Category: Legal-Judicial

The United Nations’ independent expert on human rights in the Central African Republic says the government and its Russian allies should stop obstructing investigations.

The U.N.’s Yao Agbetse says the C.A.R. military and Russian mercenaries prevent access for U.N. investigators and are believed responsible for nearly half the country’s rights violations.

Clashes are still going on in the Central African Republic countryside, where the national army and Russian mercenaries are chasing the rebels who attacked the capital of Bangui last year.

During the past four months, at least 229 civilians have died, according to a recent U.N. report. But that figure could be underestimated, because U.N. investigators are prevented from accessing sites of various alleged crimes.

The U.N. recently sent Agbetse to Bangui with a message for the Central African government: Draw a red line that allies cannot cross, he said. If U.N. investigators are impeded from accessing places where violations could have been committed, he added, the assumption is that the government doesn’t want the truth to be known.

The U.N. said it documented at least 4 cases of mass executions since October, mostly around mining sites.

When asked why the C.A.R. government is blocking access to the sites, presidential spokesperson Albert Yaloke Mokpeme questioned why the U.N. has been in the country for eight years, but failed to protect them from attack.

He also said that for years the rebels illegally occupied ore deposits and exploited them to buy weapons, so his government acted accordingly.

When asked again why the government is impeding access to the sites, Mokpeme said, “We are not preventing anyone from doing their job, but don’t tell us what to do.”

Experts say Russian mercenaries from the private company Wagner Group gain mining contracts in the C.A.R. in exchange for their military support.

Wagner Group is widely believed to have links to the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Russian government has denied any such link.

Source: Voice of America

As the Sahel region “stares down a horrendous food crisis”, the UN emergency food relief chief warned on Wednesday that the number of people on the brink of starvation has “increased almost tenfold” over the past three years and “displacement by nearly 400 per cent”.

The vast Sahel, which runs nearly the breadth of the continent, south of the Sahara Desert, is experiencing some of its driest conditions in years.

“An absolute crisis is unfolding before our eyes”, WFP Executive Director David Beasley said from Benin, having just visited the agency’s operations in Niger and Chad.

Insecurity, poverty, inflation

In just three years, the number of people facing starvation has skyrocketed from 3.6 to 10.5 million, in the Sahelian nations of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.

And insecurity, COVID-induced poverty, dramatic food cost increases and other compounding factors, have put those countries and others in the region, on a trajectory that would surpass any previous crises.

“I’ve been talking with families who have been through more than you can possibly imagine”, Mr. Beasley said. “They have been chased from their homes by extremist groups, starved by drought and plunged into despair by COVID’s economic ripple effects”.

Rock bottom support

While the needs are sky high, resourcing to support the vulnerable is at rock bottom, forcing WFP into the difficult position of having to take from the hungry, to feed the starving, he said.

For example, funding shortages in Niger mean that WFP is halving food rations.

The UN food relief agency requires $470 million for the next six months to continue operations in the Sahel.

Despite a challenging security context, last year WFP worked with humanitarian partners there to maintain lifesaving support for 9.3 million people across the five countries.

Helping to change lives

WFP has also been implementing resilience-building programmes to help families thrive.

Over the last three years, it has partnered with communities to turn 270,000 acres of barren Sahel fields into productive agricultural and pastoral land, changing the lives of over 2.5 million people.

Communities that have benefited from the resilience building activities there, have been empowered to grow enough food to feed themselves and diversify their productions and income – faring relatively better against the unprecedented food crisis.

Conflict across borders

Meanwhile, the threat of conflict spilling across from neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger is leaving Benin on tenterhooks.

And despite that the Government-funded school-feeding programme – jointly implemented by WFP – provides nutritious meals to 700,000 children and has been vital for creating jobs and strengthening the local economy, Mr. Beasley warned that the situation remains dire.

“We’re running out of money, and these people are running out of hope,” he said.

Source: United Nation

WASHINGTON —

The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a blow to President Joe Biden on Thursday, blocking his mandate that employees of large businesses be vaccinated against COVID-19 or face weekly testing.

At the same time, the nation’s highest court allowed a vaccination mandate for health care workers at facilities receiving federal funding.

“I am disappointed that the Supreme Court has chosen to block common-sense life-saving requirements for employees at large businesses that were grounded squarely in both science and the law,” Biden said in a statement.

The president welcomed the requirement that health care workers be vaccinated, saying it would affect some 10 million people working at facilities receiving federal funds and will “save lives.”

But Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida said the court’s ruling “sends a clear message: Biden is not a king & his gross overreaches of federal power will not be tolerated.”

“I had COVID & got the vaccine, but I will NEVER support a vaccine mandate that bullies hardworking Americans & kills jobs,” Scott said via Twitter.

After months of public appeals to Americans to get vaccinated against the virus that causes COVID-19, which has killed more than 845,000 people in the United States, Biden announced in September that he was making vaccinations compulsory at large private companies.

Under the mandate, unvaccinated employees would have to present weekly negative tests and wear face masks at work.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), a federal agency, gave businesses until February 9 to be in compliance with the rules or face the possibility of fines.

But the Supreme Court’s six conservative justices ruled the mandate would represent a “significant encroachment into the lives — and health — of a vast number of employees.”

“Although Congress has indisputably given OSHA the power to regulate occupational dangers, it has not given that agency the power to regulate public health more broadly,” they said.

“Requiring the vaccination of 84 million Americans, selected simply because they work for employers with more than 100 employees, certainly falls in the latter category,” they added.

The three liberal justices dissented, saying the ruling “stymies the federal government’s ability to counter the unparalleled threat that COVID-19 poses to our nation’s workers.”

The vaccination mandate for health care workers at facilities receiving federal funding was approved in a 5-4 vote, with two conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joining the liberals.

“Ensuring that providers take steps to avoid transmitting a dangerous virus to their patients is consistent with the fundamental principle of the medical profession: first, do no harm,” they said in the majority opinion.

Vaccination has become a politically polarizing issue in the United States, where about 63% of the population is fully vaccinated.

A coalition of 26 business associations had filed suit against the OSHA regulations and several Republican-led states had challenged the mandate for health care workers.

In his statement, Biden said it is now up to states and individual employers to determine whether they should be requiring employees “to take the simple and effective step of getting vaccinated.”

He said the Supreme Court ruling “does not stop me from using my voice as president to advocate for employers to do the right thing to protect Americans’ health and economy.”

“We have to keep working together if we want to save lives, keep people working, and put this pandemic behind us,” he said.

Source: Voice of America

Pope Francis on Wednesday urged governments to combat child labor, saying it was terrible that children who should be playing are instead working as adults or scavenging in garbage dumps for something to sell.

Speaking at his weekly general audience Francis also lamented that in many countries people were being exploited in the unofficial, underground economy, working without benefits or legal protection.

“Let’s think of the victims of work, of children who are forced to work. This is terrible,” he said.

The U.N. International Labour Organization (ILO) said in a report last year that the number of children in labor rose to about 160 million worldwide in 2020.

“Children who are at an age when they should be playing are forced to work like adults. Let’s think of those children, poor little things, who scour in garbage dumps looking for something useful to trade or sell,” the pope said in comments that were mostly improvised.

The ILO report, done with the U.N. children agency UNICEF, said progress to end child labor had stalled for the first time in 20 years at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, reversing a previous downward trend.

He said that lack of work was a “social injustice” and that while charity and handouts for the jobless were important, they filled the stomach but did not dispense dignity.

“Governments must give everyone the possibility of earning their bread because this gives them dignity. Work anoints people with dignity,” he said.

According to the ILO, Africa has the largest number of child workers in the world, with about 72 million, about 43 percent of them doing hazardous work.

At the audience, Francis asked for a moment of silence to remember the unemployed, victims of industrial accidents and those who had taken their own lives after losing their jobs because of the pandemic.

Source: Voice of America

The U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday adopted a resolution to establish an International Commission of Human Rights Experts to investigate allegations of abuses committed by all warring parties in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict.

The resolution passed 21 to 15, with 11 abstentions at the end of a daylong special session to address the grave human rights situation in Ethiopia.

Among those voting against the resolution were China, Cuba, Eritrea, Pakistan, Russia and Venezuela. The European Union, which sponsored the resolution, said an independent investigation is necessary to ensure a transparent and impartial accountability process is put in place.

Speaking earlier in the day, Denmark’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Jeppe Kofod told the council it was Addis Ababa’s responsibility to bring perpetrators of crimes to justice. However, he expressed concern that Ethiopia’s national institutions were not up to the task.

“In order to ensure accountability and to prevent further violations, additional independent, international investigations are necessary,” Kofod said. “This is essential to ensure the timely gathering of evidence, of violations, and of abuses committed and for justice to be served.”

Since Ethiopia’s military attacked the Tigray People’s Liberation Front 13 months ago, human rights violations have escalated at an alarming rate. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, and more than 400,000 are suffering from famine.

The U.N. human rights office accuses all warring factions of gross violations, some amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity. These include extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detentions, sexual- and gender-based violence, torture, and widespread destruction and looting of civilian property.

The resolution calls for the three-member commission to conduct investigations, establish facts, collect and preserve evidence, identify those responsible and provide guidance on transitional justice, including accountability, reconciliation and healing.

The commission’s mandate is for one year, renewable as necessary.

In a statement issued after the vote, the Ethiopian government denounced the resolution as being politically motivated. It accused the council of double standards and of meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign state under the pretext of human rights. It said it would not cooperate with the established mechanism imposed upon it against its consent.

Source: Voice of America