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Top stories this week are likely to include: proposed OAS human rights commission reform; OAS meeting underway in Bolivia; Pacific Alliance meeting on Wednesday; Peru-Chile relations; and no end in sight to the anti-mining protests in Peru.
OAS Human Rights Reform Considered: Organization of American States (OAS) member states such as Ecuador and Venezuela are calling for reforms to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the independent human rights organ of the regional body. Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño called for changes such as cutting funding for the OAS special rapporteur on press freedom, warning that the OAS “will disappear” otherwise, which earned the endorsement of Venezuela. Insulza has further called for renegotiation of the IACHR’s statute and procedures including allowing governments to decide how the IACHR monitors them. Last Friday, the Washington Post editorial board responded to these proposals, writing, “It’s not surprising that Venezuela and its allies would push for noxious initiatives, or that Mr. Insulza would serve as their frontman […] Canada and the United States… and their democratic allies should work to ensure that the Insulza proposals are rejected—and that the OAS is perserved as an institution committed to democracy and human rights.”
AQ Editor-in-Chief Christopher Sabatini concurs: “The reasoning behind the proposals that Insulza is bringing to the General Assembly is unclear. What is clear is that their effect would be to whittle away at much of the independent voice of the Commission—the most effective office in the OAS—and he’s doing it by making common cause with some suspect governments."
Developments at the OAS General Assembly: Representatives from the 35 OAS member states are in Cochabamba, Bolivia, from June 3 to 5 for the organization’s 42nd General Assembly. In addition to the IACHR reforms, other issues on the table include Bolivian President Evo Morales’ desire for forward movement in regard to his country’s lack of access to the Pacific Ocean, a longstanding dispute with Chile. Argentina’s leadership wishes to rally hemispheric consensus around its claim to the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands. OAS Secretary-General José Miguel Insulza briefed the assembly that Latin America is still far from achieving the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The UN has set 2015 as its target date for achievement of the MDGs. But expectations for concrete results are not high, notes Sabatini: "The OAS general assembly has become a theater for overreach and meaningless debate."
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Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General José Miguel Insulza will arrive in Ecuador tomorrow to begin discussions with President Rafael Correa over his government’s decision not to participate in last month’s Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia. Insulza will likely also address recent calls by the Ecuadorian government to modify the OAS constitution to reduce U.S. influence within the organization.
Ecuador’s decision to boycott April’s summit in protest over Cuba’s exclusion the meeting comes alongside other recent Ecuadorian complaints, such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights’ (IACHR) request to suspend the defamation sentence against El Universo newspaper. A columnist and three directors of the newspaper have since been pardoned.
Correa has recently said publicly that the only legitimate multilateral organization in Latin America is the Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños (CELAC)—created in Venezuela last year—which excludes the United States and Canada. Additional details of Thursday’s planned meetings have been scarce, with Ecuador’s foreign ministry saying only, “The goal is to maintain a political dialogue on the Organization of American States.”
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The spectacle of two supposed ends of the ideological spectrum—the self-proclaimed socialist Chávez and the neoliberal Fujimori—railing against the IACHR is really not as surprising as it sounds. It’s the common bond of autocratic regimes that want to be free of international scrutiny and the obligations to protect and defend their own citizens that transcends ideology. And for those, the IACHR—which has stood in defense of human rights for over 50 years irrespective of the ideology of the government—makes a logical enemy.
Affiliated with the Organization of American States (OAS), the independent IACHR has defined human rights law and precedence on everything from holding governments accountable for disappearances by military governments during the bloody dictatorships of the 1980s (issuing a groundbreaking report in 1980 in Argentina), to arguing for aligning domestic laws concerning violence against women with international norms (1998), to defending Indigenous rights in land disputes with governments and investors in Nicaragua (1996) and Brazil (2011). Through it all, the IACHR has maintained a steady independence from the political vicissitudes in the region.
In fact, it is the only thing that has really shown any mettle or effectiveness within the inter-American system in recent years.
Because the IACHR lacks the power to enforce its recommendations on the member governments, its authority is moral, based on the regional public shame that comes with failing to uphold the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights (to which, sadly and inexplicably, the U.S. is not a signatory) and the precedence and legitimacy of its history.
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A spokesman for the U.S. State Department said Wednesday “it would be deeply regrettable” if Venezuela were to leave the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). President Hugo Chávez announced on Monday that Venezuela would seek to withdraw from the inter-governmental body, describing it as “a mechanism that the United States uses against us.” The IACHR is an autonomous branch of the Organization of American States tasked with the promotion and protection of human rights in the hemisphere.
Also on Monday, Chávez named various allies to seats on a newly created advisory body, the State Council, and tasked the committee with assessing the process for withdrawal. On Wednesday, the Venezuelan State representative for human rights, Germán Saltrón, argued that the IACHR is biased against Venezuela, and claimed that it endorsed the April 2002 attempted coup to unseat Chávez. Venezuela, said Saltrón, “is a democratic country and no one can come here to claim the moral high ground on human rights.” He added that the withdrawal may take one year.
Speaking to reporters during a daily press briefing yesterday, U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said, “Washington considers the body an effective and unique organization within the hemisphere.” Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL), president of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of Representatives, said that with his proposal to withdraw Venezuela from the body, Chávez “again is trying to silence advocates of human rights throughout the hemisphere… [which] will have widespread negative implications for democracy and fundamental freedoms.” In Americas Quarterly, IACHR Executive Secretary Santiago Canton has called the commission “a crucial tool against injustice—exceeding the imagination of its founders and mak¬ing it a force in the hemisphere and an example in the world.”
Last month, the IACHR released its 2011 annual report, which denounced the Venezuelan government’s political intolerance and violence against unionists, women and rural farmers.
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The Naso indigenous community of
By the same token, however, they are cursed to live in such a beautiful and coveted place. The Naso aren't all that different from many other indigenous groups in
Last month, a small delegation of Naso leaders traveled to
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A Native American group in British Columbia has won a ruling by the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) that will likely lead the federal government to defend its record on indigenous land rights at an international tribunal that the commission will set up later this year.
The Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group, whose traditional territory consisted of nearly 750,000 acres of land on the east coast of Vancouver Island, contends that Canada has continuously violated tribal members’ human rights since it converted the tribe’s land to private property in an 1884 land grant to a railway company. According the group’s website, their goal is to secure the titles to tribal lands and regain control over local resources. The group is also seeking compensation for the territory it claims was illegally taken from its members.
At the heart of the case is the issue of whether the current British Columbia treaty process and Canada's judicial system are effective in protecting Hul'qumi'num land rights. Observers note that the ruling could ultimately change the future of the land claims treaty process in British Columbia and elsewhere in Canada.
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AQ's coverage and post-trip analysis of the President's May 2-4 visit.
