New Global Survey Analyzes War and Human Rights

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New Global Survey Analyzes War and Human Rights

(London, January 26, 2004) -- The invasion of Iraq ended the reign of a
brutal government, but coalition leaders are wrong to characterize it as a
humanitarian intervention, Human Rights Watch said in the keynote essay of
its annual global survey released today.

The 407-page World Report 2004: Human Rights and Armed Conflict includes
fifteen essays on a variety of subjects related to war and human rights, from
Africa to Afghanistan, from sexual violence as a method to warfare to the new
trends in post-conflict international justice.

"Waging war is no excuse for ignoring human rights," said Kenneth Roth,
executive director of Human Rights Watch. "In 2003, we saw too many
governments invoke the demands of warfare to excuse their own misdeeds."

In a departure from past practice, the World Report 2004 does not include
summaries of human rights events in the more than 70 countries where Human
Rights Watch works. Instead, up-to-date information on those countries has
been posted at www.hrw.org.

Armed conflicts this year posed a particularly salient challenge to human
rights - and not only the armed conflict in Iraq. One essay documents how
human rights abuse in the war in Chechnya, which Russian authorities now
justify as their contribution to the global war on terror, is being
thoroughly ignored by European and other governments. A more hopeful entry on
Africa's "forgotten wars" analyzes efforts by regional leaders, especially in
the recently formed African Union, to take a more active role in curbing
armed conflict and human rights abuses. Those efforts may bring renewed
energy and increased resources to address devastating conflicts in the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), West Africa, and Sudan, among others.

Three essays examine human rights issues in the wake of war. Allied forces
are "losing the peace" in Afghanistan, according to one essay, because they
are ceding control of the country outside the capital Kabul to brutal
warlords. An essay on the former Yugoslavia shows how continuing insecurity,
failures of justice, and employment discrimination serve as barriers to
return of refugees and the displaced. As a result, "ethnic cleansing" remains
substantially in place in many areas.

The imperative of justice for war crimes, and the difficulty of achieving it,
are highlighted in an essay surveying international justice efforts to date
and how best to consolidate gains going forward.

An essay on the war against terror in the United States argues that the Bush
administration is trying to shield a broad range of executive actions on
national security from the kind of judicial review that is essential to
protecting human rights.

Three of the essays focus on the way war is conducted, in particular the
growing international effort to restrict the use of cluster munitions and the
use of child soldiers, as well as to punish states that sell weapons to known
human rights abusers. A fourth essay examines the question of how the U.S.
government is applying "war rules" to the counter-terrorism effort in order
to give itself more leeway to deny suspected terrorists their rights; in
fact, the more restrictive "police rules" of law enforcement should be
followed in many cases.

An essay on "resource wars" argues that the role of corrupt governments is
often overlooked in analyses of how precious commodities such as oil and
diamonds provoke rebel groups into launching civil wars.

In the keynote essay, Roth notes that removing Saddam Hussein from power
brought about the end of one of the world's most abusive governments. But
intervening militarily on the territory of a sovereign state, without its
permission, is inherently dangerous and must be undertaken for humanitarian
purposes in only the most extreme cases. While Saddam Hussein had an
atrocious human rights record, his worst atrocities were committed long
before the intervention. At the time coalition forces invaded Iraq, there was
no ongoing or imminent mass killing of the sort that would require the kind
of preventive military action that should characterize true humanitarian
interventions.

For a military action to be characterized as "humanitarian," Roth argues that
the motive for intervening should be primarily humanitarian; the danger of
slaughter should be imminent and the scale of the killings massive; and all
other options for preventing the slaughter should have been exhausted.

"The Bush administration cannot justify the war in Iraq as a humanitarian
intervention, and neither can Tony Blair," said Roth. "Saddam Hussein's
atrocities should certainly be punished, and his worst atrocities, such as
the 1988 genocide against the Kurds, would have justified humanitarian
intervention then. But such interventions should be reserved for stopping an
imminent or ongoing slaughter. They shouldn't be used belatedly, to address
atrocities that were ignored in the past."

The volume's final essay finds that the human rights movement has come a long
way since Human Rights Watch was founded 25 years ago, yet many of its gains
are threatened under the cover of an endless and boundary-less war on terror.
The essay argues that the movement must demonstrate that "support for
terrorism feeds off repression, injustice, inequality and lack of
opportunity," and that the "global security is thus enhanced by the success
of open societies that foster respect for the rule of law, promote tolerance,
and guarantee people's rights of free expression and peaceful dissent."

Human Rights Watch World Report 2004: Human Rights and Armed Conflict is
available at: http://hrw.org/wr2k4/