Friday, September 22, 2017

Is the Israel lobby rewriting the Labour Party’s rule book?

Jewish Labour Movement chair Jeremy Newmark with former Labour leader Tony Blair in 2010. (Facebook)

Asa Winstanley-22 September 2017

An Israel lobby group in the Labour Party is trying to pass a rules change at the main UK opposition party’s conference, which starts this weekend.

The Jewish Labour Movement – which is closely linked to the Israeli embassy – claims the motion aims to “create a zero-tolerance environment for anti-Semitism” in the party.

But critics charge that the Jewish Labour Movement, which has been at the center of politically motivated exaggerations of anti-Semitism, is merely aiming to make it easier to push Palestine solidarity activists out of the party.

Labour’s National Executive Committee, its main governing body, on Tuesday approved a version of the rules change which will now be put to a full vote at the party conference.

Despite the Jewish Labour Movement taking credit, documents seen by The Electronic Intifada prove that the motion is substantially watered down from the one the group originally proposed.

But left-wing activists, such as Jewish Voice for Labour, are still wary of the rules change, even in its new form.

Potential danger

Jewish activists in Labour have told The Electronic Intifada that, although not as bad as the original version, the new rule could still endanger free speech on Israel.

Jewish Voice for Labour is a new group which will launch at the conference.

It rejects attempts by the Jewish Labour Movement “to extend the scope of the term ‘anti-Semitism’ beyond its meaning of hatred and bigotry towards Jews, particularly when directed at activities in solidarity with Palestinians.”

Leah Levane, a Labour activist in South East England, was due to speak at the conference in favor of an alternative that would explicitly protect “words or actions regarding Israel or Zionism that are part of legitimate political discourse.”

Jewish Voice for Labour activists have recommended that conference delegates back the alternative motion.

Media reports on a meeting of Labour’s national executive on Tuesday said that Levane’s local Labour branch in Hastings would be asked to withdraw its motion in favor of the compromise proposal.

Levane told The Electronic Intifada on Friday that her local party was considering whether to withdraw the motion. She argued that it does not negate the national executive’s modified motion, and that they could have been combined.

She said the national executive’s motion still leaves potential dangers for critics of Israel.

Thought crime?

Jewish Voice for Labour media officer Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi told The Electronic Intifada that even in the watered-down version, “the notion that ‘the mere holding or expression of beliefs and opinions’ should be taken into account when someone is accused of breaching party codes of conduct is alarming.”

Should the rule change be approved, Wimborne-Idrissi said, the Jewish Labour Movement is likely to push for new “codes of conduct” that define criticisms of Israel or Zionism as “anti-Semitism.”

This would be done by incorporating the controversial “IHRA definition” of anti-Semitism, which Israel lobby groups have pushed legislatures and institutions around the world to adopt.
The Jewish Labour Movement has strongly promoted the document.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s document alleges that “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” is an example of anti-Semitism.

It could also define advocating for a single, democratic state in historic Palestine, in which Jews, Muslims and Christians have full and equal rights, as anti-Semitism, because that could be construed as “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination.”

The Labour Party’s “Race and Faith Manifesto” formally endorses a two-sentence definition of anti-Semitism, contained in the controversial IHRA document, which does not mention Israel: “A certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.”

It adds that, “Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

This part of of the IHRA document poses no issue. It is the accompanying “examples” provided by IHRA that define criticism of Israel and its Zionist state ideology as anti-Semitism. The Labour manifesto is silent on whether the party accepts those examples as valid instances of anti-Semitism.
A spokesman for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in April declined to comment on the rest of the IHRA document.

Confusion

The news on Tuesday that the Jewish Labour Movement and Shami Chakrabarti, the party’s candidate for attorney general if Labour enters government, had secretly negotiated a compromise on the rules change was met by activists with confusion.

The strongly pro-Israel Jewish Chronicle claimed it was “a robust solution to tackle the problem of anti-Semitic harassment.”

But Darren Williams, a left-wing member of Labour’s National Executive Committee, wrote on Facebook that the deal “avoided the more draconian approach favored by the Jewish Labour Movement.”

Jewish Labour Movement chair Jeremy Newmark hit back in the comments section claiming that it “was the precise text that [the Jewish Labour Movement] promoted and asked for” and then implied Williams was an anti-Semite who wanted to “incite bad feeling towards the party’s only Jewish affiliate.”

Newmark has a long history of making false claims of anti-Semitism as a political tool to defend Israel. An employment tribunal judge in 2013 described as “preposterous” and “untrue” testimony he gave in a failed case alleging anti-Semitism at the University and College Union.

In a 2014 article about the boycott of Israel for a Tel Aviv newspaper, Newmark wrote that he had been at “the vanguard of the fight” against “the assault upon Israel’s legitimacy for many years.”

Not the JLM’s wording

Academic and activist Jonathan Rosenhead argued in an analysis on Friday that the compromise motion agreed by Labour’s national executive “is certainly not the Jewish Labour Movement’s wording, and does not have its very direct and specific targeting of anti-Semitism.”

Bob Pitt, an ex-researcher for former Labour mayor of London Ken Livingstone has also argued that the Jewish Labour Movement was “forced to accept a compromise which fell short of conceding their most dangerous and objectionable demand.”

The full text of the compromise rule change was obtained by left-wing Labour blog The Skwawkbox.
Comparing the rule change to the Jewish Labour Movement’s original text reveals it has been substantially watered down by the national executive.

Rules for Israel

The Jewish Labour Movement has removed from its website the text of its original proposal, but archived copiesof the document can be found online.
It can be read in full below.

The original Jewish Labour Movement proposal would have allowed the party to discipline members accused of anti-Semitism in cases “where the victim or anyone else think it was motivated by hostility” towards Jews.

In other words, one politically motivated false accusation of anti-Semitism is all it would have taken for a Labour Party member to be expelled.

This most damaging clause has been removed from the compromise version which will be voted on at conference.

The Jewish Labour Movement also argued that its original proposal would have rendered it unacceptable “to use Zionism as a term of abuse.”

Zionism is the Israeli state’s official ideology, which advocates a “Jewish state” in Palestine, a country with a historic non-Jewish majority.

The Jewish Labour Movement is constitutionally committed to Zionism and is involved in the World Zionist Organization. The latter group is strongly involved in the ongoing colonization of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank by Israeli settlers.

A time of change

The rule change on anti-Semitism comes as party delegates will vote on sweeping reforms to the party’s governance, that left-wing trade union activist Michael Calderbank argues would represent “a significant step forward in empowering party members.”

But he cautioned that while the compromise on the proposed rule change may spare the party under leader Jeremy Corbyn from “being engulfed in controversy over its willingness to tackle accusations of anti-Semitism, it may also embolden Jewish Labour Movement supporters to push for a new round of disciplinary action targeted at those who have caused controversy on the left.”

The Jewish Labour Movement has been one of the main groups on the right of the Labour Party promoting a false “anti-Semitism crisis” narrative since Corbyn was elected in 2015.

This resulted in a witch hunt of members who had in reality done little more than criticize Israel or defend Palestinian rights.

proposedrulechange-constitutionalamendment.pdf by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

Remembering 1982 Sabra-Chatila massacre

22 September 2017

In September 1982, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his Defence Minister Ariel Sharon, god fathers of Jewish terrorism in the Middle East, invaded Lebanon to drive out the Palestine Liberation Organisation-PLO

Prominent journalist and historian Peter Mansfield said” after massive air raids, Israel launched a full scale invasion of Lebanon, and slaughtered thousands of civilians and terrorized the population. Backed by United States and Europe, Israel    contemptuously dismissed   UN - super power tool to implement their evil designs.

Columnist Maureen Abdullah said ‘as Beirut was bombed by air, land and sea and   the world watched the wanton destruction beneath the relentless gaze of television.

Veteran British journalist Robert Fisk who covered the war said in his book Pity the Nation, that most of the victims were Muslims. The Muslim cemetery was so crowded with dead from the Israeli raids that corpses were being buried thirty feet deep in mass graves, one on top of the other. Bodies in decay were disgusting. The smell of human remains in 100 degrees of heat nauseating and it contradicts our most deeply held values - love, beauty, gentleness, health, cleanliness, hygiene and life.

According to the Red Cross, by the end of   second week,   14,000, mainly civilians, were killed and 20,000 wounded. But the most horrific toll of casualties was in the Muslim areas of West Beirut where 2,461 were killed by the Israeli raids which also killed hundreds of others in many villages along the Litany River.

The air raids and massacres continued as Israel demanded complete surrender of the PLO whose forces were trapped in Beirut. Israel also began using the US supplied destructive cluster bombs against West Beirut where the mournful exodus of citizens continued.

Finally PLO formally announced its decision to leave Beirut and the Zionist invaders cut off power and water supply to West Beirut. No food was allowed in and the Israeli troops even grabbed baskets of food from Muslim women and threw them into the ditch. Phalanges militiamen grabbed two bottles of water from a 65 or 70 year old woman, smashing them saying “F...k your sister” in front of four Israeli soldiers, who laughed shabra 3

Journalist Jim Muir described the invasion as an Israeli American war crimes with the Americans trying to reap the fruits of the Israeli invasion.

In the midst the Israeli-backed Christian militiamen massacred the entire population of Sabra and Chatila Palestinian refugee camps despite written assurances of US envoy Philip Habib and European countries ensuring the protection of the Palestinian civilians.

Robert Fisk, accompanied by two more journalists Loren Jenkins, an American, and Tveit, a Norwegian, who visited the camp on 18 September 1982 morning had this to say about the massacre;
“All of us wanted to vomit. We were breathing death, inhaling the very putrescence of the bloated. There were women lying in houses with their skirts torn up to their waists and their legs wide apart.

Children with their throats cut, rows of young men shot in the back after being lined up at an execution wall. There were babies - blackened babies because they had been slaughtered more than 24 hours earlier and their small bodies were already in a state of decomposition - tossed into rubbish heaps alongside discarded US army ration tins, Israeli army medical equipment and empty bottles of whisky. Walking across the muddy entrance of Chatila we found that these buildings had all been dynamited to the ground.

Down the lane way there laid a pile of corpses: young men whose arms and legs had been wrapped around each other in the agony of death; all had been shot at point blank range through the cheek, the bullet tearing away a line of flesh up to the ear and entering the brain. Some had vivid crimson or black scars down the left side of their throats. One had been castrated, his trousers torn open and a settlement of flies throbbing over his torn intestines. The eyes of the young men were all open. The youngest was only twelve or thirteen years old and the bodies began to bloat in heat. On the other side of the main road we found the bodies of women and several children. The corpse of the middle aged women lay draped over a pile of rubble. One lay on her back, her dress torn open and the head of a little girl emerging from behind her. Another child lay on the roadway like a discarded doll, her white dress stained with mud and dust. She could not have been more than three years old and her head been blown away by a bullet fired into her brain. One of the women also had a tiny baby to her body and the bullet that had passed through her breast had killed the baby too. Someone had slit open the woman’s stomach, cutting sideways and then upwards, perhaps trying to kill her unborn child. Her eyes were wide open, her dark face frozen in horror.

They saw a young, pretty woman lying on her back as if she was sunbathing in the heat and the blood running from her back was still wet. The Israeli backed murderers who raped and knifed the woman have just left.

The real massacre began with mass killings on 17 September 1982 Friday afternoon watched from the nearby stadium by the Israelis and Ariel Sharon. Most of those murdered were secretly and hurriedly buried in mass graves beneath the golf course between Chatila and the airport with bulldozers brought well in time for the purpose to cover up the crime. The other bodies found in Chatila were buried near the entrance to the camp amidst great grief and nauseating stench.

Shocked by the crime many countries asked how the Jews who have suffered so terribly under Hitler could be so heartless to commit such atrocities.
shabra 4

Sick of Begin-Sharon crimes even the Israelis came out on demonstrations demanding their resignations .Professor Yeshayahu Leibotvitz of the Hebrew University, the Editor of Encyclopaedia Hebraica said “the massacre was done by us. The Phalangists are our mercenaries exactly as the Ukrainians and the Croatians and the Slovakians were the mercenaries of Hitler, who organised them as soldiers to do the work for him. Even so we have organised the assassins of Lebanon in order to murder the Palestinians”.

As a result of the Israeli invasion almost 17,825 were killed.

Despite all these crimes against humanity no action was taken against Israel by UN or anyone. Instead Jewish power and its iron grip on US, UK and Europe was such that this very same terrorist Menachem Begin, the architect of this massacre, was awarded Nobel Prize for peace. This is the shameful state of affairs in the current international scene.

In Israel, governments and prime ministers may change. But their policies towards Palestinians remain unchanged. To date they continue their oppressive policies against Palestinians, deprive them even the basic human rights to live in their own soil, continue to kill Palestinians on a daily basis, imprison and torture Palestinians, grab Palestinian lands for setting up Jewish settlements and demolish Palestinian homes to quote a few crimes.

Thirty five years later today Israel remains the very same evil and cruel entity protected and promoted by US-UK, France and Russia while equally cruel and evil Arab dictators, abandoned Palestinians, abandoned their dignity and self-respect, sold their people to US-UK European and Israeli war mongers, now   shamelessly embrace Israel to ensure their political survival.

Here in Sri Lanka ruling elements who only want Muslim votes and not the Muslim community dismiss Muslim sentiments in hob knobbing with Israel. Late President J.R.Jayawardene brought Israelis to fight Tamil militancy .However demonstrating their inherent treachery Israelis trained both Sri Lankan government forces and the Tamil militants in the same area and at the same time without letting government forces and Tamil militants know what was going on.

Once again the defeated President Mahinda Rajapaksa, so called champion of    Palestinian cause, brought in Israel to fight LTTE in its final war. This policy continued under Maithri-Ranil government which in fact has thrown the door wide open to Israel despite its crimes against humanity and known anti-Muslim agenda.

The government is so pro-Israel that President Maithripla Sirisena even visited Holocaust Museum in Germany, symbol of Zionist deception to win international sympathy’.

They are here with their own global agenda to demonise Islam and destroy the Muslim community.
Sinhala racists whose hatred towards the island’s Muslims is common knowledge   cultivate relations with Israel .Perhaps Israel may be helping in their evil agenda against the island’s Muslims.

Mainstream Sri Lankan media doesn’t want to highlight true face of Israel and its crimes and the plight of Palestinians under Israeli occupation. In doing so they   fail to provide   the true picture on   Middle East politics.
shabra crime

Corrupted Muslim politicians too remain indifferent as positions and perks are more important to them than the interest of the community or the country. There are plenty of signs of communal harmony coming under strain and it is matter of time the country pays its price for the folly of permitting Israel and giving a free hand to implement its agenda here. Ends

Syria opposition activist and journalist daughter found dead in Istanbul

Orouba Barakat and Halla Barakat suffered stab wounds to the neck

Orouba Barakat and Halla Barakat were prominent activists against the government of Bashar al-Assad (screengrab from social media)

Amandla Thomas-Johnson-Friday 22 September 2017

A senior Syrian opposition activist and her daughter have been found dead at their apartment in Istanbul.

Orouba Barakat, who has been an opponent of the ruling Baath party since the 80s, and her only child, journalist Halla Barakat, were found dead in the early hours of this morning with stab wounds to the neck.

Friends raised the alarm after being unable to reach them by telephone. Turkish police then arrived at their apartment in the Uskudar district on the Asian side of Istanbul to find them dead.

Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Turkey has become home to almost three million Syrian refugees, many of them opponents of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Orouba Barakat's sister Shaza also confirmed the deaths in a Facebook post, saying the two "were assassinated at the hands of injustice and tyranny".

"Orouba wrote headlines on the first page and she pursued criminals and exposed them. Her name and her daughter's name, Hala, now made first page headlines.”

She said her sister had opposed the Assad regime from the 80s going back to the rule of Bashar al-Assad's father Hafez.

The Yeni Safak daily said Orouba, 60, had carried out investigations into alleged torture in prisons run by the Assad government.

It said she had initially lived in Britain, then the United Arab Emirates before coming to Istanbul.

Halla Barakat, 22, was working for a website called Orient News and had also for a time for Turkish state broadcaster TRT. She was an American-Syrian national.

Her cousin, Deah Barakat, was one of three Muslim students killed as part of the Chapel Hill shooting in the United States in 2015.

Razan Saffour, a journalist and a friend of Halla, said the family had been threatened by Syrian government supporters before and that the Syrian journalist community in Istanbul were "shocked" at the killings.

"In Istanbul there are a lot more opposition members and senior journalists who have more influence. We’re just shocked that they were killed."

“That it happened in a compound is more shocking. They took precautions to live in a compound.”

Another friend who has asked to remain anonymous said that “they never had fear”.

“Everywhere she [Halla] went, she always wore the Syrian revolution flag. All she ever shared on Facebook was revolutionary-related. She wouldn't even share her personal moments of happiness. They knew what they stood for. They never had fear.”

“What’s horrifying about this is that not only did they target a woman and their daughter, it was at home and was a stabbing. It takes it to a whole new level.”

Syrian activist Rami Jarrah wrote on Facebook that the family believes the killing could be due to Orouba's opposition activities.

Previous killings

Syrian opposition activists and journalists have repeatedly complained of threats to their security.

In October 2015, Syrian journalists Ibrahim Abdul Qader and Fares Hamidi from the city of Raqqa were beheaded in the Turkish town of Urfa. They had worked with the group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently to document human rights abuses committed by Islamic State in the city.

Naji Jerf was called 'Uncle' by Syrian activists for training young reporters (Facebook)

In the same year Naji Jerf, a prominent Syrian journalist known for his opposition to both President Bashar al-Assad and Islamic State, was shot dead in the Turkish town of Gaziantep.

Philippines’ Duterte tells cops to kill his son if involved in illegal drugs

2017-09-07T060357Z_238526389_RC13ECF4F820_RTRMADP_3_PHILIPPINES-DRUGS-940x580

A lawyer whispers to Paolo Duterte, Davao's Vice Mayor and son of President Rodrigo Duterte, during a Senate hearing on drug smuggling in Pasay, Metro Manila, Philippines, September 7, 2017. Source: Reuters

PHILIPPINE President Rodrigo Duterte on Wednesday said he has instructed the police to kill his son if he is found to be involved in the illicit drug trade, local media reported.

“My order was: If there’s any of my children into drugs, kill them, so the people can’t say anything against me,” he said in a speech during the awarding outstanding government workers and groups in the presidential palace.

The president’s order came in wake of allegations against his son, Davao City Vice Mayor Paolo Duterte’s, alleged ties to people caught over a shipment of drugs from China recently.

An opposition politician, Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV alleged the oldest son was a member of the Chinese drug triad, the Philippine Inquirer reported.

Duterte responded to the allegations by assuring that his son would not be spared if he was caught up in the controversial war on drugs, which has claimed the lives of thousands in the span of a year.

“The better. So that I can say to people: There, you keep talking. There’s my son’s corpse,” Duterte said.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, left-wing activists and political opponents of the President held rallies to warn against what they see as the emergence of a dictatorship under the no-nonsense but hugely popular leader.

Politicians, indigenous people, church leaders, businessmen, and leftists marched, staged rallies and attended masses to denounce Duterte, accusing him of abuses and authoritarianism similar to that of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

SEE ALSO: Philippines: Duterte’s eldest son denies links to $125 million drug shipment

The events were to mark the 45th anniversary of the declaration of martial law under Marcos, which lasted nine years and is remembered by many Filipinos as brutal and oppressive.

Vice President Leni Robredo appeared at a mass at the University of the Philippines, traditionally a hotbed of political activism, and was due to appear at a rally of the opposition Liberal Party she leads.

Robredo, who was not Duterte’s running mate, said Filipinos born after the Marcos era should not be complacent and should recognise signs of “rising tyranny”.

“If we do not remember the past, we are condemned to repeat it,” she said in a statement. “Sadly those who are deceived do not even know that they are walking a doomed path.”

Marcos declared martial law in 1972, a year ahead of elections in which he was ineligible to run, and held power for 14 years until his removal in a bloodless, army-backed “people’s power” uprising.

2017-09-15T072400Z_1706724880_RC1DB552F410_RTRMADP_3_PHILIPPINES-PROTEST

Protesters burn effigies of U.S. President Donald Trump and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to express their outrage over what they say is the increasing intervention of the United States in the ongoing war in Marawi city, southern Philippines, during a protest outside the U.S. embassy in metro Manila, Philippines Sept 15, 2017.

He abolished democratic institutions and was accused of killing, torturing and “disappearing” thousands of opponents.

Duterte has expressed admiration for Marcos several times and his fiercest critics are alarmed by the former mayor’s autocratic rhetoric and his disdain for those who oppose him.

However, many millions are drawn to Duterte’s down-to-earth style, his decisiveness and his imperfections, and see him as a champion of ordinary Filipinos and the country’s best hope for the long overdue change that presidents from the political elite failed to bring.

Duterte declared Thursday a holiday for government workers and schools to give them a chance to protest against him. Several thousand demonstrators took the opportunity to gather separately to show their support for him.

The anti-Duterte demonstrators were not rallying in the same place or around a single issue. Some denounced his ferocious war on drugs that has killed thousands of Filipinos, while others railed against what they see as his cosy relationship with the still-powerful Marcos family.

SEE ALSO: Philippines human rights commission gets only $20 from Duterte’s congress

Others complained about his pro-China stance, his threats to impose martial law nationwide and destruction in southern Marawi City by airstrikes targeting Islamist militants, using US military bombs and technical support.

“The people have not forgotten and will not allow a repeat of Marcosian rule,” said Renato Reyes, leader of the leftist Bayan (Nation) group.

Reyes decried widespread human rights violations under the government’s “fascist” war on drugs, and for letting the US military involvement in Philippine security issues.

Demonstrators also planned to burn an effigy of Duterte on a throne, modeled on the evil character “Night King” in the popular television series “Game of Thrones”.

Additional reporting by Reuters

UN human rights experts want end to unilateral sanctions and world bank immunity-The writer’s book, Mission Impossible: Geneva is now available

By SANJA DE SILVA JAYATILLEKA-September 21, 2017, 10:23 pm

Most Sri Lankans hear about the UN Human Rights Council only when it passes resolutions on Sri Lanka. Therefore it is regarded with suspicion and some people either want Sri Lanka to leave it or want it gone altogether with the entire United Nations. To them, it looks like all it does is pick on small countries in a biased way and make matters worse.

However, the UN Human Rights Council is far from our enemy. It is tasked with the promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development. It is made up of a certain number of member states of the United Nations with the others able to participate and contribute despite the absence of voting rights. Unlike at the UN Security Council, no state has a veto at the UNHRC. Its composition is representative of the distribution of the world’s population and therefore the majority of members are from the Asia-Pacific, Latin American and African regions. And it has taken many bold and progressive steps in fulfilling its mandated tasks.

Unilateral Sanctions

At the currently ongoing September 2017 session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, a report on the impact of unilateral sanctions was presented at its request. The Special Rapporteur(an independent expert appointed by the Council) on Unilateral Coercive Methods, Idriss Jazairy,has called for a declaration by States that "unilateral coercive measures involving extraterritorial application of domestic measures are unlawful under international law."

Unilateral sanctions are imposed by individual States acting on their own and outside a multilateral forum such as that of the United Nations. Only the very powerful States can ensure compliance with their sanctions and the United States is one of them. Countries which are targeted for sanctions have little chance of challenging them. Most often, in those countries, it is the people who suffer, not the alleged perpetrators (invariably their leaders), who are sought to be punished through these sanctions.

Now it has been recognized that such sanctions are unlawful. The report presented to the Council calls for their abolition and urges States to give precedence to other means of peaceful settlement of disputes in keeping with the Charter of the United Nations and in accordance with international law.

One of the countries highlighted in this report as a target of unilateral sanctions by the United States is Cuba. It indicates that the US did not have the endorsement of the international community for the sanctions against Cuba and in fact condemned it at the UN General Assembly, every year since 1992. It says "Since 1992, the General Assembly has annually voiced its condemnation of the extraterritorial reach of the embargo imposed on Cuba by the United States." Most often, the US had only a handful of countries voting with it and in 2016, under President Barak Obama, even the US abstained, making it 191 in favor, none opposed and two abstentions.Despite the repeated resolutions at the UN General Assembly, the US sanctions against Cuba have remained.

At the UN Human Rights Council this month, the Special Rapporteur has proposed that States imposing such sanctions should be made accountable: "…such action entails the legal accountability of targeting States for measures affecting negatively the enjoyment of human rights of the affected populations."

For the first time, a United Nations expert has begun the process of evaluating the impact of sanctions on the general population of the targeted countries. While General Assembly resolutions have had no impact, this initiative by the UN Human Rights Council is likely to make the world more aware of the plight of those most affected and demarcate a clear path for redress.

To this end, the Special Rapporteur recommends that an ad hoc compensation commission should be established under the UN for victims of those sanctions to ensure accountability and availability of remedies and redress until a proper judicial review is undertaken of unilateral sanctions.

The Special Rapporteur’s report criticizes the United States for applying its domestic sanctions law to "foreign persons and institutions". It gives the example of sanctions against financial institutions "for having engaged in financial transactions initiated outside the United States that do not comply with the country’s sanctions regimes…"The report also warns that the United Kingdom is also in the process of introducing legislation "displaying the same features, albeit in a more limited form".

The EU however has adopted a ‘blocking statute’ which prohibits EU companies from complying with "extraterritorial sanctions imposed by the United States". The EU agrees that unilateral sanctions are unlawful. The report says that the EU has declared that it "will refrain from adopting legislative instruments having extra-territorial application in breach of international law."

A vast majority of UN member states regard extraterritorial sanctions as unlawful. This includes Japan, Canada and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

If these proposals are adopted at the Council, it would be yet another bold step towards the promotion and protection of human rights. In a world where the powerful rule, this initiative of the UN Human Rights Council and the report of its Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights, Ambassador IdrissJazairy, is a welcome one.

The World Bank

At the same (currently ongoing) session of the Council, the World Bank has come under the scrutiny of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, Alfred de Zayas.

He was requested by the Council to report on his research into how the policies pursued by international organizations and institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF impacted on a democratic and equitable international order. In his report,the Independent Expert states that some believe that these institutions have a greater impact on the world order than the UN General Assembly and the ECOSOC combined.

Until now, it seemed as if the World Bank and the IMF were somehow above the law since they were huge international financial institutions. Many of their projects around the world have impacted on the local populations negatively, but few have found ways of making them accountable for the consequences of the projects they support or finance, nor to make their views heard.

Of the many studies undertaken on the impact of the World Bank on Human Rights, one that the expert’s report quotes is that ofthe Indian Law Resource Centre. In a 2009 study their"scholars refuted the argument that the international financial institutions are somehow above the law and that they only have to honour their charters and constitutions."

In a critique of the World Bank, the Independent Expert says that the World Bank understands "development" to mean growth in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), increased trade and greater consumption. As inequalities between States and within States increase, he says observers have suggested that development should be defined in terms such as "a more equitable distribution of wealth, food security, clean water, sanitation, health care, housing."

Going further, the Independent Expert questions whether the World Bank should continue to have immunity from litigations in domestic courts over the negative impact of its policies on local populations. He recommends waiver of institutional immunity granted to the World Bank when gross violations of human rights have occurred as a result of projects resulting from its loan practices and lack of due diligence, "in a similar way as Head of State immunity was loosened since the Pinochet arrest warrant in 1998".

In a chilling reminder of the power of these huge international institutions, the Independent Expert goes on to recommend urgent steps to protect those who have dared to complain against them. He recommends addressing as a matter of urgency," risk of reprisals and other security risks" linked to thosecritical of World Bank projects.

He includes in his statement the importance of safeguarding the functioning of the State in any disputes with entities carrying out World Bank projects. He advises the Board of Governors of the World Bank to ensure that the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes must "refrain from interfering with the ontological functions of the State, which are to regulate in the public interest". He also says that the International Centre for Settlement of Disputes should not lend its services to litigation that "puts the functions of the State into question".

This report, together with the report on the IMF to be presented to the General Assembly by him,should go a long way towards holding these two powerful institutions accountable for their actions. The United Nations Human Rights Council has embarked on achieving a difficult and long overdue task which could only serve to further the cause of human rights.