Saturday, February 25, 2017

UN Secretary General pledges to take action on journalist safety

February 24, 2017

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) urged UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to take steps to address the urgent issue of safety of journalists.

“As journalists around the world are increasingly under attack physically and verbally it is encouraging and gratifying to have this kind of support from the Secretary General, said Joel Simon, CPJ's Executive Director. We look forward to working with him to move this commitment forward.”

The goal of the #ProtectJournalists campaign is to establish a concrete mechanism that enforces international law and thereby finally reduces the number of journalists killed every year in the course of their work.

Statistics show that despite various UN resolutions related to safety of journalists and combating impunity, there have been few concrete results on the ground. In fact, the past five years have been the deadliest on record for journalists, with hundreds of journalists killed and many more attacked simply for doing their jobs. RSF reported that 78 journalists were killed in the year 2016 alone and impunity remains the norm, with full justice in only three percent of journalist murders in the past decade, according to CPJ research.

Murder is the ultimate form of censorship, and when a journalist is killed the right to information for the broader public is also imperiled. The world’s major problems, from environmental issues to extremist violence, cannot be resolved without the work of journalists.

A worldwide coalition of NGOs, media outlets, journalists and prominent public figures are supporting RSF’s initiative for the creation of a Journalist Protector. CPJ, the Associated Press, WAN-IFRA, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Bangkok Post, and the Brazilian Center for Investigative Journalism (Abraji) are just a few of the more than 120 organizations that have joined the coalition to date.

This week several coalition members, such as the James W. Foley Foundation, the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, and the Pakistan Press Foundation, sent letters to Secretary General Guterres echoing the call for the appointment of a Special Representative.

Anti-corruption improving across SE Asia, despite graft at higher levels

25th February 2017

THE anti-corruption landscape throughout Southeast Asia is improving slowly but steadily, but often in spite of those in power, a report from Hogan Lovells has found.

The report from the global law firm, entitled Global bribery and corruption review 2016, found that despite improvements across the region, corruption is still prevalent at high levels in a number of the countries looked at.

Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia are among the countries that, while having made progress to tackle corruption, have actually been held back in reputation or progress due to vested interests and actions by public officials and law enforcement.

This, however, is also showing signs of improvement with “increasing regulatory, commercial and political pressures” slowly bringing about increasingly effective anti-corruption legislation and enforcement.

SEE ALSO: Malaysia: Australian police say they are taking part in probe on 1MDB scandal

Malaysia is still suffering the fallout from the 1 Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal that saw the country’s reputation with investors suffer significantly.

The allegations surrounding Prime Minister Najib Razak accusing him of siphoning millions from the state investment fund, and the ensuing inadequate investigations that followed, have brought about a dramatic change in perception of the country’s ability to combat graft.

“It has made investors doubt whether there is any transparency in the country (at any level of government),” Hogan Lovells reports.

The impression of Malaysia on the world stage is that of a country “engulfed in corruption at the highest political level” and this is having a knock on effect on the economy and foreign investment.

Vietnam, was highlighted as one of the main problem areas in the region, ranking only 113th place (out of 176) in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI). Corruption is still a major issue according to Hogan Lovells, from “daily, low-level facilitation payments to high-level corruption scandals” with little domestic enforcement action being taken against government officials or the offending companies.

SEE ALSO: Vietnam’s newly elected prime minister vows to push forward reforms, fight corruption

But Hogan Lovells feels that it is only a matter of time before this changes and the Vietnam anti-corruption authorities “wake up to the significant credibility and revenue deficit they face” as a result of not imposing strict punishments and sanctions for corrupt practices.

Indonesia on the whole is becoming more transparent, the report found, which is reflected in their dramatic rise in the CPI from 118th to 88th over a four year period. This was powered by efforts to create a “safe and sophisticated commercial environment” that is being managed by a more open central and regional government.

While there have been drastic improvements in transparency within government; present and former government officials are still involved in big business deals making public sector corruption an enduring challenge.

President Joko Widodo has made public sector corruption a focus of his term since being elected in 2014 on an anti-graft campaign, and inroads have been made according to Hogan Lovells.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has made public sector corruption a focus of his term since being elected in 2014 on an anti-graft campaign. Pic: AP.

“He (Widodo) has cut bureaucracy and with it the scope for corrupt interactions with government officials,” the report said. “That in turn has improved perceptions about how safe your investment in Indonesia will be.”

SEE ALSO: Indonesia’s anti-corruption agency pushes plan to combat deforestation, fires

Thailand’s economy has seen significant growth in recent years due to the assistance of foreign direct investment, and this is likely to continue, but Hogan Lovells fear that the “country’s anti-corruption legal framework is struggling to keep pace.”

The rarity of corruption cases being brought shows that “actual enforcement (of the legislative changes) needs some improvement,” the report says.

Despite progress in developing its legislative framework, local enforcement that has been found lacking in the fight against corruption with some cases seemingly being pursued for purely “political motivations.”

Cases such as that of former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who faces charges of corruption for her management of a rice subsidy scheme, hint at continuing tensions between the ruling military junta and the former Shinawatra political dynasty and the danger that corruption charges are being used to silence critics of ruling party.

There has long been a well-founded impression that corruption is a significant problem in Southeast Asia and often a major hurdle to doing business in the region. But as Hogan Lovells has found, 2016 saw some genuine and effective steps in the right direction that are “good news” for the region and business alike.

History: Writing and Re-writing the Legacy of Malcolm X

We do not remember Malcolm’s image crisply. Instead, like Avedon’s portrait, we squint in order to imagine ourselves and our own world within the blurred edges of his likeness. We create and re-create his image according to our contemporary realities in ways that are useful to us.

by Alaina Morgan -Feb 24, 2017

The following article is part of our online forum,” Remembering Malcolm,” edited by Garrett Felber.

( February 24, 2017, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) As a historian of Islam and the African Diaspora, I am always in the center of conversations about Malcolm X. Some of these musings have been recounted to me by people who remember Malcolm’s short, but influential, life. Still others happen in union halls or at city council meetings, where residents of cities throughout the Atlantic world pivot seamlessly from reminiscing about Malcolm to talking about the destructive effects of racial capitalism on their present lives. And many of these conversations have come through the archive – from static-laden recordings on cassette tape; from cryptic meeting minutes handwritten on crumbling tissue-thin paper; or from ancient black-and-white newsreels.

In 1963, famed American photographer Richard Avedon shot a set of rare portraits of Malcolm in which he appears unsmiling, facial features blurred, the rims of his iconic glasses just visible, and his eyes receding into the dark spaces around their sockets. He appears as a wisp – we know it is him, but only a faint impression of him is actually visible. Scholar Graeme Abernethy notes that the photograph is one of the few instances that we have which so starkly represents the malleability of Malcolm’s image. He writes that the photograph is “cryptic in its purposeful haze, skull-like in its coloration and concealment of Malcolm’s eyes in shadow, yet intimate in its perspective . . . [and therefore, it] seems to allude to the transubstantiation enabled by his death.” This malleability is possible because Malcolm’s life, with all of its possibility, was snuffed out as it began to shine the brightest.

At the time of his death, Malcolm had recently been on hajj, met with leaders throughout Africa and the Middle East, and begun his own Sunni Muslim organization, the Muslim Mosque, Inc. He debated at Oxford University and the London School of Economics, and was in the process of building an international organization, called the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which would bring the case of African Americans before the United Nations. We can’t know for sure the extent to which Malcolm would have been able to prompt us to liberation from oppression with his revolutionary politics and his religious fervor, but the evidence certainly suggests that he made enough people nervous – on both the side of leadership of the Nation of Islam and on the side of the white government establishment – to warrant his assassination.

We do not remember Malcolm’s image crisply. Instead, like Avedon’s portrait, we squint in order to imagine ourselves and our own world within the blurred edges of his likeness. We create and re-create his image according to our contemporary realities in ways that are useful to us. And because there is an unknown, we are able to collectively engage in a continuous process of writing and re-writing his life. It is a story in which his image inspires us, but also satisfies us – spiritually, intellectually, and practically. It is a story where we get to write a series of alternate endings.

Click on the cover to read other articles of this series published by AAIHS
Part of our need to see ourselves in Malcolm’s blurred image comes so readily because many of the problems that he addressed are still relevant today. For Malcolm, both during his time with the Nation of Islam and after, these problems were signaled by repeated references to police brutality, widespread poverty, colonial oppression, and mass incarceration. These same challenges for the Black community continue to exist and conversations about how to confront these problems have cropped up repeatedly throughout our history, inspiring activism from the Black Panther Party to Black Lives Matter. Because of the unfulfilled possibilities that his life held, Malcolm’s hazy image can be formed into multiple action plans. In a way this respects that Malcolm was a complicated figure that continually changed and reinvented himself throughout his life as we all do.

In an attempt to present Malcolm as a human being and not as a “virtual saint,” Manning Marable emphasized in his 2011 biography that Malcolm was a man who was constantly evolving. But Marable is not the first to give us permission to view Malcolm as a complex and constantly evolving figure. It was Malcolm himself through his Autobiography that allowed us to see him as a flawed human being who grew from Detroit Red to Satan to Malcolm X and then finally to el-hajj Malik el-Shabazz. It was Malcolm who presented us with the idea that he was redeemed through Islam, first through the Nation and then through Sunni Islam. It was his speeches themselves, from when he implored Black people at the 1960 Harlem Freedom Rally to band together in the “Spirit of Bandung” irrespective of religious affiliation to his famed “Message to the Grassroots” speech in November 1963 right before he separated from the Nation of Islam. In one of his final interviews on February 16, 1965, he talked about worldwide Black revolution in ways that allow us to see him as figure whose ideas were constantly in evolution.

In a recent op-ed for the New York Times, fittingly entitled “No Racial Barrier Left to Break (Except All of Them),” historian Khalil Gibran Muhammad celebrated the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by warning us against focusing on the exceptionality of Black leadership. And that is because “no individual no matter how singular, can bend the moral arc of the universe.” Rather, no individual can transform hundreds of years of structural racism alone. By pushing back on the idea of Malcolm as an inaccessible perfect martyr and iconic saint, as Marable does, it frees us to use his example as instructive but not constricting. And therefore, these different Malcolms – the black nationalist and the socialist, the revolutionary and the social democrat – can be used to mobilize and organize different movements for racial and economic justice. As activists, the unfinished project of Malcolm’s life inspires us to action by instructing us to organize from a broad base, to speak and act selflessly, to seek allies across coalitions, to constantly reinvent oneself, and to work tirelessly for justice. In this way, this project can be constructive.

As historians, however, our duty is different. Part of this duty is tethered to ameliorating some of the destructive aspects of the fiction-building project surrounding Malcolm’s life. Much of the controversy regarding Marable’s biography of Malcolm revolves around the assertion that Marable’s class standing as an elite academic motivated him to invent a less revolutionary, more universally palatable Malcolm X. Essentially, scholars argue that Marable remade Malcolm in his own liberal image for an America that he supposed might be “post-racial” after the election of Barack Obama.

This debate is important for several reasons. First, the transformability of Malcolm’s memory has allowed his image to be ubiquitously present and readily commodified. There is a point at which we fetishize Malcolm. Viewed through the lens of Marxism, he becomes nothing more to us than an object that is valued based on its utility and to the extent to which it can be consumed by the public. This commodification is most obvious in the example of the US Postal Service’s commemoration of Malcolm X in January 1999 by issuing a hundred million stamps bearing his image. However, he remained to his death, deeply suspicious and openly hostile towards the United States and the OAAU’s statement of basic aims and objectives indicated that it was their goal to bring the United States before the United Nations to pay for their crimes against the Black community.

As Joe Wood suggested in 1992, our authorship of Malcolm “courts an illusion.” In other words, by attempting to identify ourselves with him, we project ourselves onto him as if he were a blank screen. That is how Malcolm’s image can be used simultaneously as an image in an American mainstream nation-building project in the form of a US Postal Stamp, and still serve as a symbol of Black and Third World resistance. While in Avedon’s 1963 portrait, the contours of Malcolm’s face are still visible, by co-opting his image and message for anything we erase him from history. It is our duty as historians not only to ensure that the histories of everyday workers and marginalized people are highlighted in our stories, but also that the histories of our minority leaders are not rendered into empty objects so fungible in meaning that they can be transformed for any purpose.

Alaina M. Morgan is a doctoral candidate in New York University’s Department of History where she is currently finishing her dissertation, “Atlantic Crescent: Afro-Muslim Internationalism, Anti-Colonialism, and Transnational Community Formation, 1955-2005,” a political, intellectual, and religious history of the formation of Afro-Muslim anti-colonial networks in the Atlantic world. Alaina is an alumna of Columbia University School of Law and Rutgers University.

France and Canada: 58th and 59th Countries to Endorse Safe Schools Declaration

Commit to Protect Students, Teachers, Schools, and Universities During War

2017-01-crd-safe schools declaration map

FEBRUARY 21, 2017

(Paris) The French and Canadian governments should be congratulated for becoming the latest countries to endorse the international political commitment known as the Safe Schools Declaration, said the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA). The endorsement came during the international conference on the protection of children in armed conflicts being hosted by the French foreign ministry in Paris today.

“France and Canada’s support for the Safe Schools Declaration is a welcome addition to the growing community of countries demanding that schools be safe places for children, even during war,” said Diya Nijhowne, GCPEA director. “The Safe Schools Declaration lays out many common-sense steps that countries can take to help ensure that students and schools are better protected.”

Fifty-nine countries have now endorsed the Safe Schools Declaration, including the majority of both European Union and NATO member states.

The Safe Schools Declaration is an inter-governmental political commitment that provides countries the opportunity to express support for protecting students, teachers, schools, and universities from attack during times of armed conflict. It stresses the importance of continuing education during armed conflict.

“Hundreds of thousands of children worldwide find their schools under attack or used by fighting forces to wage war,” said Zama Coursen-Neff, children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “The Safe Schools Declaration provides a concrete way for countries to commit to protecting children’s education, even during armed conflict.”

By joining the declaration, countries pledge to restore access to education when schools are bombed, burned, and destroyed during armed conflict, and undertake to make it less likely that students, teachers, and schools will be attacked in the first place. They agree to deter such violence by promising to investigate and prosecute war crimes involving schools, and to minimize the use of schools for military purposes so they do not become targets for attack.

The declaration was developed through consultations with states in a process led by Norway and Argentina in Geneva in early 2015, and was opened for endorsement at the Oslo Conference on Safe Schools on May 29, 2015. Argentina has announced that it will host the Second International Conference on Safe Schools in Buenos Aires on March 28-29, 2017.

Today’s conference in Paris marks the tenth anniversary of the Paris Principles and Commitments, which are dedicated to protecting children from unlawful recruitment or use by armed forces or armed groups.
“France and Canada have a strong tradition of advocating for the protection of children during armed conflict, and have reinforced their commitment through today’s endorsement of the Safe Schools Declaration,” said Nijhowne. “We urge all countries that have yet to join the Safe Schools Declaration to consider doing so at next month’s international conference in Buenos Aires.”

The Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) is a unique coalition of international organizations, including CARA (Council for At-Risk Academics), Human Rights Watch, the Institute of International Education’s Scholar Rescue Fund, Protect Education in Insecurity and Conflict, Save the Children, the Scholars at Risk Network, UNHCR, UNICEF, and UNESCO. GCPEA is a project of the Tides Center, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. Learn more at www.protectingeducation.org.

Wind and solar power are disrupting electricity systems

But that’s no reason for governments to stop supporting them

Feb 25th 2017

ALMOST 150 years after photovoltaic cells and wind turbines were invented, they still generate only 7% of the world’s electricity. Yet something remarkable is happening. From being peripheral to the energy system just over a decade ago, they are now growing faster than any other energy source and their falling costs are making them competitive with fossil fuels. BP, an oil firm, expects renewables to account for half of the growth in global energy supply over the next 20 years. It is no longer far-fetched to think that the world is entering an era of clean, unlimited and cheap power. About time, too.

There is a $20trn hitch, though. To get from here to there requires huge amounts of investment over the next few decades, to replace old smog-belching power plants and to upgrade the pylons and wires that bring electricity to consumers. Normally investors like putting their money into electricity because it offers reliable returns. Yet green energy has a dirty secret. The more it is deployed, the more it lowers the price of power from any source. That makes it hard to manage the transition to a carbon-free future, during which many generating technologies, clean and dirty, need to remain profitable if the lights are to stay on. Unless the market is fixed, subsidies to the industry will only grow.

Policymakers are already seeing this inconvenient truth as a reason to put the brakes on renewable energy. In parts of Europe and China, investment in renewables is slowing as subsidies are cut back. However, the solution is not less wind and solar. It is to rethink how the world prices clean energy in order to make better use of it.

Shock to the system

At its heart, the problem is that government-supported renewable energy has been imposed on a market designed in a different era. For much of the 20th century, electricity was made and moved by vertically integrated, state-controlled monopolies. From the 1980s onwards, many of these were broken up, privatised and liberalised, so that market forces could determine where best to invest. Today only about 6% of electricity users get their power from monopolies. Yet everywhere the pressure to decarbonise power supply has brought the state creeping back into markets. This is disruptive for three reasons. The first is the subsidy system itself. The other two are inherent to the nature of wind and solar: their intermittency and their very low running costs. All three help explain why power prices are low and public subsidies are addictive.

First, the splurge of public subsidy, of about $800bn since 2008, has distorted the market. It came about for noble reasons—to counter climate change and prime the pump for new, costly technologies, including wind turbines and solar panels. But subsidies hit just as electricity consumption in the rich world was stagnating because of growing energy efficiency and the financial crisis. The result was a glut of power-generating capacity that has slashed the revenues utilities earn from wholesale power markets and hence deterred investment.

Second, green power is intermittent. The vagaries of wind and sun—especially in countries without favourable weather—mean that turbines and solar panels generate electricity only part of the time. To keep power flowing, the system relies on conventional power plants, such as coal, gas or nuclear, to kick in when renewables falter. But because they are idle for long periods, they find it harder to attract private investors. So, to keep the lights on, they require public funds.

Everyone is affected by a third factor: renewable energy has negligible or zero marginal running costs—because the wind and the sun are free. In a market that prefers energy produced at the lowest short-term cost, wind and solar take business from providers that are more expensive to run, such as coal plants, depressing power prices, and hence revenues for all.

Get smart

The higher the penetration of renewables, the worse these problems get—especially in saturated markets. In Europe, which was first to feel the effects, utilities have suffered a “lost decade” of falling returns, stranded assets and corporate disruption. Last year, Germany’s two biggest electricity providers, E.ON and RWE, both split in two. In renewable-rich parts of America power providers struggle to find investors for new plants. Places with an abundance of wind, such as China, are curtailing wind farms to keep coal plants in business.

The corollary is that the electricity system is being re-regulated as investment goes chiefly to areas that benefit from public support. Paradoxically, that means the more states support renewables, the more they pay for conventional power plants, too, using “capacity payments” to alleviate intermittency. In effect, politicians rather than markets are once again deciding how to avoid blackouts. They often make mistakes: Germany’s support for cheap, dirty lignite caused emissions to rise, notwithstanding huge subsidies for renewables. Without a new approach the renewables revolution will stall.

The good news is that new technology can help fix the problem (see article). Digitalisation, smart meters and batteries are enabling companies and households to smooth out their demand—by doing some energy-intensive work at night, for example. This helps to cope with intermittent supply. Small, modular power plants, which are easy to flex up or down, are becoming more popular, as are high-voltage grids that can move excess power around the network more efficiently.

The bigger task is to redesign power markets to reflect the new need for flexible supply and demand. They should adjust prices more frequently, to reflect the fluctuations of the weather. At times of extreme scarcity, a high fixed price could kick in to prevent blackouts. Markets should reward those willing to use less electricity to balance the grid, just as they reward those who generate more of it. Bills could be structured to be higher or lower depending how strongly a customer wanted guaranteed power all the time—a bit like an insurance policy. In short, policymakers should be clear they have a problem and that the cause is not renewable energy, but the out-of-date system of electricity pricing. Then they should fix it.

El Nino drought leaves 1 million African children severely malnourished - U.N.

Rain clouds loom as Malawian subsistence farmer Louise Abele carries maize she has bought to feed her family near the capital Lilongwe, Malawi January 31, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings/Files

By Megan Rowling-Wed Feb 17, 2016

BARCELONA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Nearly 1 million children need treatment for severe malnutrition in eastern and southern Africa due to drought that is putting millions more at risk of hunger, water shortages and disease, the U.N. children's agency said on Wednesday.

Even though the powerful El Niño weather phenomenon blamed for the drought is forecast to dissipate in the coming months, its impact on people in affected countries will last far longer, the United Nations has warned.

"El Niño... will wane, but the cost to children - many who were already living hand-to-mouth - will be felt for years to come," said Leila Gharagozloo-Pakkala, regional director for east and southern Africa with the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF).

"Governments are responding with available resources, but this is an unprecedented situation. Children's survival is dependent on action taken today," she added in a statement.

In a late January update, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said El Niño would affect more than 60 million people across parts of Africa, the Pacific, Asia and Latin America.

The current impacts of El Niño - a warming of sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific - include drought in Central America, southern Africa, Indonesia and the Philippines, and wetter conditions in the southern Horn of Africa, south Brazil, Peru and Ecuador.

The extreme weather is hitting production of staple foods in those regions, including maize, rice and wheat.

In Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and most provinces in South Africa have declared a disaster, while in Ethiopia, the number of people in need of food aid is expected to rise to 18 million by the end of 2016 from just over 10 million now, UNICEF said.

Ethiopian children are increasingly missing school as they have to walk further in search of water after two seasons of failed rains, it added.

In Malawi, facing its worst food crisis in nine years, some 2.8 million people are at risk of hunger, and cases of severe acute malnutrition jumped by 100 percent from December to January, UNICEF said.

Meanwhile, Kenya is experiencing cholera outbreaks aggravated by floods, while in Zimbabwe, a drop in water supplies from the few functioning boreholes is putting people at greater risk of waterborne diseases such as diarrhoea.

OCHA has estimated it will take affected communities around two years to recover from El Niño-exacerbated drought - if agricultural conditions improve in the second half of this year, the U.N. statement said.

UNICEF has appealed for $155 million for its work in El Niño-hit African countries this year. So far it has received only 15 percent of what it needs in southern Africa.

Last week charity Save the Children said food aid for Ethiopians would run out in April unless donors stepped up with more funds by the end of this month.

(Reporting by Megan Rowling, editing by Tim Pearce. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

CCD covers up Poddala Jayantha, Namal Perera assault probes!

Sarath Fonseka, Namal Perera after being attacked AND Tamil civilians killed during the war Picture courtesy: www.asiantribune.

Fonseka Is Between Scylla And Charybdis

Feb 24, 2017

Journalists question as to why investigations into the Wasim Thajudeen murder, the disappearance of Prageeth Ekneligoda and the assaults on Upali Tennakoon and Keith Noyarh are progressing at least at snail pace, while the assaults on Poddala Jayantha and Sri Lanka Press Institute’s Namal Perera are not being investigated at all.

The CID is conducting the other investigations, while the assaults on Jayantha and Perera are being investigated by the CCD, which functions under Colombo’s senior DIG Nandana Munasinghe. These investigations are making no progress – leaving alone producing those responsible before courts, they are yet to be identified. The entire country well knows that the murders, abductions and assaults during the previous regime had been committed by a particular group run by a topmost place at the time. Therefore, it is questionable as to why only the CID investigations are in progress, while the CCD probes are on hold.

Journalists say that if the CCD fails to investigate those incidents, the CID should be handed over that task in order to ensure justice. Journalists are preparing to organize themselves for action in this regard and will complain to the relevant institutions about the suspension of the investigations, reports say.

Key elements for a follow-up resolution on Sri Lanka

To Permanent Representatives of Member and Observer States of the UN Human Rights Council

FEBRUARY 24, 2017

Excellency,

We write to seek your support in ensuring that the upcoming consideration of Sri Lanka’s progress toward implementing its commitments under United Nations Human Rights Council resolution 30/1 accurately and substantively reflects the situation within the country. This includes both progress to date and the significant challenges remaining. At the end of this letter, we outline what we would consider to be the minimum key elements for a credible follow-up resolution.

As you know, this resolution, adopted by the Council in October 2015 through consensus, contains 25 key undertakings by the Sri Lankan government across a range of human rights issues. We acknowledge at the outset the positive steps taken by the government to date. Four UN Special Procedures, plus the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, have visited Sri Lanka since the resolution was adopted. By all accounts, their visits received government cooperation, and they were unhindered in their movements and meetings. Two nationwide consultations have been carried out, one on constitutional reform and the other on transitional justice. The government has released some reports from previous government commissions of inquiry into wartime abuses, and established coordination offices to deal with transitional justice and reconciliation issues. Importantly, the government in May 2016 ratified the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

However, we remain concerned about the government’s actual willingness to fully implement all aspects of resolution 30/1. A key element of the resolution consists of transitional justice promises: a special court including international judges and prosecutors to try cases of war crimes by all parties to the conflict, an office on missing and disappeared persons, a truth-seeking and reconciliation mechanism, and a reparations mechanism. The government has made only halting progress towards fulfilling these commitments. A hastily drafted and passed law to establish an Office of Missing Persons was done without thorough consultation of key stakeholders, and the office has yet to be set up. The three other promised mechanisms have not made significant progress. Reliable reports indicate that the government team working on these three mechanisms has prepared draft legislation but as yet they have not been shared with stakeholders.

A report issued by the government-appointed Consultation Task Force (CTF), which conducted extensive nationwide consultations on the transitional justice mechanisms, should be given the attention it deserves. The CTF report contains specific detailed recommendations, drawn from all affected communities including the security services, and provides an important blueprint for the way forward.

The government may be commended for mandating these wide-ranging consultations, and should be encouraged through the anticipated Council resolution to engage with the CTF report’s findings and give due consideration to implementing its recommendations. To do otherwise would be tantamount to a dismissal of victims’ voices. It was the victims’ rights groups that sustained a diligent campaign over many years that helped to make resolution 30/1 possible. The CTF report and its recommendations should be at the forefront in the design of Sri Lanka’s promised four transitional justice mechanisms.

An additional note of concern on Sri Lanka’s progress on transitional justice is its ongoing resistance to any foreign involvement in the four mechanisms. Government officials, including the president and cabinet members, have been increasingly unwilling to consider significant international involvement in the justice mechanism. This directly contravenes the call by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for a “hybrid” justice mechanism given the shortcomings of domestic institutions to ensure impartial investigations and witness protection, and the Sri Lankan government’s failure to take meaningful accountability measures since Sri Lanka’s civil war ended in May 2009. Resolution 30/1affirms the importance of participation in a justice mechanism of “Commonwealth and other foreign judges … and authorized prosecutors and investigators.” It is a core component of the resolution, which the Sri Lankan government embraced through its co-sponsorship, and an important recommendation of the CTF.

In addition to the lack of progress on the transitional justice mechanisms, Sri Lanka has not implemented many of the other undertakings from the resolution. Security sector reform, including repealing and replacing the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act, has not yet been undertaken. More favorably, the government has removed the police from under the purview of the Defense Ministry and created a separate Law and Order Ministry, and the president reportedly issued directives to the security forces to abide by the law in its treatment of arrested and detained persons. However, a January 2017 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, based on a May 2016 visit, confirms the findings of Human Rights Watch and other organizations that torture is endemic to the security forces and that a culture of impunity is entrenched. The Special Rapporteur’s full report will be discussed at the Council session.

While the government has made some important symbolic steps towards reconciliation between the minority and majority communities, a February 2017 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues, also being presented for consideration at the Council this session, highlights the ongoing marginalization and misrepresentation faced by Sri Lanka’s minority communities, as well as a trust-deficit between these communities and the government, due in significant part to a culture of impunity.

We understand that the government has had only 16 months to fulfill the many pledges contained in resolution 30/1. However, government statements and inaction increasingly point to a dwindling political will to implement the resolution’s key components. The Council has played a crucial role in identifying the many steps needed to reconcile with the past, ensure justice and accountability, and implement necessary reforms. It is imperative that the Council remain fully engaged with the process until the commitments Sri Lanka made to the Council and UN member states and its own people through its co-sponsorship of resolution 30/1 are fully met.

We anticipate that the High Commissioner will present a robust and substantive report on the progress towards implementation of the resolution, and the many challenges remaining. In order to maintain confidence in the process, the follow-up resolution this session will need to engage meaningfully with the High Commissioner’s report and the other reports and recommendations that will be before the Council.

At a minimum, the resolution should:

Reaffirm resolution 30/1 and underline the importance of the commitments therein being met in full;
Welcome the High Commissioner’s report (once available) and call on the government of Sri Lanka to Implement its recommendations;
Welcome the government’s creation of the Consultation Task Force, the extensive national consultations, and the successful completion of its report, and encourage the government to give appropriate consideration to implementing its recommendations;
Acknowledge the government’s cooperation with UN Special Procedures and treaty bodies, welcome their reports and encourage implementation of their recommendations;
Acknowledge the challenges facing the government, and the need for substantial progress in key areas (notably transitional justice mechanisms, security sector reform; land returns; and the ending of military involvement in civilian activities);
Call on the government of Sri Lanka to develop a timetable for implementing the recommendations in the previous resolution and in the High Commissioner’s report, taking into account the need for an integrated approach to reforms and transitional justice, rather than prioritizing one part of the process over others;
Maintain OHCHR reporting, and further Human Rights Council engagement, across a suitable timeframe, with opportunities for interim reporting through oral updates and interactive dialogues.

Anything less would fall substantially short of the expectations of victims, and risk undermining faith in the process long before the promises of reconciliation, justice and reform have been translated into reality.

We urge your delegation to support the inclusion of these elements in the resolution.

In Formulating A New Constitution: A Quick Response To S. Krishnanathan

By Laksiri Fernando –February 24, 2017

Dr. Laksiri Fernando

The purpose of my article, “An Appeal To Tamil Political Leaders On ‘The New Constitution” is partly achieved as Mr S. Krishnanathan has constructively responded expressing what he thinks about the main contours of a new constitution that includes some of the questions that I have raised. This is conducive to a public debate on the subject. However, I would take some exception to what he has said at the outset.

He has expressed some displeasure, among other commenters, that I have made the appeal to the Tamil political leaders and says “Instead of appealing to Tamil Political Leaders, Dr. Laksiri Fernando should have appealed to the Sinhala political leaders because the Sinhala political leaders have a long history of being obstinate and even going back on agreed proposals.”

My purpose was not historical, but very contextual to the ongoing constitution making process. It is also not about blaming anyone, but an appeal. Therefore, as I saw it, and still see it, among many obstacles to a consensual constitutional draft, some of the views of the Tamil political leaders on the ‘unitary state, federalism, merger of the North/East and foremost position to Buddhism,’ among other matters, already have and could become stumbling blocks.

If I were wrong on those matters, then there is nothing wrong in showing them. Instead he is asking me to appeal or ‘rather condemn’ the Sinhala political leaders. I also don’t think keeping fixed views on Sinhala political leaders or Tamil political leaders is going to help the new constitution making process, however correct one’s positions may be. It is more unfortunate if someone thinks that a ‘Sinhala’ person should not appeal to the Tamil political leaders, instead of appealing to his own leaders. I think these are the psychological barriers that we should shake off for the sake of reconciliation, rather than reinforcing them. Breaking such barriers is equally important as a new constitution. I like a response from Mr Krishnanathan on this matter.

His Proposals

It is admirable that Krishnanathan has put forward his views on a new constitution. I also believe that he must have submitted these proposals to the Public Representations Committee (PRC) or to the Sub-Committees/Steering Committee. He undoubtedly must be in a better position to influence the process than me given his past influential positions, and he is operating on the ground.

If I may comment on some of his positions, I don’t subscribe to a general ‘theory,’ as he does, “that the Sinhala community being the majority community should be given the rightful place without jeopardizing the equality of all citizens resident in the country.” I don’t think such a ‘theory’ is necessary or correct, although I have expressed the opinion that the ‘foremost place for Buddhism’ could be accepted as recognition of a historical fact.

But I have some reservations on his compromised formulation on the character of the state. It is not because of his compromise, which I appreciate, but because of his ‘power sharing’ formulation. His formula is that “Sri Lanka shall be a unitary state with extensive power sharing with the provinces.” Such a formulation appears that ‘provinces’ are something alien and peripheral to something. It couldn’t be to the unitary state! If it is ‘power sharing between the centre and the provinces,’ then it makes sense, as a formulation. But I strongly think that what should be there in the qualification is not ‘power sharing’ but ‘devolution.’

What I have proposed is the following to the PRC and stated in my now controversial article.

‘Sri Lanka is a unitary state with devolution of power in nine provinces.’

I hope this is clear, precise and simple. It is somewhat strange that he has rather forgotten (or is it by purpose?), that the word ‘Devolution’ does not appear in his proposals. Neither his section on ‘Nature of State’ nor ‘Centre-Periphery Relations’ talk about devolution! I am not sure whether he is trying to invent the wheel? This is another thing that he should clarify. It is my view that we should not deviate from the cause that we have been treading in since 1987. The basis of provincial council system is devolution.

Power sharing with the provinces also can be misleading. In a way, it is understandable if an elite of a particular community (i.e. minority) claims to ‘share power’ with another elite of another community (i.e. majority). This is part of power politics in our contemporary society which I don’t admire very much. Power sharing is like sharing of spoils! But if the Sinhala leaders do that, then the Tamil and Muslim leaders also should have a claim for that. That I admit.

But for the people’s sake, the better term would be ‘shared responsibility.’ If Sri Lanka is too early for such a radical departure, that I also understand. But for all purposes, we should not give undue importance to this ‘power game’ in the new constitution. Not in the name of the people. Devolution of power rather defuses it.

Agreements/Disagreements