Item 4 Interactive dialogue on the oral briefing of the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia

Hybrid forum where scholars and Tai Ji Men members will discuss the importance of robust parliamentarism in building peaceful, equitable, and inclusive societies as well as transparent and accountable institutions. They will explore the Tai Ji Men case, and iconic case where a democratic Parliament failed to keep rouge bureaucrats in check, while calling for effective parliamentarism to clarify the injustices vested on the spiritual movement and others.

On 13 July 2021, Fernand de Varennes, Special Rapporteur on minority issues, addressed a side-event on the persecution of Ahmadi Muslims Worldwide organised by the International Human Rights Committee and the “Coordination des associations et des particuliers pour la liberté de conscience”, along with colleagues on freedom of religion or belief and on freedom of expression. He pointed out how Ahmadis appear to be increasingly marginalised as minorities in a number of countries, subjected even to severe restrictions on the practice of their religion with other members of their community, and targeted by hate speech in social media. »

Violations of Houthis militias against children in Yemen

The eminent experts here present, that I will introduce to you, will address several issues related to human rights violations in Yemen perpetrated by the Houtis. The purpose is to enlighten us and more important, to alert international bodies on the unbearable humanitarian disaster that has been taking place since 2014 in Yemen, and which makes this country and its people one of the most damaged of the century.

The two NGOs, CAP Liberté de Conscience and Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, co-organized a series of two side events to the 49th session of the UN Human Rights Council on March 22 and March 23, 2022. The themes of the series addressed central topics of society and humankind: freedom of conscience and physical integrity.

Abolitionist and Retentionist States, UN experts, and Civil Society Make a Unified Call for Action to Repeal of the Death Penalty for Apostasy and Blasphemy at the first Hybrid UN Human Rights Council side-event in 2022

We would like to draw the attention of the Council and the Subcommittee on the prevention of torture with regard to the human rights situation in Russia, a country requesting from Montenegro the extradition of a Ukrainian citizen.

We are deeply concerned about the situation in Balochistan which has been monitored for years by the Brussels-based NGO Human Rights Without Frontiers.

It has already depleted the gold, uranium, and other valuable deposits in many parts of Balochistan. Now, the Baloch coast is nearly void of marine life, which has been the backbone of their economy for centuries.

We, the undersigned organizations, with support of more than 7200 organization in the World, urge the Member States of the HRC to pass a strong resolution at the upcoming 49th Session, affirming an international commitment to protect human rights and justice in Sri Lanka, with a particular focus on Tamils victims of Genocide in Sri Lanka.

For many years, Montenegro has expressed its firm intention to become part of the European Union. To become an EU member state, Montenegro will have to implement multiple reforms, fight against corruption, respect human rights and eradicate double standards in the application of legal norms, including in extradition cases.

The challenges from lived experiences came very early to me, the moment I decided to work as an activist for the upliftment of the vulnerable sections of the population. On the one hand, my appointment as a Mayor in Wardak province (which is among the most conservative regions in Afghanistan) was lauded as a significant step in the democratically elected government’s commitment towards women empowerment. At the same time, my mayorship was the beginning of direct confrontation with the country’s conservative forces and the Taliban. In the last two years, I survived three assassination attempts and lost my father and numerous friends, and so many loved ones to the Taliban assassins.

This article states that ‘an act willfully committed by a citizen of Ukraine in the detriment of sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability, defense capability, and state, economic or information security of Ukraine: joining the enemy at the time of martial law or armed conflict, espionage, assistance in subversive activities against Ukraine provided to a foreign state, a foreign organization or their representatives, shall be punishable by imprisonment for a term of ten to fifteen years.’

Likewise, in its Resolution 49/1 adopted on 4 March 2022, the Human Rights Council ‘condemned in the strongest possible terms the human rights violations and abuses and violations of international humanitarian law resulting from the Russian Federation’s aggression against Ukraine’. The Council expressed ‘grave concern at the documented harm to the enjoyment of many human rights, including the rights to life, education, and the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, caused by Russian shelling and bombing in populated areas’. Further, Council resolution 49/1 expressed grave concern at reports of ‘gross and systematic violations and abuses of human rights’, thereby invoking the explicit language of GA Resolution 60/251 in so far as concerns the threshold
for suspension

We are deeply concerned about the mass-scale massacres of civilians in war and non-war zones in Ethiopia as recently reported by Human Rights Without Frontiers.

In a written statement submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council (Forty-ninth session 28 February–1 April 2022) which was submitted through Coordination des Associations et des Particuliers pour la Liberté de Conscience, a non-governmental organization in special consultative status in the United Nations Human Rights Council, it was demanded that the gross violation of human rights in Balochistan needs immediate attention and intervention from the international community.

The statement mentions that scholars have recognized that corruption is a violation of human rights. “Thirteen years ago, CAP-LC states, the Maastricht Center for Human Rights in the Netherlands organized an important conference on corruption as a human rights issue, on October 22–23, 2009. The majority position at the Maastricht conference was that there is indeed a provision in international law that makes corruption a violation of human rights. It is article 2, number 1, of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.” The provision mandates that states should remove the obstacles to the full enjoyment of human rights by their citizens, and there is little doubt that corruption is such an obstacle.

We have learned that egregious crimes such as forced organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners has occurred for over two decades in the People’s Republic of China. Irrefutable evidence has been gathered and led to a unanimous judgement. The international community appears to be overwhelmed in the handling of crimes against humanity to the extent that the values of our civilization are at stake. Humankind has to decide if it accepts or rejects the killing of human beings for forced organ harvesting or other exploitations.

Escalation of Human Rights Violations in the 21st century : State-sponsored Forced Organ Harvesting of Living People

Inspire and equip policy makers to address and effectively work to repeal the death penalty for choice or expression of religion or belief.

We would like to draw the Council’s attention to arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances of Baloch political activists, leaders, students, doctors, intellectuals, writers, and human rights defenders. They are being picked up by security forces or their proxy death squads and kept incommunicado for years. As a result of this practice, thousands of Baloch remain missing.  Tortured bodies of thousands have been found.

We are profoundly grateful to UN working group on Enforced and Involuntary disappearances for comprehensively raising the issue of forced abduction of Sindhis through a joint communication in March this year. Despite this, disappearances of Sindhi political and human rights activists by Pakistani secret agencies continue unabated. In the month of August alone more than 10 prominent political workers and human rights activists including Insaf Dayo, Ayoub Kandhro, Suhail Raza Bhatti, Zakir Sahito, Kashif Tagar have been abducted. 

The Tamils have been fighting for over seventy years for self Determination. We are a nation of people living in the merged North and East in the island of Ceylon. We have our right to determine our own destiny.  Successive Sri Lankan Sinhala – Buddhist Governments have continually suppressed Tamils right to self-determination and govern Tamils employing brutal military force to annihilate, which amounts to Genocide.

The human rights violations in Balochistan by Pakistan have many aspects. These include enforced disappearances, kill and dump, illegal detentions, torture of political and human rights activists. Human rights violations also include social, cultural, and economic aspects.