to the influx of new arrivals by closing ports to NGO and humanitarian ships carrying migrants and threatening to bar Sophia vessels from docking.

Meanwhile, Sophia officials have complained that rescuing people from leaking, unseaworthy boats detracted from the operation’s ability to pursue its primary target: Libyan smugglers.

In a leaked status report from 2017, Sophia officials made a highly unusual suggestion: that the operation be granted permission to suspend its rescue responsibilities in order to focus on its anti-smuggling operations.

“Consideration should be given to an option that would allow the operation to be authorized for being temporarily exempt from search and rescue when actively conducting anti-smuggling operations against jackals in international waters,” the report read.

The EU has also wilfully ignored inconvenient aspects of its policies when it comes to its collaboration with Libya’s municipal coast guard.

The intention of the strategy — launched one year into the Sophia operation — was to equip Libyan authorities to intercept migrant boats setting off from the Libyan coast and bring people back to shore. This saved Europe from sending its own ships close to coast, and meant that people could be brought back to Libya, rather than to Europe, as required by international maritime law — or more specifically, Italy.

Here too, the EU was aware it was pursuing a problematic strategy, as the Libyan coast guard has a well-documented relationship with Libyan smugglers.

A leaked report from Frontex, the EU’s coast guard, noted in 2016: “As mentioned in previous reports, some members of Libya’s local authorities are involved in smuggling activities.” The report cited interviews with recently rescued people who said they were smuggled by Libyans in uniform. It also noted that similar conclusions were reported multiple times by the Italian coast guard and Operation Sophia.

“Many of [the coast guard officers] were militia people — many of them fought with militias during the civil war" — Rabih Boualleg, Operation Sophia translator

In Sophia’s leaked status report from 2017, operation leaders noted that “migrant smuggling and human trafficking networks remain well ingrained” throughout the region and that smugglers routinely “pay off authorities” for passage to international waters.

“Many of [the coast guard officers] were militia people — many of them fought with militias during the civil war,” said Rabih Boualleg, who worked as a translator for Operation Sophia in late 2016 on board a Dutch ship involved in training the coast guard from Tripoli.

“They were telling me that many of them hadn’t gotten their government salaries in eight months. They told me, jokingly, that they were ‘forced’ to take money from smugglers sometimes.”

The coast guards talked openly about accepting money from smuggling networks in exchange for escorting rubber boats to international waters instead of turning them back toward the shore, Boualleg said.

“If the [on-duty] coast guard came,” Boualleg added, “they would just say they were fishermen following the rubber boats, that’s all.”

Frontex’s 2016 report documents similar cases. Two officials with close knowledge of Sophia’s training of the Libyan coast guard also confirmed that members of the coast guard are involved in smuggling networks. A spokesperson for the Libyan coast guard did not return repeated requests for comment.

EU governments have, for the most part, simply looked the other way.

And that’s unlikely to change, said a senior European official with close knowledge of Operation Sophia who spoke on condition of anonymity. For the first time since the start of the operation, Libyan authorities are returning more people to Libya than are arriving in Italy.

“If Italy decides — since it is the country in command of Operation Sophia — to stop it, it is up to Italy to make this decision" — Dimitris Avramopoulos, immigration commissioner

“Europe doesn’t want to upset this balance,” the official said. “Any criticism of the coast guards could lead to resentment, to relaxing.”

Two years into the training program, leaked reports also show the Libyan coast guard was unable to manage search-and-rescue activities on its own. Sophia monitors their operations with GoPro cameras and through surveillance using ships, airplanes, drones and submarines.

The operation is limited by its mandate, but it has made progress in difficult circumstances, an EEAS spokesperson said. Operation Sophia officials did not respond to multiple interview requests and declined to answer questions via email.

“The provision of training the Libyan coast guard and navy, as well as continued engagement with them have proven to be the most effecting complementary tool to disrupt the activities of those involved in trafficking,” the EEAS spokesperson said in an email.

The spokesperson maintained that Libyan coast guards who are trained by Operation Sophia undergo a “thorough vetting procedure." The spokesperson also stated that, while Operation Sophia does advise and monitor the Libyan coast guard, the operation is not involved “in the decision-making in relation to operations.”

*

With the March deadline for the operation’s renewal fast approaching, pressure is mounting to find a way to reform Sophia or disband it altogether.

When Salvini closed Italy’s ports to NGO and humanitarian ships last July, the country’s foreign minister turned to the EU to negotiate a solution that would ensure migrants rescued as part of Operation Sophia would be resettled among other countries. At the time, Italy said it expected results “within weeks.” Six months later, neither side has found a way through the impasse.

“The fate of this operation is not determined yet,” European Commissioner for Immigration Dimitris Avramopoulos told reporters last month, adding that discussions about allowing migrants to disembark in non-Italian ports are still underway among member countries.

“If Italy decides — since it is the country in command of Operation Sophia — to stop it, it is up to Italy to make this decision.”

The political fight over the future of the operation has been made more acute by an increase in criticism from human rights organizations. Reports of violence, torture and extortion in Libyan detention centers have put the naval operation and EEAS on the defensive.

A Human Rights Watch report published in January found that Europe’s support for the Libyan coast guard has contributed to cases of arbitrary detention, and that people intercepted by Libyan authorities “face inhuman and degrading conditions and the risk of torture, sexual violence, extortion, and forced labor.” Amnesty International has also condemned the conditions under which migrants are being held, and in an open letter published earlier this month, 50 major aid organizations warned that “EU leaders have allowed themselves to become complicit in the tragedy unfolding before their eyes.”

These human rights violations have been well documented. In 2016, the U.N. Human Rights Office said it considered “migrants to be at high risk of suffering serious human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, in Libya and thus urges States not to return, or facilitate the return of, persons to Libya.”

Last June, the U.N. sanctioned six men for smuggling and human rights violations, including the head of the coast guard in Zawiya, a city west of Tripoli. A number of officials under his command, a leaked EEAS report found, were trained by Operation Sophia.

An EEAS spokesperson would not comment on the case of the Zawiya coast guards trained by Operation Sophia or how the officers were vetted. The spokesperson said that none of the coast guards “trained by Operation Sophia” are on the U.N. sanctions list.

The deteriorating human rights situation has prompted a growing chorus of critics to argue the EU’s arrangement with Libya is unsustainable.

“What does the EU do in Libya? They throw money at projects, but they don’t have a very tangible operation on the ground" — Tarek Megerisi, Libyan expert

“Returning anyone to Libya is against international law,” said Salah Margani, a former justice minister in Libya’s post-civil war government. “Libya is not a safe place. They will be subject to murder. They will be subjected to torture.”

“This is documented,” Margani added. “And [Europe] knows it.”

Sophia is also indicative of a larger, ineffective European policy toward Libya, said Tarek Megerisi, a Libya specialist at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“What does the EU do in Libya? They throw money at projects, but they don’t have a very tangible operation on the ground. They really struggle to convert what they spend into political currency — Operation Sophia is all they’ve got,” he said.

The project, he added, is less a practical attempt to stop smuggling or save migrants than a political effort to paper over differences within the EU when it comes to migration policy.

With Sophia, he said, Europe is “being as vague as possible so countries like Italy and Hungary can say this is our tool for stopping migration, and countries like Germany and Sweden can say we’re saving lives.”

“With this operation, there’s something for everyone,” he said.

▻https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-deadly-migration-strategy-leaked-documents

Commentaire ECRE :

Leaked documents obtained by @POLITICOEurope show that the #EU knew its military operation “Sophia” in the Mediterranean made sea crossing more dangerous.

▻https://twitter.com/ecre/status/1101074946057482240

#responsabilité #Méditerranée #mourir_en_mer #asile #migrations #réfugiés #mer_Méditerranée #Frontex #EU #UE
#leaks #sauvetage #externalisation #frontières

–-----------------------------------------

Mise en exergue de quelques passages de l’article qui me paraissent particulièrement intéressants :

The confidential reports also show the EU is aware that a number of its policies have made the sea crossing more dangerous for migrants, and that it nonetheless chose to continue to pursue those strategies. Officials acknowledge internally that some members of the Libyan coast guard that the EU funds, equips and trains are collaborating with smuggling networks.

Named after a baby girl born on an EU rescue ship, Sophia is the uneasy compromise to resolve a deep split across the bloc: between those who pushed for proactive search-and-rescue efforts to save more lives and those who favored pulling resources from the sea to make the crossing more dangerous.
The naval operation sits uncomfortably between the two, rescuing migrants in distress at sea, but insisting its primary focus is to fight smugglers off the coast of Libya. The two activities are frequently in conflict.

The report acknowledged however that the policy has pushed migrants into using rubber boats, putting them in greater danger. “Effectively, with the limited supply and the degree of overloading, the migrant vessels are [distress] cases from the moment they launch,” it said.

In a leaked status report from 2017 (▻https://g8fip1kplyr33r3krz5b97d1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/ENFM-2017-2.pdf), Sophia officials made a highly unusual suggestion: that the operation be granted permission to suspend its rescue responsibilities in order to focus on its anti-smuggling operations.

“Consideration should be given to an option that would allow the operation to be authorized for being temporarily exempt from search and rescue when actively conducting anti-smuggling operations against jackals in international waters,” the report read.

A leaked report from #Frontex (►https://theintercept.com/2017/04/02/new-evidence-undermines-eu-report-tying-refugee-rescue-group-to-smuggl), the EU’s coast guard, noted in 2016: “As mentioned in previous reports, some members of Libya’s local authorities are involved in smuggling activities.” The report cited interviews with recently rescued people who said they were smuggled by Libyans in uniform. It also noted that similar conclusions were reported multiple times by the Italian coast guard and Operation Sophia.

In Sophia’s leaked status report from 2017, operation leaders noted that “migrant smuggling and human trafficking networks remain well ingrained” throughout the region and that smugglers routinely “pay off authorities” for passage to international waters. “Many of [the coast guard officers] were militia people — many of them fought with militias during the civil war,” said Rabih Boualleg, who worked as a translator for Operation Sophia in late 2016 on board a Dutch ship involved in training the coast guard from Tripoli. The coast guards talked openly about accepting money from smuggling networks in exchange for escorting rubber boats to international waters instead of turning them back toward the shore, Boualleg said.

Frontex’s 2016 report documents similar cases. Two officials with close knowledge of Sophia’s training of the Libyan coast guard also confirmed that members of the coast guard are involved in smuggling networks. A spokesperson for the Libyan coast guard did not return repeated requests for comment.

Two years into the training program, leaked reports (▻https://g8fip1kplyr33r3krz5b97d1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/ENFM-Monitoring-of-Libyan-Coast-Guard-and-Navy-Report-October-2017-January-2018.pdf) also show the Libyan coast guard was unable to manage search-and-rescue activities on its own. Sophia monitors their operations with GoPro cameras and through surveillance using ships, airplanes, drones and submarines.

A Human Rights Watch report (▻https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/01/21/no-escape-hell/eu-policies-contribute-abuse-migrants-libya) published in January found that Europe’s support for the Libyan coast guard has contributed to cases of arbitrary detention, and that people intercepted by Libyan authorities “face inhuman and degrading conditions and the risk of torture, sexual violence, extortion, and forced labor.” Amnesty International has also condemned (►https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/LY/DetainedAndDehumanised_en.pdf) the conditions under which migrants are being held, and in an open letter published earlier this month, 50 major aid organizations warned that “EU leaders have allowed themselves to become complicit in the tragedy unfolding before their eyes.”

“Returning anyone to Libya is against international law,” said Salah Margani, a former justice minister in Libya’s post-civil war government. “Libya is not a safe place. They will be subject to murder. They will be subjected to torture.”

“This is documented,” Margani added. “And [Europe] knows it.”
Sophia is also indicative of a larger, ineffective European policy toward Libya, said Tarek Megerisi, a Libya specialist at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“What does the EU do in Libya? They throw money at projects, but they don’t have a very tangible operation on the ground. They really struggle to convert what they spend into political currency — Operation Sophia is all they’ve got,” he said.

With Sophia, he said, Europe is “being as vague as possible so countries like Italy and Hungary can say this is our tool for stopping migration, and countries like Germany and Sweden can say we’re saving lives.”
“With this operation, there’s something for everyone,” he said.

#flou

Le monde selon #Xi_Jinping

Depuis 2012, le désormais « président à vie » Xi Jinping a concentré tous les pouvoirs sur sa personne, avec l’obsession de faire de la #Chine la superpuissance du XXIe siècle. Plongée au coeur de son « rêve chinois ».

Derrière son apparente bonhomie se cache un chef redoutable, prêt à tout pour faire de la Chine la première puissance mondiale, d’ici au centenaire de la République populaire, en 2049. En mars dernier, à l’issue de vastes purges, Xi Jinping modifie la Constitution et s’intronise « président à vie ». Une concentration des pouvoirs sans précédent depuis la fin de l’ère maoïste. Né en 1953, ce fils d’un proche de Mao Zedong révoqué pour « complot antiparti » choisit à l’adolescence, en pleine tourmente de la Révolution culturelle, un exil volontaire à la campagne, comme pour racheter la déchéance paternelle. Revendiquant une fidélité aveugle au Parti, il gravira en apparatchik « plus rouge que rouge » tous les degrés du pouvoir.
Depuis son accession au secrétariat général du Parti en 2012, puis à la présidence l’année suivante, les autocritiques d’opposants ont réapparu, par le biais de confessions télévisées. Et on met à l’essai un système de surveillance généralisée censé faire le tri entre les bons et les mauvais citoyens. Inflexible sur le plan intérieur, Xi Jinping s’est donné comme objectif de supplanter l’Occident à la tête d’un nouvel ordre mondial. Son projet des « routes de la soie » a ainsi considérablement étendu le réseau des infrastructures chinoises à l’échelle planétaire. Cet expansionnisme stratégique, jusque-là développé en silence, inquiète de plus en plus l’Europe et les États-Unis.

Impériale revanche
Dans ce portrait très documenté du leader chinois, Sophie Lepault et Romain Franklin donnent un aperçu inédit de sa politique et montrent que l’itinéraire de Xi Jinping a façonné ses choix. De Pékin à Djibouti – l’ancienne colonie française est depuis 2017 la première base militaire chinoise à l’étranger – en passant par la mer de Chine méridionale et l’Australie, les réalisateurs passent au crible les projets et les stratégies d’influence du nouvel homme fort de la planète. Nourrie d’images d’archives et de témoignages (de nombreux experts et de dissidents, mais aussi d’un haut gradé proche du pouvoir), leur enquête montre comment Xi Jinping a donné à la reconquête nationaliste de la grandeur impériale chinoise, projet nourri dès l’origine par la République populaire, une spectaculaire ampleur.

►https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/078193-000-A/le-monde-selon-xi-jinping
#biographie #démocratie #trauma #traumatisme #Mao #révolution_culturelle #Terres_Jaunes #exil #Prince_Rouge #nationalisme #rêve_chinois #renaissance_nationale #histoire_nationale #totalitarisme #stabilité #idéologie #anti-corruption #lutte_contre_la_corruption #purge #dictature #investissements_à_l'étranger #prêts #dette #KUKA #ports #droits_humains #Australie #infiltration_chinoise #Nouvelle-Zélande #David_Cameron #Jean-Pierre_Raffarin #matières_premières #capitalisme_autoritaire #Ouïghours #arrestations #répression #censure #liberté_d'expression #défilés_militaires #armée #puissance_militaire #Mer_de_Chine_méridionale #îles_de_Spratleys #liberté_de_la_presse #prisonniers_politiques #Hong_Kong

#Djibouti #base_militaire (de Djibouti)

#Sri_Lanka —> Au Sri Lanka, le #port de #Hambantota est sous contrôle chinois, ceci pour au moins 99 ans (accord signé avec le Sri Lanka qui n’a pas pu rembourser le prêt que la Chine lui a accorder pour construire le port...)
#dépendance
v. aussi :
Comment la Chine a fait main basse sur le Sri Lanka
▻https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/comment-la-chine-fait-main-basse-sur-le-sri-lanka

Histoire semblable pour le #Port_du_Pirée à #Athènes, en #Grèce ou l’#aéroport de #Toulouse, en #France.

#Organisation_de_coopération_de_Shangaï :

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/SCO_%28orthographic_projection%29.svg/langfr-280px-SCO_%28orthographic_projection%29.svg.png

Quelques cartes et images tirées du #film #documentaire.

La #nouvelle_route_de_la_soie et autres investissements chinois dans les infrastructures mondiales de #transport :

https://i.imgur.com/RdHTkIr.png

La #Chinafrique :

https://i.imgur.com/z5FF0Y8.png

Le programme de #surveillance_de_masse :

https://i.imgur.com/KFHsCX5.png https://i.imgur.com/BqCkvjD.png https://i.imgur.com/XjivLqo.png https://i.imgur.com/gIOi809.png https://i.imgur.com/UcYPBRM.png

Outre la surveillance, mise en place d’un programme appelé « #crédit_social » :

Le #Système_de_crédit_social est un projet du gouvernement chinois visant à mettre en place d’ici 2020 un système national de #réputation_des_citoyens. Chacun d’entre eux se voit attribuer une note, échelonnée entre 350 et 950 points, dite « crédit social », fondée sur les données dont dispose le gouvernement à propos de leur statut économique et social. Le système repose sur un outil de surveillance de masse et utilise les technologies d’analyse du #big_data. Il est également utilisé pour noter les entreprises opérant sur le marché chinois.

▻https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syst%C3%A8me_de_cr%C3%A9dit_social

Voici ce que cela donne :

https://i.imgur.com/AanHz3Q.png https://i.imgur.com/zKtoibG.png

ping @reka

“You Cry at Night but Don’t Know Why”. Sexual Violence against Women in North Korea

Oh Jung Hee is a former trader in her forties from Ryanggang province. She sold clothes to market stalls in Hyesan city and was involved in the distribution of textiles in her province. She said that up until she left the country in 2014, guards would regularly pass by the market to demand bribes, sometimes in the form of coerced sexual acts or intercourse. She told Human Rights Watch:

I was a victim many times … On the days they felt like it, market guards or police officials could ask me to follow them to an empty room outside the market, or some other place they’d pick. What can we do? They consider us [sex] toys … We [women] are at the mercy of men. Now, women cannot survive without having men with power near them.

She said she had no power to resist or report these abuses. She said it never occurred to her that anything could be done to stop these assaults except trying to avoid such situations by moving away or being quiet in order to not be noticed.

Park Young Hee, a former farmer in her forties also from Ryanggang province who left North Korea for the second time in 2011, was forced back to North Korea from China in the spring of 2010 after her first attempt to flee. She said, after being released by the secret police (bowiseong) and put under the jurisdiction of the police, the officer in charge of questioning her in the police pre-trial detention facility (kuryujang) near Musan city in North Hamgyong province touched her body underneath her clothes and penetrated her several times with his fingers. She said he asked her repeatedly about the sexual relations she had with the Chinese man to whom she had been sold to while in China. She told Human Rights Watch:

My life was in his hands, so I did everything he wanted and told him everything he asked. How could I do anything else? … Everything we do in North Korea can be considered illegal, so everything can depend on the perception or attitude of who is looking into your life.

Park Young Hee said she never told anybody about the abuse because she did not think it was unusual, and because she feared the authorities and did not believe anyone would help.

The experiences of Oh Jung Hee and Park Young Hee are not isolated ones. While sexual and gender-based violence is of concern everywhere, growing evidence suggests it is endemic in North Korea.

This report–based largely on interviews with 54 North Koreans who left the country after 2011, when the current leader, Kim Jong Un, rose to power, and 8 former North Korean officials who fled the country–focuses on sexual abuse by men in official positions of power. The perpetrators include high-ranking party officials, prison and detention facility guards and interrogators, police and secret police officials, prosecutors, and soldiers. At the time of the assaults, most of the victims were in the custody of authorities or were market traders who came across guards and other officials as they traveled to earn their livelihood.

Interviewees told us that when a guard or police officer “picks” a woman, she has no choice but to comply with any demands he makes, whether for sex, money, or other favors. Women in custody have little choice should they attempt to refuse or complain afterward, and risk sexual violence, longer periods in detention, beatings, forced labor, or increased scrutiny while conducting market activities.

Women not in custody risk losing their main source of income and jeopardizing their family’s survival, confiscation of goods and money, and increased scrutiny or punishment, including being sent to labor training facilities (rodong danryeondae) or ordinary-crimes prison camps (kyohwaso, literally reform through labor centers) for being involved in market activities. Other negative impacts include possibly losing access to prime trading locations, being fired or overlooked for jobs, being deprived of means of transportation or business opportunities, being deemed politically disloyal, being relocated to a remote area, and facing more physical or sexual violence.

The North Koreans we spoke with told us that unwanted sexual contact and violence is so common that it has come to be accepted as part of ordinary life: sexual abuse by officials, and the impunity they enjoy, is linked to larger patterns of sexual abuse and impunity in the country. The precise number of women and girls who experience sexual violence in North Korea, however, is unknown. Survivors rarely report cases, and the North Korean government rarely publishes data on any aspect of life in the country.

Our research, of necessity conducted among North Koreans who fled, does not provide a generalized sample from which to draw definitive conclusions about the prevalence of sexual abuse by officials. The diversity in age, geographic location, social class, and personal backgrounds of the survivors, combined with many consistencies in how they described their experiences, however, suggest that the patterns of sexual violence identified here are common across North Korea. Our findings also mirror those of other inquiries that have tried to discern the situation in this sealed-off authoritarian country.

A 2014 United Nations Commission of Inquiry (UN COI) on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) concluded that systematic, widespread, and gross human rights violations committed by the North Korean government constituted crimes against humanity. These included forced abortion, rape, and other sexual violence, as well as murder, imprisonment, enslavement, and torture on North Koreans in prison or detention. The UN COI stated that witnesses revealed that while “domestic violence is rife within DPRK society … violence against women is not limited to the home, and that it is common to see women being beaten and sexually assaulted in public.”

The Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU), a South Korean government think tank that specializes in research on North Korea, conducted a survey with 1,125 North Koreans (31.29 percent men and 68.71 percent women) who re-settled in South Korea between 2010 and 2014. The survey found that 37.7 percent of the respondents said sexual harassment and rape of inmates at detention facilities was “common,” including 15.9 percent that considered it “very common.” Thirty-three women said they were raped at detention and prison facilities, 51 said they witnessed rapes in such facilities, and 25 said they heard of such cases. The assailants identified by the respondents were police agents–45.6 percent; guards–17.7 percent; secret police (bowiseong) agents –13.9 percent; and fellow detainees–1.3 percent. The 2014 KINU survey found 48.6 percent of the respondents said that rape and sexual harassment against women in North Korea was “common.”

The North Koreans we spoke with stressed that women are socialized to feel powerless to demand accountability for sexual abuse and violence, and to feel ashamed when they are victims of abuse. They said the lack of rule of law and corresponding support systems for survivors leads most victims to remain silent–not seek justice and often not even talk about their experiences.

While most of our interviewees left North Korea between2011 and 2016, and many of the abuses date from a year or more before their departure, all available evidence suggests that the abuses and near-total impunity enjoyed by perpetrators continue to the present.

In July 2017, the North Korean government told the UN committee that monitors the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) that just nine people in all of North Korea were convicted of rape in 2008, seven in 2011, and five in 2015. The government said that the numbers of male perpetrators convicted for the crime of forcing a woman who is his subordinate to have sexual intercourse was five in 2008, six in 2011, and three in 2015. While North Korean officials seem to think such ridiculously low numbers show the country to be a violence-free paradise, the numbers are a powerful indictment of their utter failure to address sexual violence in the country.

https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/styles/1070w/public/multimedia_images_2018/201811asia_northkorea_photo1.jpg?itok=kt33JLU0#.jpg

Sexual Abuse in Prisons and Detention Facilities

Human Rights Watch interviewed eight former detainees or prisoners who said they experienced a combination of verbal and sexual violence, harsh questioning, and humiliating treatment by investigators, detention facility personnel, or prison guards that belong to the police or the secret police (bowiseong).

Six interviewees had experienced sexual, verbal, and physical abuse in pre-trial detention and interrogation facilities (kuryujang)–jails designed to hold detainees during their initial interrogations, run by the MSS or the police. They said secret police or police agents in charge of their personal interrogation touched their faces and their bodies, including their breasts and hips, either through their clothes or by putting their hands inside their clothes.

Human Rights Watch also documented cases of two women who were sexually abused at a temporary holding facility (jipkyulso) while detainees were being transferred from interrogation facilities (kuryujang) to detention facilities in the detainees’ home districts.

https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/styles/1070w/public/multimedia_images_2018/201811asia_northkorea_photo2.jpg?itok=JsWT1jKx#.jpg

Sexual Abuse of Women Engaged in Trade

Human Rights Watch interviewed four women traders who experienced sexual violence, including rape, assault, and sexual harassment, as well as verbal abuse and intimidation, by market gate-keeper officials. We also interviewed 17 women who were sexually abused or experienced unwanted sexual advances by police or other officials as they traveled for their work as traders. Although seeking income outside the command economy was illegal, women started working as traders during the mass famine of the 1990s as survival imperatives led many to ignore the strictures of North Korea’s command economy. Since many married women were not obliged to attend a government-established workplace, they became traders and soon the main breadwinners for their families. But pursuing income in public exposed them to violence.

Traders and former government officials told us that in North Korea traders are often compelled to pay bribes to officials and market regulators, but for women the “bribes” often include sexual abuse and violence, including rape. Perpetrators of abuses against women traders include high-ranking party officials, managers at state-owned enterprises, and gate-keeper officials at the markets and on roads and check-points, such as police, bowiseong agents, prosecutors, soldiers, and railroad inspectors on trains.

Women who had worked as traders described unwanted physical contact that included indiscriminately touching their bodies, grabbing their breasts and hips, trying to touch them underneath their skirts or pants, poking their cheeks, pulling their hair, or holding their bodies in their arms. The physical harassment was often accompanied by verbal abuse and intimidation. Women also said it was common for women to try to help protect each other by sharing information about such things, such as which house to avoid because it is rumored that the owner is a rapist or a child molester, which roads not to walk on alone at night, or which local high-ranking official most recently sexually preyed upon women.

Our research confirms a trend already identified in the UN COI report:

Officials are not only increasingly engaging in corruption in order to support their low or non-existent salaries, they are also exacting penalties and punishment in the form of sexual abuse and violence as there is no fear of punishment. As more women assume the responsibility for feeding their families due to the dire economic and food situation, more women are traversing through and lingering in public spaces, selling and transporting their goods.

The UN COI further found “the male dominated state, agents who police the marketplace, inspectors on trains, and soldiers are increasingly committing acts of sexual assault on women in public spaces” and “received reports of train guards frisking women and abusing young girls onboard.” This was described as “the male dominated state preying on the increasingly female-dominated market.”

Almost all of the women interviewed by Human Rights Watch with trading experience said the only way not to fall prey to extortion or sexual harassment while conducting market activities was to give up hopes of expanding one’s business and barely scrape by, be born to a powerful father with money and connections, marry a man with power, or become close to one.

https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/styles/1070w/public/multimedia_images_2018/201811asia_northkorea_photo3.jpg?itok=A9ZzgiON#.jpg

Lack of Remedies

Only one of the survivors of sexual violence Human Rights Watch interviewed for this report said she had tried to report the sexual assault. The other women said they did not report it because they did not trust the police and did not believe police would be willing to take action. The women said the police do not consider sexual violence a serious crime and that it is almost inconceivable to even consider going to the police to report sexual abuse because of the possible repercussions. Family members or close friends who knew about their experience also cautioned women against going to the authorities.

Eight former government officials, including a former police officer, told Human Rights Watch that cases of sexual abuse or assault are reported to police only when there are witnesses and, even then, the reports invariably are made by third parties and not by the women themselves. Only seven of the North Korean women and men interviewed by Human Rights Watch were aware of cases in which police had investigated sexual violence and in all such cases the victims had been severely injured or killed.

All of the North Koreans who spoke to Human Rights Watch said the North Korean government does not provide any type of psycho-social support services for survivors of sexual violence and their families. To make matters worse, they said, the use of psychological or psychiatric services itself is highly stigmatized.

Two former North Korean doctors and a nurse who left after 2010 said there are no protocols for medical treatment and examination of victims of sexual violence to provide therapeutic care or secure medical evidence. They said there are no training programs for medical practitioners on sexual assault and said they never saw a rape victim go to the hospital to receive treatment.

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Discrimination Against Women

Sex discrimination and subordination of women are pervasive in North Korean. Everyone in North Korea is subjected to a socio-political classification system, known as songbun, that grouped people from its creation into “loyal,” “wavering,” or “hostile” classes. But a woman’s classification also depends, in critical respects, on that of her male relatives, specifically her father and her father’s male relations and, upon marriage, that of her husband and his male relations. A woman’s position in society is lower than a man’s, and her reputation depends largely on maintaining an image of “sexual purity” and obeying the men in her family.

The government is dominated by men. According to statistics provided by the DPRK government to the UN, as of 2016 women made up just 20.2 percent of the deputies selected, 16.1 percent of divisional directors in government bodies, 11.9 percent of judges and lawyers, 4.9 percent of diplomats, and 16.5 per cent of the officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

On paper, the DPRK says that it is committed to gender equality and women and girl’s rights. The Criminal Code criminalizes rape of women, trafficking in persons, having sexual relations with women in a subordinate position, and child sexual abuse. The 2010 Law on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Women bans domestic violence. North Korea has also ratified five international human rights treaties, including ones that address women and girl’s rights and equality, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and CEDAW.

During a meeting of a North Korean delegation with the CEDAW Committee, which reviewed North Korean compliance between 2002 and 2015, government officials argued all of the elements of CEDAW had been included in DPRK’s domestic laws. However, under questioning by the committee, the officials were unable to provide the definition of “discrimination against women” employed by the DPRK.

Park Kwang Ho, Councilor of the Central Court in the DPRK, stated that if a woman in a subordinate position was forced to engage in sexual relations for fear of losing her job or in exchange for preferential treatment, it was her choice as to whether or not she complied. Therefore, he argued, in such a situation the punishment for the perpetrator should be lighter. He later amended his statement to say that if she did not consent to having sexual relations, and was forced to do so, the perpetrator was committing rape and would be punished accordingly.

▻https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/10/31/you-cry-night-dont-know-why/sexual-violence-against-women-north-korea
#abus_sexuels #violence_sexuelle #viols #Corée_du_nord #femmes #rapport

Sri Lanka: Government Slow to Return Land. Create Consultative Process to End Military Occupation

The Sri Lankan government has yet to fully restore civilian ownership of land and property nearly a decade since the end of the civil war in 2009, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Progress, particularly since the election of a new government in 2015, has been hindered by broad military claims of national security and the lack of a transparent process.

The 80-page report, “‘Why Can’t We Go Home?’: Military Occupation of Land in Sri Lanka,” details security force occupation of land both during and after the armed conflict. It identifies the lack of transparency and due process, failure to map occupied land, inadequate support to affected people and communities, and prolonged delays in providing appropriate reparations for decades of loss and suffering. The military has also used some confiscated lands for commercial profit rather than national security and returned damaged or destroyed property to owners without compensation.

“All those displaced during Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war are entitled to return to their homes,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director. “Despite repeated pledges by the authorities, the military has been frustratingly slow to restore land to its rightful owners.”

The report is based on over 100 interviews between August 2017 to May 2018 with members of affected communities, activists, local officials, and lawyers. It looks into cases of military occupation and land release in 20 areas in six districts, primarily in Sri Lanka’s north and east.

The three-decade civil war in Sri Lanka ended with the decisive defeat of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009. Large areas, including those previously held by the LTTE in the north and east, came under military control. At the end of the war, some 300,000 people ended up in a military detention camp.

While the administration of then-President Mahinda Rajapaksa released some land to its original owners, the military retained control over large areas for military but also non-military purposes, such as agriculture, tourism, and other commercial ventures.

The new government, led by President Maithripala Sirisena, took some steps to release civilian land held by the security forces. At the United Nations Human Rights Council in October 2015, the government promised to address conflict-related issues, including returning land to its original owners. However, the government’s response has fallen far short of its promises. On October 4, 2018, the president ordered the state to release all civilian land by December 31, 2018.

The military has also retained control of land it previously announced it would return. For instance, in April 2017, the navy responded to protests by displaced communities from the Mullikulam area in Mannar by announcing it would release 100 acres of the land that security forces had been occupying. More than a year later, people are still waiting.

“Now there is no war,” said Francis Crooss, a village elder. “It’s now peacetime. So why can’t we go back home?”

State agencies have exchanged properties without releasing the land to civilians. In Pallimunai in Mannar, land belonging to residents displaced since 1990 was occupied first by the army and then the police. At war’s end, the police promised to release their land and homes, but instead, the navy took control.

“We’ve been made refugees in our own village,” said Helena Perera, one of the residents.

All three major ethnic communities in the country – the Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslims – are affected by military occupation of land in the north and east. However, the vast majority of cases impact the Tamil community.

Human Rights Watch documented a number of cases in which properties were destroyed while held by the military after the war, including Hindu temples, churches, mosques, and Buddhist shrines.

Government authorities have also carried out land grabs since the end of the war. In July 2010, the military forcibly evicted residents of Ragamwela, Panama, in southeastern Ampara district. In November 2011, 200 soldiers arrived in Ashraf Nagar village in Ampara district and demanded that all its occupants leave. In such cases, the security forces set up military camps or used the land for other purposes, including commercial use.

The government’s failure to establish a uniform policy on resettlement remains a critical problem, Human Rights Watch said. Some displaced families did not receive proper resettlement assistance when they returned to formerly occupied lands. The government transferred others from displacement camps, but they then entered into other forms of displacement, such as living with friends and relatives, or moving to other camps closer to their original properties, which the military still occupied. Those resettled more than once were denied full resettlement assistance when their land was eventually released.

A 70-year-old fisherman from Myliddy said his family had moved 24 times in 27 years until the military released his property in July 2017. But without resettlement assistance, he is severely in debt. “We hope the government will at least help us restart our lives this one last time,” he said.

Partial releases pose particular problems for returnee communities. Military control of neighboring areas hinders access to services and jobs, and heightens fears of surveillance and harassment by soldiers.

Establishing ownership of land where multiple displacements have occurred over decades is difficult, Human Rights Watch said. But instead of leaving it exclusively to the military, the government should urgently set up a transparent and consultative process, including displaced communities, to establish land claims and restore civilian ownership.

“The government has adopted an arbitrary, piecemeal approach to land returns, which is fomenting deep distrust among communities wary that the military is still in charge,” Ganguly said. “It should address rights violations and provide remedies to end the distress of those who have long suffered because of the military’s occupation of land.”

https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/styles/1070w/public/multimedia_images_2018/201810asia_srilanka_main.jpg?itok=RvobQPoa#.jpg

Lien vers le rapport:
▻https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/10/09/why-cant-we-go-home/military-occupation-land-sri-lanka

#Grèce : Des enfants demandeurs d’asile privés d’école

À cause de sa politique migratoire appuyée par l’Union européenne qui bloque des milliers d’enfants demandeurs d’asile dans les îles de la mer Égée, la Grèce prive ces enfants de leur droit à l’éducation, a déclaré Human Rights Watch aujourd’hui.
Le rapport de 51 pages, intitulé « ‘Without Education They Lose Their Future’ : Denial of Education to Child Asylum Seekers on the Greek Islands » (« ‘Déscolarisés, c’est leur avenir qui leur échappe’ : Les enfants demandeurs d’asile privés d’éducation sur les îles grecques », résumé et recommandations disponibles en français), a constaté que moins de 15 % des enfants en âge d’être scolarisés vivant dans les îles, soit plus de 3 000, étaient inscrits dans des établissements publics à la fin de l’année scolaire 2017-2018, et que dans les camps que gère l’État dans les îles, seuls une centaine, tous des élèves de maternelle, avaient accès à l’enseignement officiel. Les enfants demandeurs d’asile vivant dans les îles grecques sont exclus des opportunités d’instruction qu’ils auraient dans la partie continentale du pays. La plupart de ceux qui ont pu aller en classe l’ont fait parce qu’ils ont pu quitter les camps gérés par l’État grâce à l’aide des autorités locales ou de volontaires.

« La Grèce devrait abandonner sa politique consistant à confiner aux îles les enfants demandeurs d’asile et leurs familles, puisque depuis deux ans, l’État s’est avéré incapable d’y scolariser les enfants », a déclaré Bill Van Esveld, chercheur senior de la division Droits des enfants à Human Rights Watch. « Abandonner ces enfants sur des îles où ils ne peuvent pas aller en classe leur fait du tort et viole les propres lois de la Grèce. »

Human Rights Watch s’est entretenue avec 107 enfants demandeurs d’asile et migrants en âge d’être scolarisés vivant dans les îles, ainsi qu’avec des responsables du ministère de l’Éducation, de l’ONU et de groupes humanitaires locaux. Elle a également examiné la législation en vigueur.

L’État grec applique une politique appuyée par l’UE qui consiste à maintenir dans les îles les demandeurs d’asile qui arrivent de Turquie par la mer jusqu’à ce que leurs dossiers de demande d’asile soient traités. Le gouvernement soutient que ceci est nécessaire au regard de l’accord migratoire que l’EU et la Turquie ont signé en mars 2016. Le processus de traitement est censé être rapide et les personnes appartenant aux groupes vulnérables sont censées en être exemptées. Mais Human Rights Watch a parlé à des familles qui avaient été bloquées jusqu’à 11 mois dans les camps, souvent à cause des longs délais d’attente pour être convoqué aux entretiens relatifs à leur demande d’asile, ou parce qu’elles ont fait appel du rejet de leur demande.

Même si l’État grec a transféré plus de 10 000 demandeurs d’asile vers la Grèce continentale depuis novembre, il refuse de mettre fin à sa politique de confinement. En avril 2018, la Cour suprême grecque a invalidé cette politique pour les nouveaux arrivants. Au lieu d’appliquer ce jugement, le gouvernement a émis une décision administrative et promulgué une loi afin de rétablir la politique.

D’après la loi grecque, la scolarité est gratuite et obligatoire pour tous les enfants de 5 à 15 ans, y compris ceux qui demandent l’asile. Le droit international garantit à tous les enfants le même droit de recevoir un enseignement primaire et secondaire, sans discrimination. Les enfants vivant en Grèce continentale, non soumis à la politique de confinement, ont pu s’inscrire dans l’enseignement officiel.

Selon l’office humanitaire de la Commission européenne, ECHO, « l’éducation est cruciale » pour les filles et garçons touchés par des crises. Cette institution ajoute que l’éducation permet aux enfants de « retrouver un certain sens de normalité et de sécurité », d’acquérir des compétences importantes pour leur vie, et que c’est « un des meilleurs outils pour investir dans leur avenir, ainsi que dans la paix, la stabilité et la croissance économique de leur pays ».

Une fille afghane de 12 ans, qui avait séjourné pendant six mois dans un camp géré par l’État grec dans les îles, a déclaré qu’avant de fuir la guerre, elle était allée à l’école pendant sept ans, et qu’elle voulait y retourner. « Si nous n’étudions pas, nous n’aurons pas d’avenir et nous ne pourrons pas réussir, puisque nous [ne serons pas] instruits, nous ne saurons parler aucune langue étrangère », a-t-elle déclaré.

Plusieurs groupes non gouvernementaux prodiguent un enseignement informel aux enfants demandeurs d’asile dans les îles, mais d’après les personnes qui y travaillent, rien ne peut remplacer l’enseignement officiel. Par exemple il existe une école de ce type dans le camp de Moria géré par l’État sur l’île de Lesbos, mais elle ne dispose qu’à temps partiel d’une salle dans un préfabriqué, ce qui signifie que les enfants ne peuvent recevoir qu’une heure et demie d’enseignement par jour. « Ils font de leur mieux et nous leur en sommes reconnaissants, mais ce n’est pas une véritable école », a fait remarquer un père.

D’autres assurent le transport vers des écoles situées à l’extérieur des camps, mais ne peuvent pas emmener les enfants qui sont trop jeunes pour s’y rendre tout seuls. Certains élèves vivant à l’extérieur des camps de l’État suivent un enseignement informel et ont également reçu l’aide de volontaires ou de groupes non gouvernementaux afin de s’inscrire dans l’enseignement public. Ainsi des volontaires ont aidé un garçon kurde de 13 ans vivant à Pipka, un site situé à l’extérieur des camps de l’île de Lesbos, désormais menacé de fermeture, à s’inscrire dans un établissement public, où il est déjà capable de suivre la classe en grec

Des parents et des enseignants estimaient que la routine scolaire pourrait aider les enfants demandeurs d’asile à se remettre des expériences traumatisantes qu’ils ont vécues dans leurs pays d’origine et lors de leur fuite. À l’inverse, le manque d’accès à l’enseignement, combiné aux insuffisances du soutien psychologique, exacerbe le stress et l’anxiété qui découlent du fait d’être coincé pendant des mois dans des camps peu sûrs et surpeuplés. Évoquant les conditions du camp de Samos, une fille de 17 ans qui a été violée au Maroc a déclaré : « [ça] me rappelle ce que j’ai traversé. Moi, j’espérais être en sécurité. »

Le ministère grec de la Politique d’immigration, qui est responsable de la politique de confinement et des camps des îles, n’a pas répondu aux questions que Human Rights Watch lui avait adressées au sujet de la scolarisation des enfants demandeurs d’asile et migrants vivant dans ces îles. Plusieurs professionnels de l’éducation ont déclaré qu’il existait un manque de transparence autour de l’autorité que le ministère de l’Immigration exerçait sur l’enseignement dans les îles. Une commission du ministère de l’Éducation sur la scolarisation des réfugiés a rapporté en 2017 que le ministère de l’Immigration avait fait obstacle à certains projets visant à améliorer l’enseignement dans les îles.

Le ministère de l’Éducation a mis en place deux programmes clés pour aider les enfants demandeurs d’asile de toute la Grèce qui ne parlent pas grec et ont souvent été déscolarisés pendant des années, à intégrer l’enseignement public et à y réussir, mais l’un comme l’autre excluaient la plupart des enfants vivant dans les camps des îles gérés par l’État.

En 2018, le ministère a ouvert des écoles maternelles dans certains camps des îles, et en mai, environ 32 enfants d’un camp géré par une municipalité de Lesbos ont pu s’inscrire dans des écoles primaires – même si l’année scolaire se terminait en juin. Le ministère a déclaré que plus de 1 100 enfants demandeurs d’asile avaient fréquenté des écoles des îles à un moment ou un autre de l’année scolaire 2017-2018, mais apparemment ils étaient nombreux à avoir quitté les îles avant la fin de l’année.

Une loi adoptée en juin a permis de clarifier le droit à l’éducation des demandeurs d’asile et, le 9 juillet, le ministère de l’Éducation a déclaré qu’il prévoyait d’ouvrir 15 classes supplémentaires destinées aux enfants demandeurs d’asile des îles pour l’année scolaire 2018-2019. Ce serait une mesure très positive, à condition qu’elle soit appliquée à temps, contrairement aux programmes annoncés les années précédentes. Même dans ce cas, elle laisserait sur le carreau la majorité des enfants demandeurs d’asile et migrants en âge d’être scolarisés, à moins que le nombre d’enfants vivant dans les îles ne diminue.

« La Grèce a moins de deux mois devant elle pour veiller à ce que les enfants qui ont risqué leur vie pour atteindre ses rivages puissent aller en classe lorsque l’année scolaire débutera, une échéance qu’elle n’a jamais réussi à respecter auparavant », a conclu Bill Van Esveld. « L’Union européenne devrait encourager le pays à respecter le droit de ces enfants à l’éducation en renonçant à sa politique de confinement et en autorisant les enfants demandeurs d’asile et leurs familles à quitter les îles pour qu’ils puissent accéder à l’enseignement et aux services dont ils ont besoin. »

▻https://www.hrw.org/fr/news/2018/07/18/grece-des-enfants-demandeurs-dasile-prives-decole
#enfance #enfants #éducation #îles #mer_Egée #asile #migrations #réfugiés #école #éducation #rapport #Lesbos #Samos #Chios

Lien vers le rapport :
▻https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/07/18/without-education-they-lose-their-future/denial-education-child-asylum-seekers

Bankrolling Abuse
#Human_Rights_Watch, le 28 mai 2018
▻https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/05/28/bankrolling-abuse/israeli-banks-west-bank-settlements

Je comprends mieux pourquoi israel a expulsé le directeur de HRW il y a trois semaines...
►https://seenthis.net/messages/692740

#banques #territoires_occupés #colonies #Cisjordanie #Palestine #complicité #BDS

#Zimbabwe: bambini avvelenati nelle piantagioni di tabacco

Bambini nelle piantagioni di tabacco. Piccoli e adulti vittime di avvelenamento e con problemi respiratori. Mentre le multinazionali continuano a comprare il tabacco coltivato in queste condizioni. Human Rights Watch fa luce sul paese che si sta prepararando alle elezioni dopo il colpo di Stato contro Mugabe

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#États-Unis : Détention de migrants dans des #cellules_glaciales

Ce #traitement_dégradant leur est infligé par les agents chargés de la sécurité des #frontières

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Lien vers le #rapport :

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Stop Burning Waste in Lebanon

Lebanon’s ongoing waste management crisis poses serious health risks for the country’s residents.

Despite protests calling for an end to the garbage crisis, more than 150 dumps across Lebanon are openly burning trash at least once a week. Older people and children are most at risk. Doctors say the burning leads to respiratory illnesses and could increase the risk of developing cancer as a result of sustained inhalation of smoke. The government of Lebanon can and should stop the burning and manage the waste in a way that respects health and meets environmental standards.

Parliament is finally considering a national solid waste management law that would ban the open dumping and burning of waste. Take action today and tell the government to #StopTheBurning!

▻https://www.hrw.org/stoptheburning

#Liban #déchets
cc @daphne @albertocampiphoto @marty

#Violence and Discrimination against #LGBT People in Ghana

Ghana has a mixed record on its treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. It criminalizes “unnatural carnal knowledge” in section 104 (1) (b) of its Criminal Offences Act, which the authorities interpret as “penile penetration of anything other than a vagina.” However, the law is a colonial legacy that is rarely, if ever, enforced, and unlike several of its neighbors, Ghana has not taken steps in recent years to stiffen penalties against consensual same-sex conduct or to expressly criminalize sexual relations between women. At least two government agencies, the Ghana Police Force and the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), have reached out to LGBT people and taken proactive steps, including through providing human rights training workshops to help ensure their protection. Nevertheless, LGBT people are very frequently victims of physical violence and psychological abuse, extortion and discrimination in many different aspects of daily life, because of their sexual orientation and gender identity.

▻https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/01/08/no-choice-deny-who-i-am/violence-and-discrimination-against-lgbt-people-ghana
#rapport #homosexualité #Ghana #discriminations

Two Country of Origin Information (#COI) Reports on #Afghanistan
▻https://coi.easo.europa.eu/administration/easo/PLib/Afghanistan_targeting_conflict.pdf
▻https://coi.easo.europa.eu/administration/easo/PLib/Afghanistan_targeting_society.pdf
#Afghanistan #réfuigiés_afghans #réfugiés #COI #asile #migrations #country_of_origin_information