organization:general assembly

  • World Court Says U.K. Should Cede Rule of Indian Ocean Islands - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-25/world-court-says-u-k-should-cede-rule-of-indian-ocean-islands


    Diego Garcia, a British Indian Ocean Territory and the largest of the islands in the Chagos Archipelago.
    Photographer: USGS/NASA Landsat data/Orbital Horizon Gallo Images via Getty Images

    The International Court of Justice said the U.K. should hand back to Mauritius control of an Indian Ocean archipelago where a key U.S. naval base is located.

    The U.K.’s continued administration of the Chagos archipelago “is an unlawful act of a continuing character,” court President Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf said in The Hague. “Accordingly the U.K. is under an obligation to bring an end to its administration of the Chagos archipelago as rapidly as possible,” Yusuf said.

    The United Nations in 2017 sought an advisory opinion from the ICJ, its principal judicial organ, on the legal status of the archipelago.

    Chagos is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, which has been administered by the U.K. since 1965, when it paid the then self-governing colony of Mauritius 3 million pounds ($3.9 million) for control of the islands. Between 1967 and 1973, hundreds of inhabitants were removed to make way for the Diego Garcia U.S. military base, which has been used to launch bomber jets for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Mauritian Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth in August obtained the backing of the African Union and about 30 other countries in his bid to have control of the archipelago returned to Mauritius. The request to the ICJ excludes Diego Garcia, he said.

    • Je ne comprends pas cette dernière remarque du premier ministre mauricien :

      The request to the ICJ excludes Diego Garcia, he said.

      Le jugement de la CIJ est assez clair :
      https://www.icj-cij.org/files/case-related/169/169-20190225-01-00-FR.pdf
      Il ne mentionne nulle part #Diego_Garcia. J’imagine que P. Jugnauth veut dire qu’il ne remet pas en cause le statut de la base états-unienne, mise à disposition pour une durée de 50 ans par des accords de 1966 (tiens, c’est bientôt la fin, j’imagine que les perspectives de renégociation des accords n’est pas pour rien dans l’affaire…)

      183. Par ces motifs,
      LA COUR,
      1) A l’unanimité,
      Dit qu’elle est compétente pour répondre à la demande d’avis consultatif ;

      2) Par douze voix contre deux,
      Décide de donner suite à la demande d’avis consultatif ;

      3) Par treize voix contre une,
      Est d’avis que, au regard du droit international, le processus de décolonisation de Maurice n’a pas été validement mené à bien lorsque ce pays a accédé à l’indépendance en 1968 à la suite de la séparation de l’archipel des Chagos ;

      4) Par treize voix contre une,
      Est d’avis que le Royaume-Uni est tenu, dans les plus brefs délais, de mettre fin à son administration de l’archipel des Chagos ;

      5) Par treize voix contre une,
      Est d’avis que tous les Etats Membres sont tenus de coopérer avec l’Organisation des Nations Unies aux fins du parachèvement de la décolonisation de Maurice.

      La juge états-unienne Joan E. Donoghue a voté non à toutes les questions, sauf sur le point 1 sur la compétence, Peter Tomka, slovaque s’est opposé à l’émission de l’avis consultatif (point 2).

    • Mind your business, réponse diplomatique du Royaume-Uni à la Cour internationale de justice et à l’Assemblée générale de l’ONU, statuant sur la décolonisation.

      Dispute over Chagos Islands is a bilateral matter : UK junior foreign minister | Reuters
      https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-mauritius-worldcourt-chagos-idUSKCN1QF1CX

      Britain will consider the view of the World Court on control of the Chagos Islands but the dispute is with Mauritius and should be resolved bilaterally, British foreign office minister Alan Duncan said on Tuesday.

      On Monday the International Court of Justice (ICJ) told Britain to give up control over the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean, and said it had wrongfully forced the population to leave in the 1970s to make way for a U.S. air base.

      The U.N. General Assembly asked the court to advise on whether the process of decolonization had been concluded lawfully.

      We will of course consider the detail of the opinion carefully but this is a bilateral dispute and for the General Assembly to seek an advisory opinion by the ICJ was therefore a misuse of powers which sets a dangerous precedent for other bilateral disputes,” Duncan told parliament.

      The defense facilities on the British Indian ocean territory help to keep people here in Britain and the world safe and we will continue to seek a bilateral solution to what is a bilateral dispute with Mauritius.

  • Bill to allow removal of Confederate monuments dies in subcommittee

    Tension filled the room Wednesday as a House subcommittee voted to kill a bill that would have let localities decide whether to remove or modify Confederate monuments in their jurisdictions.

    Del. David J. Toscano, D-Charlottesville, introduced House
    House Bill 2377, which sought to change the current law that makes it illegal to disturb or interfere with war monuments. His bill would have given cities and counties authority to remove Confederate or Union monuments. This is the second year Toscano has sponsored such legislation.

    “We give localities the ability to control the cutting of weeds. But we haven’t yet given them the control over monuments that might have detrimental effects on the atmosphere and the feeling of the community,” Toscano said. “If you weren’t in Charlottesville in August of 2017, it would be hard to understand all of this.”

    He said people across Virginia want the ability to decide what to do with the monuments in their towns.

    Toscano said the monuments were erected during the “lost cause” movement, which viewed the Confederacy as heroic and the Civil War as a conflict not over slavery but over “states’ rights.”

    He addressed a subcommittee of the House Committee on Counties, Cities and Towns. The subcommittee’s chair, Del. Charles D. Poindexter, R-Franklin, gave those on each side of the debate five minutes to state their case. With a packed audience filling the small committee room, each person had little more than one minute to speak.

    Supporters of Toscano’s legislation held up blue signs with messages such as “Lose The Lost Cause” and “Local Authority for War Memorials” printed in black ink.

    Lisa Draine had tears in her eyes as she spoke of her daughter, Sophie, who was severely injured when a white supremacist, James Alex Fields Jr., drove his car into a crowd of people demonstrating against racism in Charlottesville.

    Fields, who was sentenced to life in prison last month for killing Heather Heyer, was part of the “Unite the Right” rally protesting the city’s plans to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a local park.

    “I couldn’t imagine that a statue had brought this to our town,” Draine said. “My daughter could have been your daughter.”

    A member of the Charlottesville City Council, Kathy Galvin, spoke in favor of the bill, citing the need for local legislators to have authority over the monuments.

    Matthew Christensen, an activist from Charlottesville, said it was an issue of “basic human decency” and the right of local governments. “They own the land, they own the statue, they should be able to decide what to do with it,” he said.

    Ed Willis, an opponent of Toscano’s bill, said it violates provisions in the Virginia Constitution prohibiting discrimination. “It’s painfully clear discrimination based on Confederate national origin is the basis of this bill,” he said.

    Like other opponents, Willis said his ancestors served in the Civil War. Some spoke of their families’ long heritage in Virginia and opposed what they felt was the attempt to sanitize or alter their history.

    Frank Earnest said he blamed the “improper actions” of the Charlottesville city government for the mayhem that took place in August 2017.

    “Just like the other socialist takeovers,” Earnest said, “it’ll be Confederate statues today, but don’t think they won’t be back next year to expand it to another war, another time in history.”

    The subcommittee voted 2-6 against the bill. Dels. John Bell and David Reid, both Democrats from Loudoun County, voted to approve the bill. Opposing that motion were Democratic Del. Steve Heretick of Portsmouth and five Republicans: Dels. Poindexter, Terry Austin of Botetourt County, Jeffrey Campbell of Smyth County, John McGuire of Henrico County, and Robert Thomas of Stafford County.

    Supporters of the bill met with Toscano in his office after the meeting. He said he knew the bill’s defeat was a “foregone conclusion.” HB 2377 was heard last in the meeting, giving little time for debate or discussion.

    People who want to remove the monuments asked Toscano, “How do we make this happen?”

    Toscano picked up a glass candy dish from his desk and placed a chocolate coin wrapped in blue foil in each person’s hand. This represented his desire for a Democratic majority in the House of Delegates, where Republicans hold 51 of the 100 seats.

    Toscano said he fought for years to get from 34 Democratic delegates to the 49 now serving. He urged the group to vote for those who share their concerns this November.

    “It’s all about the General Assembly,” he said.


    https://www.wdbj7.com/content/news/Bill-to-allow-removal-of-Confederate-monuments-dies-in-subcommittee-505136791
    #monument #mémoire #monuments #USA #Etats-Unis #statue #histoire #Etats_confédérés #confédération #toponymie #paysage_mémoriel #guerre_civile #Charlottesville #Virginia #Virginie

  • WHAT DOES ‘REGULAR AND ORDERLY MIGRATION’ MEAN FOR REFUGEES? The role of IOM and the Global Compact for Migration

    The #Global_Compact_for_Migration (#GCM) has just been adopted this week in Marrakech, ahead of next week’s introduction in the United Nations (UN) General Assembly of the Global Compact for Refugees. While the focus of the media has been on the number of states withdrawing from the GCM, less concern has been expressed about the content on the GCM itself, and how it may work to undermine refugees’ access to protection.

    While the GCM has a number of positive Objectives on addressing xenophobia, ensuring the human rights of migrants and using detention as a last resort, there are a number of Objectives, which strengthen states’ border control agenda.

    A key concern with the GCM can be found in its full name, the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. This agenda is echoed in the mission statement of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the lead agency for the GCM, which seeks to ‘enhance the humane and orderly management of migration’.

    However, promoting ‘orderly and regular migration’ means stopping irregular migration.

    This is clearly exemplified by Objective 11 of the GCM, which commits states to ‘manage our national borders in a coordinated manner, promoting bilateral and regional cooperation, ensuring security for States, communities and migrants, and facilitating safe and regular cross-border movements of people while preventing irregular migration.’

    In a world of unequal access to regular migration pathways, many people, especially refugees, will be excluded from these ‘safe and orderly’ options. The number of ‘regular’ pathways is unlikely to ever meet the needs of 25.4 million refugees. Indeed, most refugees must flee via irregular means in order to be protected. People must be able to leave situations of grave danger regardless of whether formal permission to enter the country of refuge has been received.

    However, the GCM actively seeks to reduce irregular migration and makes it harder for refugees to cross borders in order to find safety. This pushes people to seek out more difficult and often deadlier routes. As fences are erected and borders are closed, finding safe access to protection becomes harder and harder for refugees.

    The parallel Global Compact for Refugees is equally silent on refugees’ right to freedom of movement and the right to seek asylum, and instead focuses on cooperation to keep refugees where they are or help them return. While there is a weak statement that UNHCR will work with states to increase the pool of resettlement places around the world, this increase, however welcome, is unlikely to ever meet the needs of all refugees. As such, people will continue to be forced to take matters into their own hands and seek safety by irregular means.

    Another elephant in room during the development of the GCM has been the role of IOM, which joined the ‘UN family’ in 2016, despite not legally being a UN entity. As I have argued previously, IOM’s promotion of itself as the ‘UN Migration Agency’ masks its more controversial activities of ‘migration management’.

    While simultaneously developing the GCM, IOM has returned thousands refugees and irregular migrants back to war zones, helped states increase their border controls, and supported detention and containment policies in key transit states bordering the global north.

    The GCM provides IOM with the opportunity to sell itself as the key expert on migration, while it also works with states to reduce the number of refugees and other irregular migrants at their borders. This ‘blue-washing’, through being affiliated with the UN, allows IOM to promote itself as a humanitarian organization while also providing technical expertise to states on how to close their borders to unwanted migrants.

    NGOs involved in the GCM should push back on IOM’s state-centric migration management paradigm and actively call for policies that enhance, not hinder, refugees’ safe access to protection.

    https://www.asyluminsight.com/c-asher-hirsch-2
    #OIM #IOM #global_compact #réfugiés #asile #migrations #critique #ONU #UN

    ping @reka @isskein

  • Reporter’s Diary: Heal Somalia’s former child soldiers, heal a nation

    Even by Mogadishu standards, late September was particularly violent.

    Amino Hussein Hassan, a female law student, was shot dead on her university campus. Yahye Amir, a prominent economics professor and political analyst, escaped an assassination attempt when a bomb strapped to his car exploded, killing his brother. And Ahmed Mukhtar Salah, from the long-marginalised minority Bantu community, was beaten and burnt to death by a mob after his nephew married an ethnic Somali woman.

    Violence has been a way of life in Somalia since the outbreak of the civil war in 1991, seeping deep into the nation’s marrow as clan conflict gradually morphed into an all-out war against the al-Qaeda affiliated Islamist group #al-Shabab. “The layers of violence that people have had to digest is one of the key problems for building a peaceful and healthier society,” Laetitia Bader, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told me recently.

    Most often, those who bear the life-long consequences are the poor, the politically marginalised, and young people. In particular, the thousands of children who must deal with the trauma of years on the front lines.

    In May, I travelled to the capital, Mogadishu – as I have done regularly since 2012 – to report on a crisis that, save for some international NGOs and human rights organisations, few seem to talk about: child soldiers.

    There, I met Abdi, 16, a former child soldier. Intelligent and eloquent, he had been a star pupil at the Koranic school in his home town, about 55 miles from the capital. In 2009, at the age of seven, his teacher took him and seven other boys to join al-Shabab.

    For two years, Abdi lived in a camp with about three dozen other young recruits. By the time he was eight, he had learned how to drive a car and shoot a gun. By nine, he took part in his first raid in the village of Darussalam Mubarak, where he witnessed an assassination: a man killed by three bullets to the back.

    As horrific as that experience was, the image that has most haunted Abdi for years is that of the severed head of a young man his al-Shabab camp commander brandished before the recruits as a warning: this is what happens to informants.

    “Even now after all these years, I have nightmares,” Abdi told me. “Sometimes I wake up screaming in the middle of the night.”
    A disposable front line

    While al-Shabab’s use of children as soldiers is nothing new, in the last several years the number of child soldiers has increased markedly.

    In al-Shabab’s heyday around 2010, when it controlled vast swaths of the country, including a sizable chunk of the capital, persuasion and indoctrination were enough to ensure a steady supply of young fighters. Since 2016, increased attacks by the Somali national army and US and African Union troops have resulted in a loss of territory for the group. Most recently, on October 16, the US military announced that it had carried out one of the deadliest airstrikes against al-Shabab, killing 60 militants in the Mudug region.

    So, desperate for more foot soldiers, al-Shabab has turned to the abduction and forced recruitment of minors. Accurate numbers are difficult to come by. Child Soldiers International calculates that there has been a 269 percent increase in the number of children within the ranks of armed groups in Somalia between 2015, when there were 903 documented cases, to 2017, with 3,335 cases. Meanwhile, according to a May report on children and armed conflict presented by the UN secretary-general to the General Assembly, 1,770 children were recruited as soldiers in 2017 alone, with al-Shabab doing the vast majority of the recruitment. The overall number is likely even higher: UNICEF Somalia estimates that as many as 6,000 children and youths are part of armed groups in the country.

    In a single military operation carried out by the Somali National Army and US troops in January on a base near the town of Baledogle, 70 miles northwest of Mogadishu, for instance, 36 child soldiers between the ages of eight and 13 were rescued.

    Often untrained and ill-equipped, these child soldiers make for a disposable front line on the battlefield, protecting older, more experienced fighters. This makes them more likely to suffer physical wounds and psychological trauma.
    Young defectors

    I first met Abdi and other boys through a man I’ll call Hussein. I am not using his real name, or identifying his location, since in addition to running an orphanage he manages a centre that works with young al-Shabab defectors. About 120 boys now live there, two hours’ drive from the capital, but at one point it housed as many 520.


    https://www.irinnews.org/opinion/2018/10/22/heal-somalia-former-child-soldiers-heal-nation-al-shabab
    #enfants-soldat #Somalie #guerre

  • Uganda’s refugee policies: the history, the politics, the way forward

    Uganda’s refugee policy urgently needs an honest discussion, if sustainable solutions for both refugees and host communities are to be found, a new policy paper by International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI) reveals.

    The paper, entitled Uganda’s refugee policies: the history, the politics, the way forward puts the “Ugandan model” in its historical and political context, shines a spotlight on its implementation gaps, and proposes recommendations for the way forward.

    Uganda has since 2013 opened its borders to hundreds of thousands of refugees from South Sudan, bringing the total number of refugees to more than one million. It has been praised for its positive steps on freedom of movement and access to work for refugees, going against the global grain. But generations of policy, this paper shows, have only entrenched the sole focus on refugee settlements and on repatriation as the only viable durable solution. Support to urban refugees and local integration have been largely overlooked.

    The Ugandan refugee crisis unfolded at the same time as the UN adopted the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, and states committed to implement a Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF). Uganda immediately seized this opportunity and adopted its own strategy to implement these principles. As the world looks to Uganda for best practices in refugee policy, and rightly so, it is vital to understand the gaps between rhetoric and reality, and the pitfalls of Uganda’s policy. This paper identifies the following challenges:

    There is a danger that the promotion of progressive refugee policies becomes more rhetoric than reality, creating a smoke-screen that squeezes out meaningful discussion about robust alternatives. Policy-making has come at the expense of real qualitative change on the ground.
    Refugees in urban areas continue to be largely excluded from any support due to an ongoing focus on refugee settlements, including through aid provision
    Local integration and access to citizenship have been virtually abandoned, leaving voluntary repatriation as the only solution on the table. Given the protracted crises in South Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo, this remains unrealistic.
    Host communities remain unheard, with policy conversations largely taking place in Kampala and Geneva. Many Ugandans and refugees have neither the economic resources nor sufficient political leverage to influence the policies that are meant to benefit them.

    The policy paper proposes a number of recommendations to improve the Ugandan refugee model:

    First, international donors need to deliver on their promise of significant financial support.
    Second, repatriation cannot remain the only serious option on the table. There has to be renewed discussion on local integration with Uganda communities and a dramatic increase in resettlement to wealthier states across the globe.
    Third, local communities hosting refugees must be consulted and their voices incorporated in a more meaningful and systematic way, if tensions within and between communities are to be avoided.
    Fourth, in order to genuinely enhance refugee self-reliance, the myth of the “local settlement” needs to be debunked and recognized for what it is: the ongoing isolation of refugees and the utilization of humanitarian assistance to keep them isolated and dependent on aid.


    http://refugee-rights.org/uganda-refugee-policies-the-history-the-politics-the-way-forward
    #modèle_ougandais #Ouganda #asile #migrations #réfugiés

    Pour télécharger le #rapport:
    http://refugee-rights.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/IRRI-Uganda-policy-paper-October-2018-Paper.pdf

    • A New Deal for Refugees

      Global policies that aim to resettle and integrate displaced populations into local societies is providing a way forward.

      For many years now, groups that work with refugees have fought to put an end to the refugee camp. It’s finally starting to happen.

      Camps are a reasonable solution to temporary dislocation. But refugee crises can go on for decades. Millions of refugees have lived in their country of shelter for more than 30 years. Two-thirds of humanitarian assistance — intended for emergencies — is spent on crises that are more than eight years old.

      Camps are stagnant places. Refugees have access to water and medical care and are fed and educated, but are largely idle. “You keep people for 20 years in camps — don’t expect the next generation to be problem-free,” said Xavier Devictor, who advises the World Bank on refugee issues. “Keeping people in those conditions is not a good idea.” It’s also hard to imagine a better breeding ground for terrorists.

      “As long as the system is ‘we feed you,’ it’s always going to be too expensive for the international community to pay for,” Mr. Devictor said. It’s gotten more and more difficult for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to raise that money; in many crises, the refugee agency can barely keep people from starving. It’s even harder now as nations turn against foreigners — even as the number of people fleeing war and violence has reached a record high.

      At the end of last year, nearly 70 million people were either internally displaced in their own countries, or had crossed a border and become a refugee. That is the largest number of displaced in history — yes, more than at the end of World War II. The vast majority flee to neighboring countries — which can be just as badly off.

      Last year, the United States accepted about 30,000 refugees.

      Uganda, which is a global model for how it treats refugees, has one-seventh of America’s population and a tiny fraction of the wealth. Yet it took in 1,800 refugees per day between mid-2016 and mid-2017 from South Sudan alone. And that’s one of four neighbors whose people take refuge in Uganda.

      Bangladesh, already the world’s most crowded major nation, has accepted more than a million Rohingya fleeing ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. “If we can feed 160 million people, then (feeding) another 500,00-700,000 …. We can do it. We can share our food,” Shiekh Hasina, Bangladesh’s prime minister, said last year.

      Lebanon is host to approximately 1.5 million Syrian refugees, in addition to a half-million Palestinians, some of whom have been there for generations. One in three residents of Lebanon is a refugee.

      The refugee burden falls heavily on a few, poor countries, some of them at risk of destabilization, which can in turn produce more refugees. The rest of the world has been unwilling to share that burden.

      But something happened that could lead to real change: Beginning in 2015, hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees crossed the Mediterranean in small boats and life rafts into Europe.

      Suddenly, wealthy European countries got interested in fixing a broken system: making it more financially viable, more dignified for refugees, and more palatable for host governments and communities.

      In September 2016, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously passed a resolution stating that all countries shared the responsibility of protecting refugees and supporting host countries. It also laid out a plan to move refugees out of camps into normal lives in their host nations.

      Donor countries agreed they would take more refugees and provide more long-term development aid to host countries: schools, hospitals, roads and job-creation measures that can help both refugees and the communities they settle in. “It looked at refugee crises as development opportunities, rather than a humanitarian risk to be managed,” said Marcus Skinner, a policy adviser at the International Rescue Committee.

      The General Assembly will vote on the specifics next month (whatever they come up with won’t be binding). The Trump administration pulled out of the United Nations’ Global Compact on Migration, but so far it has not opposed the refugee agreement.

      There’s a reason refugee camps exist: Host governments like them. Liberating refugees is a hard sell. In camps, refugees are the United Nations’ problem. Out of camps, refugees are the local governments’ problem. And they don’t want to do anything to make refugees comfortable or welcome.

      Bangladesh’s emergency response for the Rohingya has been staggeringly generous. But “emergency” is the key word. The government has resisted granting Rohingya schooling, work permits or free movement. It is telling Rohingya, in effect, “Don’t get any ideas about sticking around.”

      This attitude won’t deter the Rohingya from coming, and it won’t send them home more quickly. People flee across the closest border — often on foot — that allows them to keep their families alive. And they’ll stay until home becomes safe again. “It’s the simple practicality of finding the easiest way to refuge,” said Victor Odero, regional advocacy coordinator for East Africa and the Horn of Africa at the International Rescue Committee. “Any question of policies is a secondary matter.”

      So far, efforts to integrate refugees have had mixed success. The first experiment was a deal for Jordan, which was hosting 650,000 Syrian refugees, virtually none of whom were allowed to work. Jordan agreed to give them work permits. In exchange, it got grants, loans and trade concessions normally available only to the poorest countries.

      However, though the refugees have work permits, Jordan has put only a moderate number of them into jobs.

      Any agreement should include the views of refugees from the start — the Jordan Compact failed to do this. Aid should be conditioned upon the right things. The deal should have measured refugee jobs, instead of work permits. Analysts also said the benefits should have been targeted more precisely, to reach the areas with most refugees.

      To spread this kind of agreement to other nations, the World Bank established a $2 billion fund in July 2017. The money is available to very poor countries that host many refugees, such as Uganda and Bangladesh. In return, they must take steps to integrate refugees into society. The money will come as grants and zero interest loans with a 10-year grace period. Middle-income countries like Lebanon and Colombia would also be eligible for loans at favorable rates under a different fund.

      Over the last 50 years, only one developing country has granted refugees full rights. In Uganda, refugees can live normally. Instead of camps there are settlements, where refugees stay voluntarily because they get a plot of land. Refugees can work, live anywhere, send their children to school and use the local health services. The only thing they can’t do is become Ugandan citizens.

      Given the global hostility to refugees, it is remarkable that Ugandans still approve of these policies. “There have been flashes of social tension or violence between refugees and their hosts, mostly because of a scarcity of resources,” Mr. Odero said. “But they have not become widespread or protracted.”

      This is the model the United Nations wants the world to adopt. But it is imperiled even in Uganda — because it requires money that isn’t there.

      The new residents are mainly staying near the South Sudan border in Uganda’s north — one of the least developed parts of the country. Hospitals, schools, wells and roads were crumbling or nonexistent before, and now they must serve a million more people.

      Joël Boutroue, the head of the United Nations refugee agency in Uganda, said current humanitarian funding covered a quarter of what the crisis required. “At the moment, not even half of refugees go to primary school,” he said. “There are around 100 children per classroom.”

      Refugees are going without food, medical care and water. The plots of land they get have grown smaller and smaller.

      Uganda is doing everything right — except for a corruption scandal. It could really take advantage of the new plan to develop the refugee zone. That would not only help refugees, it would help their host communities. And it would alleviate growing opposition to rights for refugees. “The Ugandan government is under pressure from politicians who see the government giving favored treatment to refugees,” Mr. Boutroue said. “If we want to change the perception of refugees from recipients of aid to economic assets, we have to showcase that refugees bring development.”

      The World Bank has so far approved two projects — one for water and sanitation and one for city services such as roads and trash collection. But they haven’t gotten started yet.

      Mr. Devictor said that tackling long-term development issues was much slower than providing emergency aid. “The reality is that it will be confusing and confused for a little while,” he said. Water, for example, is trucked in to Uganda’s refugee settlements, as part of humanitarian aid. “That’s a huge cost,” he said. “But if we think this crisis is going to last for six more months, it makes sense. If it’s going to last longer, we should think about upgrading the water system.”

      Most refugee crises are not surprises, Mr. Devictor said. “If you look at a map, you can predict five or six crises that are going to produce refugees over the next few years.” It’s often the same places, over and over. That means developmental help could come in advance, minimizing the burden on the host. “Do we have to wait until people cross the border to realize we’re going to have an emergency?” he said.

      Well, we might. If politicians won’t respond to a crisis, it’s hard to imagine them deciding to plan ahead to avert one. Political commitment, or lack of it, always rules. The world’s new approach to refugees was born out of Europe’s panic about the Syrians on their doorstep. But no European politician is panicking about South Sudanese or Rohingya refugees — or most crises. They’re too far away. The danger is that the new approach will fall victim to the same political neglect that has crippled the old one.

      https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/opinion/refugee-camps-integration.html

      #Ouganda #modèle_ougandais #réinstallation #intégration

      avec ce commentaire de #Jeff_Crisp sur twitter :

      “Camps are stagnant places. Refugees have access to water and medical care and are fed and educated, but are largely idle.”
      Has this prizewinning author actually been to a refugee camp?

      https://twitter.com/JFCrisp/status/1031892657117831168

    • Appreciating Uganda’s ‘open door’ policy for refugees

      While the rest of the world is nervous and choosing to take an emotional position on matters of forced migration and refugees, sometimes closing their doors in the face of people who are running from persecution, Uganda’s refugee policy and practice continues to be liberal, with an open door to all asylum seekers, writes Arthur Matsiko

      http://thisisafrica.me/appreciating-ugandas-open-door-policy-refugees

    • Ouganda. La générosité intéressée du pays le plus ouvert du monde aux réfugiés

      L’Ouganda est le pays qui accueille le plus de réfugiés. Un million de Sud-Soudanais fuyant la guerre s’y sont installés. Mais cette noble intention des autorités cache aussi des calculs moins avouables : l’arrivée massive de l’aide internationale encourage l’inaction et la #corruption.

      https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/ouganda-la-generosite-interessee-du-pays-le-plus-ouvert-du-mo

    • Refugees in Uganda to benefit from Dubai-funded schools but issues remain at crowded settlement

      Dubai Cares is building three classrooms in a primary school at Ayilo II but the refugee settlement lacks a steady water supply, food and secondary schools, Roberta Pennington writes from Adjumani


      https://www.thenational.ae/uae/refugees-in-uganda-to-benefit-from-dubai-funded-schools-but-issues-remai

    • FUGA DAL SUD SUDAN. LUIS, L’UGANDA E QUEL PEZZO DI TERRA DONATA AI PROFUGHI

      Luis zappa, prepara dei fori per tirare su una casa in attesa di ritrovare la sua famiglia. Il terreno è una certezza, glielo ha consegnato il Governo ugandese. Il poterci vivere con i suoi cari non ancora. L’ultima volta li ha visti in Sud Sudan. Nel ritornare a casa sua moglie e i suoi otto figli non c’erano più. É sicuro si siano messi in cammino verso l’Uganda, così da quel giorno è iniziata la sua rincorsa. É certo che li ritroverà nella terra che ora lo ha accolto. Quella di Luis è una delle tante storie raccolte nei campi profughi del nord dell’Uganda, in una delle ultime missioni di Amref, in cui era presente anche Giusi Nicolini, già Sindaco di Lampedusa e Premio Unesco per la pace. 



      Modello Uganda? Dell’Uganda il mondo dice «campione di accoglienza». Accoglienza che sta sperimentando da mesi nei confronti dei profughi sud sudanesi, che scappano da uno dei Paesi più drammaticamente in crisi al mondo. Sono 4 milioni le persone che in Sud Sudan hanno dovuto lasciare le proprie case. Chi muovendosi verso altri Paesi e chi in altre regioni sud sudanesi. In questi ultimi tempi arrivano in Uganda anche persone che fuggono dalla Rep. Democratica del Congo.

      https://www.amref.it/2018_02_23_Fuga_dal_Sud_Sudan_Luis_lUganda_e_quel_pezzo_di_terra_donata_ai_pro

    • As Rich Nations Close the Door on Refugees, Uganda Welcomes Them

      President Trump is vowing to send the military to stop migrants trudging from Central America. Europe’s leaders are paying African nations to block migrants from crossing the Mediterranean — and detaining the ones who make it in filthy, overcrowded camps.

      But Solomon Osakan has a very different approach in this era of rising xenophobia. From his uncluttered desk in northwest Uganda, he manages one of the largest concentrations of refugees anywhere in the world: more than 400,000 people scattered across his rural district.

      He explained what he does with them: Refugees are allotted some land — enough to build a little house, do a little farming and “be self-sufficient,” said Mr. Osakan, a Ugandan civil servant. Here, he added, the refugees live in settlements, not camps — with no barbed wire, and no guards in sight.

      “You are free, and you can come and go as you want,” Mr. Osakan added.

      As many nations are securing their borders and turning refugees away, Uganda keeps welcoming them. And they keep coming, fleeing catastrophes from across this part of Africa.

      In all, Uganda has as many as 1.25 million refugees on its soil, perhaps more, making it one of the most welcoming countries in the world, according to the United Nations.

      And while Uganda’s government has made hosting refugees a core national policy, it works only because of the willingness of rural Ugandans to accept an influx of foreigners on their land and shoulder a big part of the burden.

      Uganda is not doing this without help. About $200 million in humanitarian aid to the country this year will largely pay to feed and care for the refugees. But they need places to live and small plots to farm, so villages across the nation’s north have agreed to carve up their communally owned land and share it with the refugees, often for many years at a time.

      “Our population was very few and our community agreed to loan the land,” said Charles Azamuke, 27, of his village’s decision in 2016 to accept refugees from South Sudan, which has been torn apart by civil war. “We are happy to have these people. We call them our brothers.”

      United Nations officials have pointed to Uganda for its “open border” policy. While the United States, a much more populous nation, has admitted more than three million refugees since 1975, the American government settles them in the country after they have first been thoroughly screened overseas.

      By contrast, Uganda has essentially opened its borders to refugees, rarely turning anyone away.

      Some older Ugandans explain that they, too, had been refugees once, forced from their homes during dictatorship and war. And because the government ensures that spending on refugees benefits Ugandans as well, younger residents spoke of how refugees offered them some unexpected opportunities.

      “I was a farmer. I used to dig,” Mr. Azamuke said. But after learning Arabic from refugees from South Sudan, he got a better job — as a translator at a new health clinic that serves the newcomers.

      His town, Ofua, is bisected by a dirt road, with the Ugandans living on the uphill side and the South Sudanese on the downhill side. The grass-thatched homes of the Ugandans look a bit larger and sturdier, but not much.

      As the sun began to set one recent afternoon, a group of men on the Ugandan side began to pass around a large plastic bottle of waragi, a home brew. On the South Sudanese side, the men were sober, gathered around a card game.

      On both sides, the men had nothing but tolerant words for one another. “Actually, we don’t have any problems with these people,” said Martin Okuonzi, a Ugandan farmer cleaning his fingernails with a razor blade.

      As the men lounged, the women and girls were still at work, preparing dinner, tending children, fetching water and gathering firewood. They explained that disputes did arise, especially as the two groups competed for limited resources like firewood.

      “We’ve been chased away,” said Agnes Ajonye, a 27-year-old refugee from South Sudan. “They say we are destroying their forests.”

      And disputes broke out at the well, where Ugandan women insist they should be allowed to skip ahead of refugees.

      “If we hadn’t given you the land you live on, wouldn’t you be dying in Sudan?” said Adili Chandia, a 62-year-old refugee, recounting the lecture she and others got from a frustrated Ugandan woman waiting in line.

      Ugandan officials often talk about the spirit of Pan-Africanism that motivates their approach to refugees. President Yoweri Museveni, an autocratic leader who has been in power for 32 years, says Uganda’s generosity can be traced to the precolonial days of warring kingdoms and succession disputes, when losing factions often fled to a new land.

      This history of flight and resettlement is embedded in some of the names of local groups around western Uganda, like Batagwenda, which means “the ones that could not continue traveling.”

      The government encourages the nation to go along with its policy by directing that 30 percent of foreign aid destined for refugees be spent in ways that benefit Ugandans nearby. So when money for refugees results in new schools, clinics and wells, Ugandans are more likely to welcome than resent them.

      For Mr. Museveni, hosting refugees has given him relevance and political capital abroad at a time when he would otherwise have little.

      A former guerrilla fighter who quickly stabilized much of his country, Mr. Museveni was once hailed as an example of new African leadership. He was relatively quick to confront the AIDS epidemic, and he invited back Ugandans of Indian and Pakistani descent who had been expelled during the brutal reign of Idi Amin in the 1970s.

      But his star has fallen considerably. He has clung to power for decades. His security forces have beaten political opponents. Freedom of assembly and expression are severely curtailed.

      Even so, Uganda’s openness toward refugees makes Mr. Museveni important to European nations, which are uneasy at the prospect of more than a million refugees heading for Europe.

      Other African nations also host a significant number of refugees, but recent polls show that Ugandans are more likely than their neighbors in Kenya or Tanzania to support land assistance or the right to work for refugees.

      Part of the reason is that Ugandans have fled their homes as well, first during the murderous reign of Mr. Amin, then during the period of retribution after his overthrow, and again during the 1990s and 2000s, when Joseph Kony, the guerrilla leader who terrorized northern Uganda, left a trail of kidnapped children and mutilated victims.

      Many Ugandans found refuge in what is today South Sudan. Mark Idraku, 57, was a teenager when he fled with his mother to the area. They received two acres of farmland, which helped support them until they returned home six years later.

      “When we were in exile in Sudan, they also helped us,” Mr. Idraku said. “Nobody ever asked for a single coin.”

      Mr. Idraku has since returned the favor, loaning three acres to a South Sudanese refugee named Queen Chandia, 37. Ms. Chandia said the land — along with additional plots other Ugandans allow her to farm — has made all the difference.

      Her homestead of thatched-roof huts teemed with children tending their chores, grinding nuts into paste and maize into meal. Ms. Chandia is the mother of a girl and two boys. But over the years, as violence hollowed out her home country, Ms. Chandia started taking in the orphaned children of relatives and friends. Now 22 children call her “mom.”

      A refugee for nearly her entire life, Ms. Chandia arrived in Uganda as a young girl nearly 30 years ago. For years, she worried about being expelled.
      Image

      “Maybe these Ugandans will change their minds on us,” she said, describing the thought that plagued her. Then one day the worry stopped.

      But Mr. Osakan, the administrator who oversees refugee affairs in the country’s extreme northwest, is anxious. There is an Ebola outbreak over the border in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mr. Osakan fears what might happen if — or when — a refugee turns up in Uganda with the dreaded illness.

      “It would destroy all the harmony between refugees and host communities,” he said, explaining that it would probably lead to calls to seal the border.

      For now, the border is very much open, although the number of refugees arriving has fallen significantly. In one of the newer settlements, many of the refugees came last year, fleeing an attack in a South Sudanese city. But some complained about receiving too little land, about a quarter acre per family, which is less than previous refugees had received.

      “Even if you have skills — in carpentry — you are not given a chance,” said one refugee, Simon Ludoru. He looked over his shoulder, to where a construction crew was building a nursery school. The schoolhouse would teach both local Ugandan and South Sudanese children together, but the workers were almost entirely Ugandan, he said.

      At the construction site, the general contractor, Sam Omongo, 50, said he had hired refugees for the job. “Oh, yes,” he exclaimed.

      How many?

      “Not a lot, actually,” he acknowledged. “I have about three.” Mr. Omongo called one over.

      “Are you a refugee?” Mr. Omongo asked the slight man.

      “No, I’m from Uganda,” he said softly. His name was Amos Chandiga, 28. He lived nearby and owned six acres of land, though he worked only four of them. He had lent the other two to a pair of refugees.

      “They asked me, and I gave it to them,” Mr. Chandiga explained. He patted his chest. “It comes from here, in my heart.”


      https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/28/world/africa/uganda-refugees.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

    • Uganda: a role model for refugee integration?

      Uganda hosts the largest refugee population in Africa and is, after Turkey and Pakistan, the third-largest refugee recipient country worldwide. Political and humanitarian actors have widely praised Ugandan refugee policies because of their progressive nature: In Uganda, in contrast to many other refugee-receiving countries, these are de jure allowed to work, to establish businesses, to access public services such as education, to move freely and have access to a plot of land. Moreover, Uganda is a pilot country of the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF). In this Working Paper the authors ascertain whether Uganda indeed can be taken as a role model for refugee integration, as largely portrayed in the media and the political discourse. They identify the challenges to livelihoods and integration to assess Uganda’s self-reliance and settlement approach and its aspiration towards providing refugees and Ugandan communities receiving refugees with opportunities for becoming self-reliant. Drawing on three months of field research in northern and southern Uganda from July to September of 2017 with a particular focus on South Sudanese refugees, the authors concentrate on three aspects: Access to land, employment and education, intra- and inter-group relations. The findings show that refugees in Uganda are far from self-reliant and socially integrated. Although in Uganda refugees are provided with land, the quality and size of the allocated plots is so poor that they cannot earn a living from agricultural production, which thus, rather impedes self-reliance. Inadequate infrastructure also hinders access to markets and employment opportunities. Even though most local communities have been welcoming to refugees, the sentiment has shifted recently in some areas, particularly where local communities that are often not better off than refugees feel that they have not benefitted from the presence of refugees....

      https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/handle/document/62871

    • Uganda has a remarkable history of hosting refugees, but its efforts are underfunded

      Uganda has agreed to a request from the United States to temporarily accommodate 2,000 refugees from Afghanistan while Washington processes their applications to live in the US. The move underscores the reputation Uganda has of being progressive on refugee issues. Refugee expert Dr Evan Easton-Calabria provides insights into why.
      When did Uganda start hosting refugees?

      Uganda has a long history of hosting refugees. This started in the early 1940s with Polish refugees who fled from Nazi-occupied Europe. The Nakivale refugee settlement – formed in 1959 – in southwest Uganda is the oldest refugee camp in Africa.

      Uganda also hosts huge numbers of refugees. In the mid-1950s almost 80,000 Sudanese refugees, fleeing the first civil war, sought refuge in the country. They were only the first of many waves of refugees from different neighbouring countries to arrive. Uganda has hosted significant numbers of refugees ever since.

      Today, almost 1.5 million refugees live in Uganda, making it the top refugee-hosting country in Africa and one of the top five hosting countries in the world.

      Its longstanding ‘open-door’ policy has benefited it both politically and financially, with hundreds of millions of donor funds provided each year for humanitarian and development projects. These target both refugees and locals. While Kenya, for example, has received Euros 200 million in humanitarian aid from the European Union since 2012, Uganda has received this much from the EU in just over four years.
      Is the country more progressive towards refugees than its neighbours?

      Uganda’s policies towards refugees have been hailed as progressive. It has even been called “the world’s best place for refugees”.

      Refugees have the right to work and freedom of movement, thanks to Uganda’s 2006 Refugee Act and 2010 Refugee Regulations, which provide a strong legal and regulatory framework for refugee rights.

      Refugees have the right to the same social services as Ugandans, including health care and free primary education. They are not confined to camps but can also live in urban areas. The country has, therefore, received a lot of positive attention for ‘fostering’ the self-reliance of refugees.

      However, despite rights on paper in Uganda, refugees still struggle.

      They are not legally recognised as refugees if they live in cities besides the capital, Kampala. As ‘self-settled’ urban refugees, they risk being misclassified as economic migrants. Lacking official refugee status (unless they have been registered in a settlement), urban refugees also often lack assistance.

      Although refugees in Uganda are economically diverse – one study even identified over 70 different types of livelihoods activities by refugees in Uganda – for many in settlements, subsistence farming is their primary livelihood. But, despite plots of land being provided in settlements, many don’t have enough land to farm on and soil quality is often low. This means that, for many, farming is no longer a viable livelihood. This shows that liberal refugee policies, like those promoting self-reliance in Uganda, must be backed with adequate resources if they are to be more than just words on paper.

      Comparatively, Uganda’s neighbours – such as Kenya and Ethiopia – have traditionally been more restrictive. Kenya relies on a system of encampment, where most refugees live in camps, and Ethiopia has only recently expanded its out-of-camp policy to all refugees and aslyum-seekers, although regulatory gaps remain. Nevertheless, it’s important to note that both are major refugee-hosting countries. They host far more refugees than many western (and wealthier) countries. Kenya hosts over half a million refugees, mainly from Somalia and South Sudan. Ethiopia hosts over 788,000 and is the third largest refugee-hosting country in Africa.
      How effectively does Uganda manage its refugee community?

      ‘Effectiveness’ is an interesting word in this context. On one hand, Uganda provides an important foundation in terms of providing the legal infrastructure to allow many refugees to lead independent lives. But refugees also enter a challenging context: Uganda struggles to provide adequate services for its own citizens and unemployment is high. It has one of the world’s lowest rankings in the Human Capital Index.

      In addition, the 2021 presidential election saw increased political and social unrest which has led to the violation of rights such as the freedom of assembly and expression for citizens and other residents, including refugees. While many Ugandans have welcomed refugees, there are increasing accounts of overburdened cities and strains on resources, like firewood, in some parts of the country.

      The corruption of humanitarian aid is also a problem, with UNHCR Uganda accused of mismanaging tens of millions of dollars in 2016-2017. This illustrates the clear need for effective financial management so that refugees can actually be helped.

      There is also another important question of responsibility. Despite the positive attention the international community has given the country, donor funds have not often matched the praise. If schools and health facilities are crowded, in part because of refugees, the responsibility to provide additional support should not fall on a refugee-hosting country such as Uganda alone. Limited resources mean limited management. As of June, the 2020-2021 Uganda Refugee Response Plan was only 22% funded, leaving a shortfall of US$596 million to cover all sectors ranging from protection to food security to sanitation.
      Does it look likely that Uganda will continue in its role as a leading refugee destination?

      Uganda has had a strong commitment to hosting refugees for over 70 years –- about the same length that the 1951 Refugee Convention has existed. A spirit of pan-Africanism and first-hand understanding of displacement by many Ugandans have all contributed to its willingness to host refugees. Its recent temporary accommodation of Afghan refugees indicates that it is interested in continuing this role.

      That said, no country should host refugees without significant international support. Many refugee response plans, such as Uganda’s, remain significantly underfunded even as displacement rises and challenges – such as the COVID-19 pandemic – remain. Even though Uganda receives a significant amount of money, it’s not enough to support the number of people arriving as evidenced by a funding appeal by refugee response actors in June this year.

      Mechanisms such as the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework offer a means to channel resources and increase collaboration on refugee hosting. But it is important to consider what displacement in Central, Eastern, and the Horn of Africa would look like if Uganda closed its borders. Uganda is making an effort in a neighbourhood where few other countries have the same enthusiasm.

      https://theconversation.com/uganda-has-a-remarkable-history-of-hosting-refugees-but-its-efforts

  • Israel Preparing to Annex West Bank says UN Expert
    IMEMC News - July 1, 2018 12:34 AM
    http://imemc.org/article/israel-preparing-to-annex-west-bank-says-un-expert

    Israel is in the process of enacting laws that would allow it to formally annex parts of the occupied West Bank, in serious violation of international law, a United Nations expert said on Friday, according to WAFA.

    UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Michael Lynk, said, after a fact-finding tour of the region, that he was gravely alarmed about the deterioration of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), saying that reports received during his visit to the region, this week, painted the most dispiriting picture yet, of the situation on the ground.

    “After years of creeping Israeli de facto annexation of the large swathes of the West Bank through settlement expansion, the creation of closed military zones and other measures, Israel appears to be getting closer to enacting legislation that will formally annex parts of the West Bank,” he said. “This would amount to a profound violation of international law, and the impact of ongoing settlement expansion on human rights must not be ignored.”

    Lynk travelled to Amman, Jordan, this week, where he met with Palestinian civil society, government officials and UN representatives, after Israel prevented him from entering the OPT. His mission was to collect information for his next report, to be presented to the 73rd session of the General Assembly, in October of 2018.

    “This is my third mission to the region since I assumed the mandate in May 2016, and the reports I received this week have painted the bleakest picture yet of the human rights situation in the OPT,” he said.

    “Palestinians in the West Bank face daily indignities, as they pass through Israeli checkpoints, face night raids of their homes, and are unable to build or expand their homes or work to develop their communities due to the complex system which makes building permits nearly impossible to obtain from the Israeli authorities,” the Special Rapporteur said. (...)

  • .:Middle East Online:: :.
    http://middle-east-online.com/english/?id=88422

    Israel dropped out Friday of a race for a Security Council seat in 2019 and 2020 following a campaign by Arab states at the United Nations to block the bid.

    The decision clears the path for Belgium and Germany to take the two seats allocated on a regional basis when the General Assembly holds the elections next month.

    After consulting with our partners, including our good friends, the state of Israel has decided to postpone its candidacy for a seat on the Security Council,” said a statement from the Israeli mission.

    It was Israel’s first attempt to win a seat at the 15-member council.

    No reason was given for the withdrawal, but diplomats said it had appeared clear in recent weeks that Israel would lose to Germany and Belgium in the General Assembly vote on June 8.

  • Apparemment, les États-Unis ont également réduit leur budget cocktail à l’ONU :
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/05/world/middleeast/un-iran-protests-debate.html

    On Wednesday, the United States Mission to the United Nations held a cocktail reception for the nine countries that voted against the resolution in the General Assembly, which, aside from Israel, were Guatemala, Honduras, Togo, the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru and Palau.

    In a video message played at the reception, Mr. Trump thanked the attendees for “standing with the United States.”

    Je me demande : ils font ça dans une petite salle, au risque que leurs hôtes se sentent insultés, ou dans la grande salle habituelle, au risque qu’on se rende compte qu’il y a pas grand monde ?

  • Tapes Reveal Egyptian Leaders’ Tacit Acceptance of Jerusalem Move - The New York Times

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/world/middleeast/egypt-jerusalem-talk-shows.html?smid=tw-share

    As President Trump moved last month to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, an Egyptian intelligence officer quietly placed phone calls to the hosts of several influential talk shows in Egypt.

    “Like all our Arab brothers,” Egypt would denounce the decision in public, the officer, Capt. Ashraf al-Kholi, told the hosts.

    But strife with Israel was not in Egypt’s national interest, Captain Kholi said. He told the hosts that instead of condemning the decision, they should persuade their viewers to accept it. Palestinians, he suggested, should content themselves with the dreary West Bank town that currently houses the Palestinian Authority, Ramallah.

    “How is Jerusalem different from Ramallah, really?” Captain Kholi asked repeatedly in four audio recordings of his telephone calls obtained by The New York Times.

    “Exactly that,” agreed one host, Azmi Megahed, who confirmed the authenticity of the recording.

    For decades, powerful Arab states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia have publicly criticized Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, while privately acquiescing to Israel’s continued occupation of territory the Palestinians claim as their homeland.

    Continue reading the main story
    RELATED COVERAGE

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    U.S. Vetoes U.N. Resolution Condemning Move on Jerusalem DEC. 18, 2017

    Trump Recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital and Orders U.S. Embassy to Move DEC. 6, 2017
    But now a de facto alliance against shared foes such as Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State militants and the Arab Spring uprisings is drawing the Arab leaders into an ever-closer collaboration with their one-time nemesis, Israel — producing especially stark juxtapositions between their posturing in public and private.

    Mr. Trump’s decision broke with a central premise of 50 years of American-sponsored peace talks, defied decades of Arab demands that East Jerusalem be the capital of a Palestinian state, and stoked fears of a violent backlash across the Middle East.

    Arab governments, mindful of the popular sympathy for the Palestinian cause, rushed to publicly condemn it.

    Egyptian state media reported that President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had personally protested to Mr. Trump. Egyptian religious leaders close to the government refused to meet with Vice President Mike Pence, and Egypt submitted a United Nations Security Council resolution demanding a reversal of Mr. Trump’s decision. (The United States vetoed the resolution, although the General Assembly adopted a similar one, over American objections, days later.)

    King Salman of Saudi Arabia, arguably the most influential Arab state, also publicly denounced Mr. Trump’s decision.

    At the same time, though, the kingdom had already quietly signaled its acquiescence or even tacit approval of the Israeli claim to Jerusalem. Days before Mr. Trump’s announcement, the Saudi crown prince, Mohamed bin Salman, privately urged the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to accept a radically curtailed vision of statehood without a capital in East Jerusalem, according to Palestinian, Arab and European officials who have heard Mr. Abbas’s version of events.

  • 20 minutes - « L’Etat de Palestine » admis à Interpol
    27 septembre 2017 11:22
    http://www.20min.ch/ro/news/monde/story/27141636

    Interpol a approuvé mercredi l’adhésion de « l’Etat de Palestine », a indiqué l’organisation internationale policière, malgré la forte opposition d’Israël

    « L’Etat de Palestine et les îles Salomon sont désormais pays membres », a annoncé Interpol sur le réseau social Twitter, en marge de son assemblée générale organisée dans la capitale chinoise Pékin.

    New member countries State of Palestine and Solomon Islands bring INTERPOL’s membership to 192. #INTERPOLGApic.twitter.com/9LaggaQ6op– INTERPOL (@INTERPOL_HQ) 27 septembre 2017

    #Palestine

    • Interpol approves membership for State of Palestine
      Sept. 27, 2017 1:21 P.M. (Updated: Sept. 27, 2017 1:24 P.M.)
      http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=779211

      BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Interpol announced Wednesday that its General Assembly voted to admit Palestine as a new member country of the international police organization, despite adamant opposition by Israel.

      A statement on Interpol’s website said the vote brought the total number of members states of the body to 192, after the Solomon Islands was also admitted.

      Interpol’s General Assembly, currently meeting in Beijing for its 86th annual session, approved each application by more than a two-thirds majority vote, the statement said. Some 75 countries voted in favor, with 24 voting against and 34 abstaining, according to reports.

      During the session, Interpol said it also adopted a resolution regarding the criteria under which countries can apply for membership of the organization in the future, which includes a guideline that “a requesting country will also need to confirm that it meets the conditions for statehood.”

      The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed the results of voting and the approval, and minister Riyad al-Malki thanked all members who voted in favor of the State of Palestine.

      He pointed out that Palestine will continue its pursuit to raise its state and position internationally and defend the rights of its people of security and freedom.

    • Coup porté à Israël, la “Palestine” devient membre d’Interpol | The Times of Israël
      http://fr.timesofisrael.com/coup-porte-a-israel-la-palestine-devient-membre-dinterpol

      75 des 133 membres électeurs ont soutenu la candidature de Ramallah lors d’un scrutin à bulletin secret, malgré les objections d’Israël et des Etats-Unis

      Lors de l’assemblée générale annuelle d’Interpol qui a eu lieu à Pékin, la candidature des Palestiniens a recueilli 75 voix « pour », 24 voix « contre » et 34 abstentions.

    • http://fr.timesofisrael.com/coup-porte-a-israel-la-palestine-devient-membre-dinterpol

      Ce vote peut être considéré comme une défaite cinglante pour Israël, dans la mesure où Jérusalem affirme depuis longtemps que sa position au sein de la communauté internationale n’a jamais été plus forte et que la majorité arabe automatique tend à s’éroder rapidement.

      Et comme la Palestine a été admise au sein d’Interpol à l’occasion d’un vote à bulletin secret, il est difficile pour les responsables israéliens d’affirmer que les nations du monde soutiennent secrètement l’Etat juif, même si elles ne désirent pas pour le moment s’afficher à ses côtés publiquement.

  • #Interpol : Who #polices the world′s police ? | World | DW | 21.08.2017
    http://www.dw.com/en/interpol-who-polices-the-worlds-police/a-40171868

    A key criticism leveled at Interpol is that there is no external scrutiny of its operations. The agency’s General Assembly that meets once a year is made up of policing experts - effectively people who are in the same line of work as their colleagues on the ground. Its majority-voting system means that even if a member state voices an objection to a case, its complaints can be ignored.

    Interpol isn’t accountable to any outside court or body, and it is not obliged to share any data with anyone other than its own police members and its own appeals body. Its operations are deliberately opaque in the name of protecting law enforcement information. In a nutshell: If Interpol breaks its own rules, there is no one there to hold it accountable.

    Contrast that with #Europol, also an international organization for coordinating police work, but one founded on the European Community method. The European Parliament approves the budget and has a role in senior appointments, so there is parliamentary scrutiny on behalf of the citizens. The European Court of #Justice has been given oversight of Europol, so there is judicial scrutiny as well.

  • How the Trump Administration Broke the State Department | Foreign Policy
    http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/31/how-the-trump-administration-broke-the-state-department

    The office furniture started appearing weeks ago.

    Employees at the State Department couldn’t help but notice the stacks of cubicles lined up in the corridor of the seventh floor.

    For diplomats at the department, it was the latest sign of the “empire” being built by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s top aides. The cubicles are needed to accommodate dozens of outsiders being hired to work in a dramatically expanded front office that is supposed to advise Tillerson on policy.

    Foreign service officers see this expansion as a “parallel department” that could effectively shut off the secretary and his advisors from the career employees in the rest of the building. The new hires, several State officials told Foreign Policy, will be working for the policy planning staff, a small office set up in 1947 to provide strategic advice to the secretary that typically has about 20-25 people on its payroll. One senior State Department official and one recently retired diplomat told FP that Tillerson has plans to double or perhaps triple its size, even as he proposes a sweeping reorganization and drastic cuts to the State Department workforce.

    Veterans of the U.S. diplomatic corps say the expanding front office is part of an unprecedented assault on the State Department: A hostile White House is slashing its budget, the rank and file are cut off from a detached leader, and morale has plunged to historic lows. They say President Donald Trump and his administration dismiss, undermine, or don’t bother to understand the work they perform and that the legacy of decades of American diplomacy is at risk.

    • Tillerson Wants Fewer U.S. Diplomats, Fewer Meetings at U.N. Summit | Foreign Policy
      http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/28/tillerson-wants-fewer-u-s-diplomats-fewer-meetings-at-u-n-summit

      The State Department plans to scale back its diplomatic presence at this year’s annual U.N. gathering of world leaders in September, a cost-saving initiative that delivers another powerful signal that America is deepening its retreat from international diplomacy, according to four well-placed diplomatic sources.

      For more than seven decades, American presidents from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama have attended the fall U.N. General Assembly general debate in New York to project their vision of American foreign policy to the world. They have been accompanied by a growing entourage of American diplomats, lawyers and technical experts who negotiate a wide range of issues, from nuclear arms treaties to climate change pacts and conflicts.

      President Donald Trump does plan to address other world leaders at the U.N, General Assembly, and he will be accompanied by other top advisors, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his daughter Ivanka Trump, who stopped by U.N. headquarters Friday for a private lunch with U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

      But the ranks of professional diplomats, aides and officials that attend the event to promote American policy priorities on a range of issues will be thinned out. For now, it remains unclear precisely how large of a cut in U.S. staff is envisioned, but two officials said that the State Department is seeking to keep a ceiling down to about 300 people, including everyone from the President to support staff that schedule meetings and copy speeches back at the hotel.

      Last year, 347 U.S. officials were counted by the U.N. in the official American delegation, which included then President Obama and his top diplomat, John Kerry. But the full delegation, including support staff and security, was far larger, according to former U.S. officials.

      En même temps, passer de 347 à moins de 300 ne parait pas si drastique que ça…

  • Draft bill bars certain terms in parliament -
    vers l’interdiction d’utiliser les termes « génocide arménien » et Kurdistan au parlement turc ?

    http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/draft-bill-bars-certain-terms-in-parliament.aspx?pageID=238&nID=1

    A draft bill proposed by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) has recommended imposing sanctions on who use the terms “Armenian genocide” and “Kurdistan” in addresses to parliament’s General Assembly. 

    The change comes as part of an 18-article draft bill, expected to be discussed at parliament next week, overhauling the internal regulations of parliament. The AKP says the changes are necessary to overcome what it says are opposition parties’ efforts to slow down legislative works. The draft bill includes sanctions for lawmakers who use the expression “Armenian genocide” while describing the 1915 killings of Armenians.

    #Turquie #Arménie #Kurdistan

  • The list of visa-free countries to Kazakhstan beginning 2017
    http://indy-guide.com/en/articles/the-list-of-visa-free-countries-to-kazakhstan-beginning-2017
    http://www.indy-guide.com/system/images/6547/medium/1345722311_kazakhstan-pasport.jpg?1476714160

    Beginning 2017, travel to Kazakhstan will be made simpler as visa requirements will be abolished for citizens of the following countries:

    Most of the nations are member states of the European Union (EU). EXPO 2017 Chairman Akhmetzhan Yessimov confirmed at the 159th session of the General Assembly of the International Exhibitions Bureau (BIE) in Paris.

    According to expo organizers, the decision will have a positive impact on the inflow of foreign tourists during major international events in Kazakhstan, specifically next year’s specialized exhibition in Astana.

    For current visa requirements to Central Asia & Mongolia
    for 193 nationalities, visit Indy Guide’s Visa-Check.

    #kazakhstan #visa

  • World Leaders Agree at U.N. on Steps to Curb Rising Drug Resistance
    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/health/united-nations-drug-resistant-superbugs-antibiotics.html

    That groundswell of concern made its way to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday. Heads of state agreed to develop national action plans to help shore up the effectiveness of the lifesaving drugs in animals and people. They pledged to strengthen regulation and to improve reporting systems that track how the drugs are used. Farms use antibiotics to make animals grow faster, but some countries, particularly in Europe, have cracked down on such use.

    The agreement is nonbinding, and did not require countries to commit to specific targets, as the climate treaty signed by world leaders last year did. But it was a first step in a broad effort to tackle the growing problem of drug resistance, which doctors say could eventually render our most prized medicines powerless.

    “Having the U.N. discuss this issue is exciting, but it’s up to the member states to make it real,” said Dr. Lance Price, director of the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center at George Washington University. He said it was critical to get the world’s attention now. “If the developing world follows the example that we’ve set, then there’s little hope of preserving antibiotics.”

    It was the fourth time the General Assembly had taken up a health issue. Others were H.I.V., noncommunicable disease and Ebola.

    #santé #résistance_aux_antibiotiques

  • arte.tv | Documentaire « Bienvenue au Réfugistan »
    http://asile.ch/2016/06/22/arte-tv

    « Pourquoi et de quelle manière les camps de réfugiés, conçus à l’origine pour être provisoires, perdurent-ils pour certains depuis des décennies ? Le documentaire décrypte habilement les rouages de ces mondes parallèles d’où il semble impossible de sortir. »

  • Euro-Med Monitor Calls on International Community to Halt Israel’s Extra-Judicial Executions

    Author: Euro-Med Monitor

    Geneva- Israel is escalating practices of extrajudicial execution, warns the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. Israeli forces use firearms against civilians who pose no threat although it is often possible to detain them instead.

    Video recordings of surveillance cameras in the central train station of Afula city showed Israel’s reckless disregard for lives as Israeli soldiers shot a Palestinian lady holding an Israeli ID, claiming that she attempted to stab a guard working in the station, while the recordings clearly showed that the woman did not attempt to attack anybody.

    Eyewitnesses told a Euro-Med Monitor team that Israa’ Abed, 29, was very scared and got panicked when she found herself surrounded by a group of Israeli soldiers who were directly pointing their weapons at her. The soldiers shouted asking her to take off her head scarf and drop her bag. The woman refused, raised her hands, and begged them not to shoot.

    “Even if the woman tried to attack someone, the Israeli police could detain her instead of shooting her with four live bullets” said Ihsan Adel, Euro-Med Monitor legal adviser.

    In another incident, an Israeli police officer shot dead Tha’er Abughazaleh from Jerusalem after he stabbed an Israeli soldier and three other Israelis causing minor injuries to them. Israeli police declared that the man was shot while being chased by Israeli soldiers. However, photos showed that the man was shot directly in the head and the bullet was right near his head on the ground, which reveals that he was killed on purpose.

    On Sunday, October 4, 2015, an Israeli police force shot dead Fadi Samir Mustafa Elwan, 19, from the village of Issawiya near Jerusalem, under the pretext that he stabbed a 15-year-old Israeli boy. Eyewitnesses told Euro-Med Monitor that a group of Israeli settlers chased Elwan when he was walking in Masrara area in Jerusalem at the same time Israeli settlers gathered protesting the killing of two Israeli settlers earlier in the morning. Apparently, when the settlers saw Elwan, they attempted to attack him before he ran to Haim Barlev street. An Israeli police car arrived at the scene shooting seven live bullets towards the boy. Video recordings shared on Israeli websites showed Israeli settlers chasing Elwan and attacking him in the Almasserarh area before beating and dragging his body after he was killed.

    Hadil Alhashlamoun, 18, from Hebron, was also killed at an Israeli checkpoint, known as Checkpoint 56, where Palestinians are banned from passing, except for those who live in that area. The Israeli authorities claimed that the teen was shot when the soldiers knew she was carrying a weapon and asked her to stop and drop it while the girl continued walking before the soldiers fired live bullets towards the ground near her and she raised a knife. The soldiers immediately shot her in the chest and legs, according to Shaarey Tzedeq hospital where she was transferred.
    However, photos taken by an international volunteer, who was present at the scene, and testimonies of eyewitnesses, including Fawwaz Abueisha who live in Tal Rmeidah near the checkpoint, showed that the teen posed no threat to the Israeli soldiers who dropped her bag and shot her in the left leg before she fell and dropped a knife she was hiding. While the soldiers could detain her as she did not move, one of thrm shot her again in the right leg, approached and shot her several times in the chest and belly before he stopped for a moment and shot another bullet in her chest.
    Although an Israeli surveillance camera recorded the incidents, the Israeli authorities refused to publish the video, which confirms the fact that the girl posed no threat before being killed.

    Such acts constitute a violation of the Principles on the effective prevention and investigation of extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions (ECOSOC Principles), which were endorsed by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 15,1989, and state that firearms may not be used against persons except in the case of self-defence or the defence of others against an imminent threat of death or serious injury, to prevent the perpetration of a particularly serious crime involving a grave threat to life, or to arrest a person presenting such a danger and resisting the law enforcement official’s authority or to prevent his/her escape. In addition, the Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials adopted by the General Assembly “emphasizes that the use of force by law enforcement officials should be exceptional; while it implies that law enforcement officials may be authorized to use force as is reasonably necessary under the circumstances for the prevention of crime or in effecting or assisting in the lawful arrest of offenders or suspected offenders, no force going beyond that may be used.”

    Israeli forces violated these articles not only in the aforementioned incidents, but also on Monday, August 17, when the Israeli border police killed Muhammed Bassam Amsha, 25, from Kafr Ra’i in the district of Jenin, as he was passing the Zaatara checkpoint, in the north of Nablus. While the Israeli police claimed that Amsha was carrying a knife and attempted to stab an Israeli soldier, eyewitnesses confirmed that they did not see any knives with the man. On the following day, Israeli forces stormed the house of Amsha claiming that they had photos showing him carrying a knife before being shot dead. However, when his father asked to see the photos, the Israeli officer refused.

    Moreover, on Thursday, July 23, Israeli forces killed Falah Hamdi Zamel Abumaria, 53, from the village of Beit Amr in Hebron. The soldiers stormed his house to detain his son who they shot first causing his father to panic and throw a pottery vase at the soldiers from his balcony. The soldiers responded by firing three live bullets at his chest. The Israeli authorities claim that the family refused to hand their son and attacked the soldiers before they responded by shooting him.
    According to Haidar Abumaria, Falah’s son, the soldiers beat the father as soon as they arrived at the house before they shot his son, Muhammed with two live bullets, critically injuring him. The father then started cursing the soldiers and asking them to leave the house when they shot him in the chest and prevented ambulances from reaching the place before he died.

    A serious investigation must be opened into the aforementioned incidents, according to the Geneva Conventions and the Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions which state that "there shall be thorough, prompt and impartial investigation of all suspected cases of extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions.

    The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor calls on the Israeli authorities to open a real and transparent and investigation into the aforementioned incidents, and to bring the perpetrators to justice. Ignoring such incidents would give people the green light to perpetrate more crimes in complete disregard for lives. Moreover, the organization calls on the states parties to the Geneva Convention to take concrete steps in pressuring Israel to comply with international law and respect the right to life.

    http://www.euromedmonitor.org/en/article/942

  • Ukraine campaigns to strip Russia of UN veto power - Yahoo News India
    https://in.news.yahoo.com/ukraine-campaigns-strip-russia-un-110529700.html

    Ukraine redoubled its efforts Wednesday to see Russia stripped of its veto power on the UN Security Council when the global body’s General Assembly meets in the coming weeks.
    Numerous nations are upset with Russia for being one of the five permanent council members that together with China has blocked a series of UN efforts to impose sanctions on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
    […]
    The United States along with Britain and France — the other three veto-wielding members and strong supporters of Ukraine’s new pro-Western leadership — have refrained from openly backing such a drastic measure against Russia and the increasingly unpredictable President Vladimir Putin.
    […]
    Moscow swiftly dismissed the proposal and denounced Kiev’s push to expand veto rights to the other 10 non-permanent Security Council members.
    Ukraine hopes to be elected as one of the new rotating Council members at a vote in New York scheduled for October 15.

  • The Day Anti-Castro Forces Tried to Bomb the U.N.
    http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/12/the-day-anti-castro-forces-tried-to-bomb-the-u-n


    Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Minister of Industries of Cuba, addresses the General Assembly on Dec. 11, 1964. UN Photo/TC

    When the politically-charismatic Ernesto Che #Guevera, once second-in-command to Cuban leader Fidel Castro, was at the United Nations to address the General Assembly sessions back in 1964, the U.N. headquarters came under attack – literally.

    The speech by the Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary was momentarily drowned by the sound of an explosion.

    The anti-Castro forces in the United States, backed by the Central Intelligence Agency (#CIA), had mounted an insidious campaign to stop Che Guevera from speaking.

    A 3.5-inch bazooka was fired at the 39-storeyed glass house by the East River while a CIA-inspired anti-Castro, anti-Che Guevara vociferous demonstration was taking place outside the U.N. building on New York’s First Avenue and 42nd street.

    #Cuba

  • GENERAL ASSEMBLY VOTE ON UKRAINE´S TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY
    http://derechointernacionalcr.blogspot.no/2014/03/united-nations-general-assembly-vote-on.html

    Veto of Russia´s representantive during the meeting of March 15, 2014 at the United Nations Security Council (picture taken from press note).

    The General Assembly adopted last March 27 a resolution on Ukraine’s territorial integrity without mentionning Russia. The drat resolution has been presented by Canada, Costa Rica, Germany, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine. The text adopted underscores the invalidity of the 16 March referendum held in Crimea.

    With 100 votes in favour, 11 against, 58 abstentions, and 24 “No show”, the General Assembly adopted this resolution titled “Territorial integrity of Ukraine”

    #ukraine #crimée #un #résolution

  • Maryland bill that would bar participation in #boycott of #Israel goes too far - The Washington Post
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/maryland-bill-that-would-bar-participation-in-boycott-of-israel-goes-too-far/2014/03/08/5bc247f6-a5a0-11e3-84d4-e59b1709222c_story.html

    This bill is ill-advised and should be killed. If it advances out of the General Assembly, Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) should veto it.

    #bds

  • Revealed from archive: Israel’s secret plan to resettle Arab refugees
    Plans drawn up during the 1950s and ’60s had one overriding goal: to preserve the demographic status quo by resettling the 1948 Arab refugees far away from the country.
    By Arik Ariel Dec. 19, 2013 | 4:30 PM | 15
    http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/.premium-1.564422

    Au passage et entre autres, pour l’auteur les Palestiniens ont “abandonné” leurs maisons, et le pays “s’est vidé” de ses habitants arabes.

    Last month ‏marked the 50th anniversary of the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Amid the flood of articles dealing with the traumatic impact of the event on American society, a modest place was devoted to Israeli-American relations during the Kennedy presidency − mostly in relation to Washington’s fears about Israel’s nuclear project. Little if anything was written about the deep anxiety that prevailed in Israel at the start of Kennedy’s term because of the president’s initiative to resolve the Palestinian refugee problem.

    At the conclusion of the first meeting between Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and President Kennedy, held in New York in the autumn of 1961, there was no longer any doubt on the Israeli side that the White House was working on a new initiative concerning the Arab refugees called the “three-pronged approach.” Ben-Gurion did not like ‏(to put it mildly‏) the idea presented to him by the president, which called for some of the refugees to be settled in Arab states, others overseas and some to return to Israel. However, in deference to the president, the Israeli leader did not reject the idea out of hand.

    Since the end of the fighting during the War of Independence in 1948, the question of what would become of the 650,000 to 700,000 refugees who had abandoned their homes and property within Israel’s borders had become a millstone around the country’s neck. Some of the refugees had fled, others had been encouraged to leave, some had been expelled. According to one estimate, the property left behind by the refugees included more than four million dunams of land ‏(one million acres‏), 73,000 rooms, and 8,000 stores and offices.

    Some of the nascent state’s leaders viewed the country’s “voiding” of its Arab inhabitants − and thus the ability to establish a state possessing a Jewish majority − as the greatest achievement of the Zionist movement, transcending even the creation of the Jewish state as such. Accordingly, already in mid-1948, while the fighting raged, Israel formulated a policy under which the return of the refugees to its territory would not be permitted under any circumstances. Jerusalem sought to perpetuate the demographic status quo together with the geographic status quo, which was created upon the cessation of hostilities and the signing of the armistice agreements.

    In December 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 194 ‏(III‏), which stipulates, in Article 11, that “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.” In the wake of this, Israel came under heavy pressure to repatriate some of the refugees.

    The refugee issue was raised every year during the deliberations of the General Assembly and in international conferences. Notable in this regard was the Lausanne Conference in May 1949, which was convened to advance a solution to the Middle East conflict. During the conference, Israel came under great pressure from Washington, with President Harry Truman sending a strongly worded message in which he maintained that Israel’s refusal to accept refugees put the peace in danger and ignored UN resolutions.

    At Lausanne, Israel stated its willingness to take control of the Gaza Strip, under the mistaken impression that only 150,000 refugees lived there. Afterward, it turned out that the population of the Gaza Strip at that time consisted of between 150,000 and 200,000 refugees, in addition to 80,000 permanent residents. As the pressure mounted, Israel stated that, under certain conditions, it would be ready to accept up to 100,000 refugees. However, the Arab states rejected this offer, and Israel retracted it in July 1950.

    International pressure on Israel waned in the early 1950s, as the international community’s efforts to find a solution for the refugee problem turned more toward regional economic possibilities and the integration of the majority of the refugees into the Arab states. Still, the idea that some of the refugees would return to Israel remained a central element of every proposed solution.

    Burgeoning aid

    In the summer of 1961, the skies above Jerusalem darkened when it emerged that the Kennedy administration was determined to find a solution for the approximately one million refugees who were crowded into camps from Syria and Lebanon in the north, as far as Jordan, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the south. ‏(The exact number of refugees, and the question of who should be classified as a refugee, remained a constant subject of controversy.) It would be a mistake, though, to think that the catalyst for Washington’s new initiative was the refugees’ wretched and pitiful condition, the Middle East conflict or the Cold War. It was, in fact, Congress that set the initiative in motion by urging the State Department to find a solution for the problem.

    What provoked Congress to become involved was the burgeoning amount of aid provided by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, in the form of food, education and health − and the fact that the American taxpayer was underwriting 70 percent of UNRWA’s budget. Israel understood thoroughly the intricacies of American politics − far more so, indeed, than it understood the developments in the refugee camps adjacent to its borders. Jerusalem thus believed that the refugee problem was gradually disappearing, or, as Ben-Gurion noted, “The Arabs of Israel are out of the game” and “the resolution of November 29 is dead” − a reference to the General Assembly’s partition of Palestine resolution on November 29, 1947. However, at the end of the 1950s, the ball started to roll in the opposite direction.

    Not only did the refugees not disappear, and not only did their ambition to return to their homeland not fade, but an accelerated process of heightened national identity set in among them. Their desire to return to their former homes grew more intense, in tandem with the political institutionalization of that wish. Israel failed to discern the emergence of the process, though its ambassador to Rome, Eliyahu Sasson, issued a warning about it in a message to Foreign Minister Golda Meir at the end of 1961. Time was working against Israel, he wrote, for within a few years the refugees will establish an official body to represent them and speak in their name, while pursuing a policy akin to that of the rebels in Algeria.

    Jerusalem was perturbed by the Kennedy administration’s new initiative and concerned about the upcoming 16th General Assembly session, particularly in light of the fact that Israel had suffered a setback the previous year in the General Assembly’s deliberations about the refugee question. “Palestinian existence” was dredged up from the recesses of oblivion, but the Foreign Ministry initially thought − wrongly − that this referred to “the refugees’ existing rights to their property.”

    The Arab and Muslim states submitted a resolution calling for the appointment of a custodian to protect the refugees’ property rights. Ahmad Shukeiri, the first chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization − dubbed “the savage” by Meir − was, for the first time, allowed to address the General Assembly on behalf of the refugees. As these developments unfolded, concern grew in Jerusalem that this time Israel would have to “pay” in the currency of refugees, whom it would have no choice but to accept. The overriding question was: How many refugees could Israel accept without putting its survival and existence as a Jewish state at risk?

    Appearing at a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in June 1961, Golda Meir stated that Israel had been asked to accept elderly refugees. The country’s Arab minority already constituted 10 percent of Israel’s population, Meir noted, and she went on to ask how many refugees would have to be allowed in before the situation resembled that of Algeria.

    The senior staff of the Foreign Ministry also considered the question of the price to be paid, in a series of meetings classified as top secret. The ministry’s director general, Dr. Haim Yahil, thought that admitting 30,000 to 40,000 refugees over a period of three or four years would not pose an excessive risk. Others disagreed. Some of the participants averred that an Arab minority constituting 25 percent of the population was a number Israel could live with, but others argued that this was a dangerously high percentage.

    In July 1961, the government held two discussions about how Israel would present its position at the General Assembly. Since the status-quo policy was not on the agenda, except for the expressed willingness to make some tactical compromises, the ministers instead discussed the “price” Israel could live with.

    Interior Minister Yosef Burg, who liked to sum up things with pithy quips, said, “The return of Arabs is not only an atomic bomb, it is an anatomical bomb.” Striking a somewhat businesslike note, Finance Minister Levi Eshkol asked what constituted a decisive Jewish majority: 51, 61 or 71 percent? He said that the last number certainly constituted a decisive majority. Ben-Gurion said that if there would be 600,000 Arabs in Israel, they would be the majority within two generations. ‏(At the time, Israel’s population stood at 3.1 million, including 252,000 Arabs.‏) No formal decisions were made.

    Encouraging emigration

    As the idea that Israel, under international pressure, might have to allow some refugees to return began to sink in, Jerusalem started to look for demographic solutions to “balance out” this prospect. Starting with the premise that the birthrate among the refugees and among the Arabs who had remained in Israel was higher than among the Jews, the question the policymakers asked was how it would be possible to reduce the number of the country’s Arab population.

    In the midst of the War of Independence, when more than 400,000 Arabs from then-nascent Israel had already become refugees, a “transfer committee” − i.e., one dealing with population transfer − was established with a mandate from the government to recommend policy on the subject of the refugees.

    Yosef Weitz, a Jewish National Fund official who had been the driving force behind the committee’s establishment, was appointed its chairman. One of its recommendations was that the Arabs’ abandonment of their homes should be considered an irrevocable fait accompli and that Israel should support their resettlement elsewhere. The committee also recommended that Arabs who had remained in the country should be encouraged to emigrate and that the state should buy the land of Arabs who were willing to leave. In addition, Arab villages should be destroyed and Arabs should be prevented from working the land, including a ban on harvesting field crops and olive picking − this in the wake of attempts by refugees to cross back into Israel, to the villages and fields they had left behind.

    Secretly, the highest levels in Jerusalem realized there would be no option but to take back some of the refugees. With this in mind, Weitz’s committee decreed that the number of Arabs in Israel should not exceed 15 percent of the total population. The recommendations, submitted in written form, were not adopted in a formal government resolution. However, they had the effect of reinforcing the government’s view that Israel had to be assertive in its effort to preserve the demographic status quo.

    Ben-Gurion and his adviser on Arab affairs, Yehoshua Palmon, took part in some of the committee’s meetings, in which ways to encourage the
    country’s Arabs to leave were discussed. In June 1950 Israel Defense Forces’ GOC Southern Command Moshe Dayan said: “The 170,000 Arabs who remain in the country should be treated as though their fate has not yet been sealed. I hope that, in the years ahead, another possibility might arise to implement a transfer of those Arabs from the Land of Israel.”

    In the country’s first decade of existence, the leaders of the ruling Mapai party ‏(the precursor of Labor‏) and its coalition partner Ahdut Ha’avoda, together with the senior officers of the Military Government ‏(Israel’s Arab citizens were under military rule until 1966‏), believed that at least some local Arabs would draw the “right conclusions” from the outcome of the War of Independence, and consider emigrating of their own volition. In 1950, Palmon wrote to Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett that the majority of the propertied Arabs aspired to leave if they could also take their assets. The Christians among them would choose to move to Lebanon, he noted, while the Muslims would opt for Egypt. Palmon confirmed that he had examined possibilities of a property exchange between Arabs from Israel and Jews in Egypt and Lebanon. His conclusion was that an arrangement to that effect could be worked out.

    For his part, Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon referred to migration among the country’s Arabs in a talk he gave in November 1953. For the Jewish population, he said, “This is a vital matter, even if we do not see emigration as a solution to the basic question. We have to remember that the natural growth rate among the Arabs is approximately 6,000 a year, and emigration could solve that issue.”

    The largest and most comprehensive plan, involving the transfer of thousands of Christian Arabs from Galilee to Argentina and Brazil, was given the secret codename “Operation Yohanan,” named for Yohanan from Gush Halav ‏(John of Giscala‏), a leader of the Jewish revolt against the Romans in the first Jewish-Roman war. The plan was devised in the utmost secrecy in backroom meetings in the Prime Minister’s Office and the Foreign Ministry, with Weitz’s aid. Foreign Ministry documents from the early 1950s show that it was actually Sharett, known for his moderate views, who encouraged the plan, even though he was concerned about the Church’s response when it became apparent that a large portion of the leavers were Christians.

    In March 1952, Weitz forwarded to the Foreign Ministry a detailed report about the resettlement of Christian Arabs from Upper Galilee to Argentina and Brazil. The report pointed out that the Argentine authorities were abetting the migration of farmers to the country. He added that 35 families from the Galilee village of Jish ‏(Gush Halav‏) had evinced an interest in the plan. The overall proposal included the creation of a share-holding company to be held by non-Jews and for which the initial financing would come from Jewish National Fund capital in Argentina. Sharett added that, if necessary, the project could be presented as an initiative of Israel’s Arab community, similar to the migration of Maronite Christians from Lebanon, which was then underway. Should the operation be discovered, the foreign minister made it clear, any connection to the government must be vehemently denied.

    In November 1952, Sharett informed Weitz that the prime minister had authorized Operation Yohanan. He added that the details of the plan must be kept strictly confidential. In any event, the project was canceled at the beginning of 1953, apparently because the Argentine authorities balked. The Middle Eastern department in the Foreign Ministry dealt with the subject of resettling the refugees outside Israel from the day the department was created. Its mission was to find places where the refugees could be settled, raise funds and obtain international support for settling the refugees abroad.

    In the spring of 1950, the director of the Foreign Ministry’s international institutions department, Yehezkel Gordon, suggested that Israel consider settling Arab refugees in Somalia and Libya, to take the place of the 17,000 to 18,000 Jews who had immigrated to Israel from Cyrenaica and Tripoli. The idea was particularly appealing because the Jews who left Libya had not been allowed to remove their property from the country.

    After Libya became independent, in January 1952, Moshe Sasson, from the Foreign Ministry, put forward a secret proposal to settle Arabs from Israel − from among both the refugees and those who had remained in the country − in Libya, with the property of the Libyan Jews to be restored to them within the framework of the exchange. In June 1955, Weitz traveled from Paris to Tunisia and Algeria in order to examine the possibility of settling Arabs from Israel and Arab refugees there, parallel to the immigration to Israel of Jews from those countries.

    Palmon was involved in an attempt by Israel to purchase about 100,000 dunams ‏(25,000 acres‏) of land in the Ras al-Akhdar region of Libya, in order to settle refugees there. The plan went awry when it was leaked to the media and the Libyan ruler came under massive pressure not to allow the refugees to settle there. In 1956-1957, another plan was devised to acquire farms near Tripoli and bring in a core group of 50 to 70 refugee families. Codenamed “Uri,” the plan was to be carried out by a development and construction company which would be registered in Switzerland, with its shares held by a Swiss bank. The elaborate plan was canceled after it, too, was leaked to the press.

    Palmon was also sent to Paris to hold talks with the president of Syria, Adib Shishakli ‏(who ruled in 1953-54‏), about the possibility of resettling refugees in Arab countries. However, no concrete arrangement emerged from these talks. In 1955, Sharett examined the possibility that Brazil would admit 100,000 refugees. He also looked into the possible acquisition of land in Cyprus at a rock-bottom price in order to exchange it for property held in Israel by Arabs wishing to emigrate.

    In September 1959, yet another plan was devised, codenamed “Theo,” to settle 2,000 refugee families in Libya and employ them through a commercial development company. It was estimated that $11.5 million ‏(in the terms of that era‏) would be needed to execute this scheme. The terms of the plan ensured that the refugees’ presence would not be a burden on the Libyan economy and would not reduce the income of local workers. Furthermore, for every outside professional, three local workers would be employed.

    In the first half of the 1960s, the Foreign Ministry continued to examine plans to encourage the emigration of Arab refugees from the Middle East to Europe, particularly to France and Germany. One option that was considered was to find them jobs in Germany, which was then in dire need of working hands. During 1962, Israeli officials examined the possibility of finding employment for Palestinian refugee laborers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The initial checks done for this plan, known as “Operation Worker,” and the correspondence involved, were kept completely under wraps. But both Foreign Minister Meir and her director general, Yahil, objected to these ideas. Meir was concerned that Germany would be flooded with Arab refugees, and, in any event, the whole scheme proved fruitless.

    In February 1966, the possibility of settling refugees from Jordan in France was also examined.

    Israel’s efforts to find overseas locations in which to settle Arab refugees continued even after the Six-Day War of 1967. In the end, though, these efforts failed, as had ideas and proposals raised by others, including Syrian President Husni al-Zaim and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Said in 1949. Sharett, for one, objected to the Iraqi leader’s proposal to exchange the refugees for Iraq’s community of 140,000 Jews. Sharett and others were concerned about the lawsuits demanding compensation that Iraqi Jews were liable to file for their property, as other Jewish communities in Arab countries were doing. The refugee issue was thus intertwined with the question of the property of the Jewish immigrants to Israel from the Arab states.

    ‘Quiet talks’

    In late 1961, in the wake of President Kennedy’s initiative, Dr. Joseph Johnson, from the Carnegie Endowment, was appointed a special representative to tackle the problem and to work with the parties involved to come up with a solution. The plan he devised − to distribute questionnaires to the Palestinian refugees and permit those who wished to return to Israel, subject to security considerations − stirred deep fears in Jerusalem.

    Meir, who was appalled by the idea, wielded all the influence at her command in Washington in order to ensure that the plan met a quick death.

    The “payment” Israel would be required to make in return for the shelving of the plan became apparent in top-secret discussions − known as the “quiet talks’ − held between Jerusalem and Washington in 1962-63. In them, Israel expressed its readiness to absorb up to 10 percent of the refugees as part of a comprehensive settlement. At that time, the refugee population stood at approximately 1,100,000 souls. But this initiative, too, fell by the wayside, because the United States was unable to obtain the Arab states’ agreement to a comprehensive settlement.

    Between 1948 and 1967, Israel viewed the refugee problem through the prism of Washington. The refugees appeared on Jerusalem’s agenda when the United States thought that measures should be taken or a new plan devised to resolve the problem. In the absence of external pressure, the status-quo policy prevailed.

    The fact that the “political compass” of Jerusalem’s decision makers repeatedly pointed to Washington and New York as the sources dictating their policy on the refugees explains in good measure Israel’s lack of attention to the social and political developments occurring in the refugee camps across the border until 1967. Whereas security and military developments in the camps, such as the founding of Fatah and the establishment of armed units, were followed closely in Israel, the processes by which the refugees consolidated themselves politically was of little if any interest. Thus, as the refugee problem gradually evolved from a humanitarian issue into the Palestinian national issue, Israel found itself reacting to events.

    Under American pressure, Israel displayed readiness to absorb a considerable number of refugees on three occasions, even if by doing so it would cross the “15 percent line” − i.e., the agreement of 1949 to absorb 150,000 refugees living in the Gaza Strip ‏(together with the territory of the Strip‏); a proposal that same year to admit 100,000 refugees; and agreement to take in 10 percent of the refugees within the framework of the “quiet talks.”

    Israel was willing to accept refugees at a time when its demographic and geostrategic situation was far worse than it is today. To the extent that one can learn from past experience, it can be said that willingness to take in a small token number of refugees based on Israeli-determined criteria − including age, timetables and family situation ‏(UNRWA now has five million refugees registered, scattered in 58 camps‏) − could provide an important and symbolic response to the demand for “return,” which still underlies the ethos of the Palestinian refugees. Israel would thus acknowledge its moral share in the creation of the problem.

    The establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel as part of a comprehensive settlement will take the edge off the demand for return, as it is illogical that a large proportion of the refugees will demand to return to this country rather than settle in their new state. In retrospect, the effort to preserve the status quo did not benefit Israel ‏(as witnessed by the Yom Kippur War, the first intifada and other events‏). This is unlikely to change in the future.

    Dr. Arik Ariel, an attorney, is a lecturer in intelligence and policy and in law and politics at the Emek Yezreel College. The article is based on his PhD. thesis at the University of Haifa.

  • Exclusive : Inside America’s Plan to Kill Online Privacy Rights Everywhere
    http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/11/20/exclusive_inside_americas_plan_to_kill_online_privacy_rights

    Tout en proclamant publiquement son soutien, l’administration étasunienne agit en coulisses pour faire capoter une résolution non contraignante qui doit être votée à l’AG de l’ONU, visant à fixer un cadre légal à la #surveillance. Ce sont les alliés de ladite administration (Canada, Australie, Grande-Bretagne) qui sont chargés de mener la charge.

    The United States and its key intelligence allies are quietly working behind the scenes to kneecap a mounting movement in the United Nations to promote a universal human right to online privacy, according to diplomatic sources and an internal American government document obtained by The Cable.

    The diplomatic battle is playing out in an obscure U.N. General Assembly committee that is considering a proposal by Brazil and Germany to place constraints on unchecked internet surveillance by the National Security Agency and other foreign intelligence services. American representatives have made it clear that they won’t tolerate such checks on their global surveillance network. The stakes are high, particularly in Washington — which is seeking to contain an international backlash against NSA spying — and in Brasilia, where Brazilian President Dilma Roussef is personally involved in monitoring the U.N. negotiations.

    (...)

    Publicly, U.S. representatives say they’re open to an affirmation of privacy rights. “The United States takes very seriously our international legal obligations, including those under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” Kurtis Cooper, a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said in an email. “We have been actively and constructively negotiating to ensure that the resolution promotes human rights and is consistent with those obligations.”

    But privately, American diplomats are pushing hard to kill a provision of the Brazilian and German draft which states that “extraterritorial surveillance” and mass interception of communications, personal information, and metadata may constitute a violation of human rights. The United States and its allies, according to diplomats, outside observers, and documents, contend that the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights does not apply to foreign espionage.

    In recent days, the United States circulated to its allies a confidential paper highlighting American objectives in the negotiations, “Right to Privacy in the Digital Age — U.S. Redlines.” It calls for changing the Brazilian and German text so “that references to privacy rights are referring explicitly to States’ obligations under ICCPR and remove suggestion that such obligations apply extraterritorially.” In other words: America wants to make sure it preserves the right to spy overseas.

    (...)

    The privacy resolution, like most General Assembly decisions, is neither legally binding nor enforceable by any international court. But international lawyers say it is important because it creates the basis for an international consensus — referred to as “soft law” — that over time will make it harder and harder for the United States to argue that its mass collection of foreigners’ data is lawful and in conformity with human rights norms.

    “They want to be able to say ‘we haven’t broken the law, we’re not breaking the law, and we won’t break the law,’” said Dinah PoKempner, the general counsel for Human Rights Watch, who has been tracking the negotiations. The United States, she added, wants to be able to maintain that “we have the freedom to scoop up anything we want through the massive surveillance of foreigners because we have no legal obligations.”

    • The Empire’s New Clothes
      Posted on November 21, 2013 by emptywheel
      http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/11/21/the-empires-new-clothes

      This is, then, in addition to being a perfect example of the Snowden effect, it’s also a perfect example of what Henry Farrell and Martha Finnemore have described in their essay on American hypocrisy and what I elaborated on here.

      US hegemony rests on a lot of things: the dollar exchange, our superlative military, our ideological lip service to democracy and human rights.

      But for the moment, it also rests on the globalized communication system in which we have a huge competitive advantage. That is, one reason we are the world’s hegemon is because the rest of the world communicates through us — literally, in terms of telecommunications infrastructure, linguistically, in English, and in terms of telecommunications governance.

      Aggressively hacking the rest of the world endangers that, both because of what it does to our ideological claims, but just as importantly, because it provides rivals with the concrete incentive to dismantle that global infrastructure.

      We’re opting to retain the ability to spy on everyone else, all using the increasingly flaccid claim of terrorism, all while pretending that simply endorsing this basic principle of human rights won’t devastate one tool of our Empire.

      But as the leak of these Redlines makes clear, we clearly do believe it would undermine the Empire.

    • Message to U.N. General Assembly: Stand up for Right to Privacy in the Digital Age
      https://www.accessnow.org/blog/2013/11/21/message-to-u.n.-general-assembly-stand-up-for-right-to-privacy-in-the-dig

      Privacy is intrinsically linked to freedom of expression and many other rights;

      The mere existence of domestic legislation is not all that is required to make surveillance lawful under international law;

      Indiscriminate mass surveillance is never legitimate as intrusions on privacy must always be genuinely necessary and proportionate;

      When States conduct extraterritorial surveillance, thereby exerting control over the privacy and rights of persons, they have obligations to respect privacy and related rights beyond the limits of their own borders;

      Privacy is also interfered with even when metadata and other third party communications are intercepted and collected.

    • UN: Reject Mass Surveillance | Human Rights Watch
      http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/11/21/un-reject-mass-surveillance

      After heated negotiations, the draft resolution on digital privacy initiated by Brazil and Germany emerged on November 20 relatively undamaged, despite efforts by the United States and other members of the “Five Eyes” group to weaken its language. Although a compromise avoided naming mass extraterritorial surveillance explicitly as a “human rights violation,” the resolution directs the UN high commissioner for human rights to report to the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly on the protection and promotion of privacy “in the context of domestic and extraterritorial surveillance... including on a mass scale.”

    • L’#ONU adopte une résolution contre l’#espionnage | Sous surveillance
      http://www.lapresse.ca/international/dossiers/sous-surveillance/201311/26/01-4714785-lonu-adopte-une-resolution-contre-lespionnage.php

      Le texte, adopté par consensus sans vote, avait été soumis notamment par l’Allemagne et le Brésil, dont les dirigeants avaient réagi très vivement aux révélations sur un vaste système d’espionnage organisé par les services de renseignement américains.

      La résolution a été co-parrainée par plusieurs autres pays européens et sud-américains, dont la France, l’Espagne, le Mexique, le Chili ou la Bolivie.

      Sans mettre en cause directement aucun pays, cette résolution non contraignante stipule que la surveillance et l’interception de données personnelles par des gouvernements ou des entreprises « sont susceptibles de violer les droits de l’homme ».

      Une première mouture du texte utilisait une formulation plus forte, mais a été édulcorée pour permettre aux États-Unis et à leurs proches alliés (Royaume-Uni, Australie, Nouvelle-Zélande) de se joindre au consensus.

      Le comité des droits de l’homme de l’Assemblée générale se déclare « profondément inquiet de l’impact négatif » que la surveillance et l’interception des communications peuvent avoir sur les droits de l’homme, « y compris la surveillance extra-territoriale ».

      La formulation initiale soutenue par l’Allemagne et le Brésil parlait de « violations des droits de l’homme qui peuvent résulter de toute surveillance de communications, dont la surveillance extra-territoriale des communications ».

      Pour l’ambassadeur allemand Peter Wittig, cette résolution, même non contraignante, constitue un important « message politique ». C’est la première fois selon lui que l’ONU affirme que « la surveillance illégale et arbitraire, à l’intérieur et au-delà des frontières, peut violer les droits de l’homme ».

      La résolution doit ensuite être soumise au vote de l’Assemblée en session plénière.

    • Les Nations Unies votent en faveur de la #vie_privée sur #Internet
      http://www.numerama.com/magazine/27845-les-nations-unies-votent-en-faveur-de-la-vie-privee-sur-internet.htm

      Les Nations Unies s’engagent en faveur de la vie privée. Ce mercredi, l’Assemblée générale a adopté une résolution sur le droit à la vie privée à l’ère numérique. Celle-ci invite tous les États membres de l’#ONU « à respecter et à protéger le droit à la vie privée, notamment dans le contexte de la communication numérique ». Mais dans les faits, cette décision n’est pas juridiquement contraignante.

      Le vote de l’Assemblée reprend en fait le texte adopté en novembre par la troisième commission de l’ONU, et dont le ton avait été adouci sous la pression des pays très actifs en matière d’espionnage (les « Five Eyes », à savoir les États-Unis, la Grande-Bretagne, l’Australie, le Canada et la Nouvelle-Zélande).

      Il est ainsi affirmé que « les droits dont les personnes jouissent hors ligne doivent également être protégés en ligne, y compris le droit à la vie privée ». Les États sont invités « à respecter pleinement toutes leurs obligations au regard du droit international ». En revanche, il n’est pas clairement indiqué que la collecte des données personnelles pouvait constituer une atteinte aux droits fondamentaux.

      Sans les mentionner directement, la résolution demande aux pays concernés de « revoir leurs procédures, leurs pratiques et leur législation relatives à la surveillance et à l’interception des communications, et à la collecte de données personnelles, notamment à grande échelle » et d’établir « des mécanismes nationaux de contrôle indépendants efficaces » pour encadrer, le cas échéant, des pratiques d’interception.

      Le texte adopté à l’ONU « prie par ailleurs la Haut-Commissaire des Nations Unies aux droits de l’homme de lui présenter [lors de la 79e session] un rapport d’activité sur la protection du droit à la vie privée dans le contexte de la surveillance et de l’interception des communications et de la collecte des données personnelles sur le territoire national et à l’extérieur, y compris à grande échelle ».

      Le Haut-Commissaire remettra ensuite un « rapport final » lors de la 80e session qui devra contenir « des vues et recommandations afin de récapituler et de préciser les principes, normes et meilleures pratiques qui permettent aux États de défendre leur sécurité tout en honorant les obligations que leur impose le droit international des droits de l’homme ».

      L’Assemblée générale des Nations Unies indique en effet que la surveillance des communications numériques « pourraient être contraires au droit à la vie privée et la liberté d’expression et d’opinion ».

  • Implementing Rio+20: ECOSOC’s New Role and Its Old Culture

    http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/225-general/52530-implementing-rio20-ecosocs-new-role-and-its-old-culture.html

    Implementing Rio+20: ECOSOC’s New Role and Its Old Culture

    posted on: Monday, October 28th, 2013

    by: Harris Gleckman, Center for Governance and Sustainability, University of Massachusetts – Boston

    Almost since the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) was created, there have been ECOSOC reform efforts. Most of these efforts have been preceded by a build-up of political enthusiasm and followed by quite minor changes. One then could be quite skeptical of the 2013 version of ECOSOC reform adopted this September [1]. The timing of this round of ECOSOC reform was based on the last time “ECOSOC was reformed” (General Assembly decision 61/16), but now supplemented by the Rio+20 outcome document’s call for the mainstreaming of sustainable development by ECOSOC.

    ECOSOC has always been the weakest piece of the UN charter. Unlike the Security Council, there are no obligations for Member States or the UN system to act on ECOSOC’s decisions. As the opening paragraphs of the new resolution repeat three times, ECOSOC‘s job is “to coordinate” the economic, social, environmental and related activities of the UN system. But it was not given any ability to sanction UN-related organizations that ignore its advice, nor has it received any real role in budget decisions. And, unlike the Security Council and the General Assembly, ECOSOC has not been a place where governments bring pressing external economic, social or environmental threats to their security or development. Further, in spite of its name, it is not a place where economic counsel is given to global economic actors or where coordination of globalization’s challenges is forthrightly discussed.

    voir http://uncsd.iisd.org/guest-articles/implementing-rio20-ecosocs-new-role-and-its-old-culture

    #environnement