UN Report : Human Rights Situation in Iraq Remains Fragile

[UN OHCHR logo. Image from ohchr.org] [UN OHCHR logo. Image from ohchr.org]

UN Report : Human Rights Situation in Iraq Remains Fragile

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following press release was issued on August 8, 2011, by the UN Assistantce Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the latest report documenting human rights violations in Iraq in 2010.]

Human Rights Situation in Iraq Remains Fragile – UN Report

BAGHDAD/GENEVA – A UN report into the human rights situation in Iraq over the course of 2010 has warned that armed violence and “silent” human rights violations continue to affect large sectors of the population. 

The report, released today by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), studies a range of human rights issues, including the impact of armed conflict and violence on civilians, detention and the rule of law, and protection of the rights of specific groups. The report also covers the state of political rights in the country, including freedom of assembly and expression. It noted that while there was improvement in some areas, many challenges remain. 

“Widespread poverty, economic stagnation, lack of opportunities, environmental degradation and an absence of basic services constitute ‘silent’ human rights violations that affect large sectors of the population,” the report notes. 

“Armed violence continued to impact negatively on civilian infrastructure,” the report notes, adding that such violence not only leads to arbitrary loss of life and injury, but also limits access to other basic rights, including the right to access basic humanitarian services, and the rights of assembly, freedom of expression and freedom of religion. 

According to UNAMI and Government estimates, around 3,000 civilians were killed in ongoing violence in 2010, largely perpetrated by armed insurgents and terrorist groups. Members of minorities, women and children continue to suffer disproportionately from indiscriminate and targeted violence. Significant problems remain with law enforcement and the administration of justice, especially in relation to the provision and respect for due process and fair trial rights. While the report noted some improvement in the physical conditions of many detention facilities and prisons, incidents of abuse and torture remain widely reported. An over-reliance on confessions to convict encourages an environment where the torture of detainees takes place, the report notes. 

“Ending impunity also remains a serious challenge in Iraq,” the report states. “Perpetrators of crimes committed over many years continue to be unaccountable. A number of mass graves were discovered during the year containing the victims of various human rights abuses committed at various times over the past few decades.” 

The report also notes that women’s rights in some ways deteriorated in 2010 and children continue to suffer from violence and armed conflict, in some instances having been recruited or used to commit acts of violence.  Minorities suffered from a number of attacks. 

“The human rights situation throughout Iraq remains fragile,” the report notes. The report also makes a number of recommendations to address the enormous challenges that the Government and people of Iraq are facing. 

Information for the report was gathered from direct monitoring by UNAMI as well as from a variety of other sources, including Government, UN Agencies, civil society and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). 

END

The full report is available in English and Arabic at http://bit.ly/nvDt6r.

OHCHR Country Page – Iraq: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Countries/MENARegion/Pages/IQIndex.aspx

For more information or interviews, please contact:

In Baghdad: Director of Public Information/Spokesperson, United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq- Email: achouri@un.org

In Geneva: Rupert Colville, Spokesperson for the High Commissioner for Human Rights (+ 41 22 917 9767, rcolville@ohchr.org ) or press officer Xabier Celaya (+ 41 22 917 9383 or xcelaya@ohchr.org )
 

[Click here to read the full UN Assistantce Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) report.]

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412