The All-Party Parliamentary Human Rights Group (PHRG), and Human Rights Watch organised this event to highlight the major international human rights concerns which emerged from Human Rights Watch’s research in 2014, and to inform Parliamentarians and encourage their continued commitment to protecting and promoting human rights abroad.
The PHRG is would like to thanks Ann Clwyd MP for chairing this event.
The audience heard from the following speakers:
- David Mepham, UK Director, Human Rights Watch (“DM”)
- Benjamin Ward, Deputy Director, Europe & Central Asia Division, HRW (“BW”)
- Anneke Van Woundenberg, Advocacy Director for Africa, HRW (“AVW”)
- The key points raised by the speakers were as follows:
- In Egypt, the human rights situation is worse now than it has been for a generation. Of particular concern are the cases of mass detention and arrest. (DM)
- In Bahrain there has been a continued clampdown on freedom of expression and on human rights defenders. (DM)
- There are fears of Myanmar’s reform process stalling and continuing concerns about the plight of the Rohingya population. (DM)
- In Europe, 2014 has seen rising intolerance, particularly in connection with minority groups. (BW)
- The thousands who died in 2014 making the crossing by boat from North Africa to Europe is a human tragedy. The withdrawal of humanitarian assistance to these boat migrants cannot be justified on humanitarian grounds. (BW)
- The international community must do more to aid the resettlement of refugees, particularly those from the Syrian conflict. (BW)
- The UK’s membership of the European Court of Human Rights is vital to the Court’s functioning. (BW)
- More must be done to keep the conflict in Central African Republic on the agenda. (AVW)
- Boko Haram’s operations are now transcending borders as attacks become increasingly audacious. There are also concerns about the crimes being committed by Nigerian security forces in response to the Boko Haram insurgency. (AVW)
- The crisis in South Sudan has displaced more than 1.9 million people. Amnesty and Human Rights Watch are amongst few organisations reporting on the conflict there. (AVW)
- There have been increasing restrictions of the political space in certain countries which are championed for their development policies. (AVW)
- More positively, people in Burkina Faso successfully pushed back against the rule of former dictator, Blaise Compaoré when a popular uprising in October forced him from office. (AVW)
During the discussion, Jeremy Corbyn MP raised the human rights situations in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Mexico. Baroness Kinnock also raised human rights concerns in Eritrea, as well as Myanmar.
The full report can be found online at http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2014.
The PHRG will continue to monitor serious violations of human rights around the world and work with Parliamentarians to raise these concerns in the UK Parliament.