If armed conflicts always put human rights at risk, the international response they receive can aggravate or minimize that threat. In 2023, the consolidation of a “double standard” diplomacy has been one of the greatest challenges for the protection of human rights on a global scale, the organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned yesterday in the presentation of its annual report on the situation of human rights in the world, organized at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
Some governments “condemn the Israeli government’s war crimes against the civilian population in Gaza but remain silent about the Chinese government’s crimes against humanity in Xinjiang,” said Tirana Hassan, executive director of HRW, referring to the Chinese government’s persecution of the Uyghurs, a Turkish people who inhabit the aforementioned region. “Others demand international prosecution of Russian war crimes in Ukraine, while undermining accountability for past US abuses in Afghanistan,” she added.
When human rights are violated, the civilian population must be protected, “regardless of who the author or the victim is,” the directors of the humanitarian organization insisted in front of journalists. Hassan welcomed South Africa’s indictment of Israel for genocide before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as a good example of the possibilities for achieving justice in cases of human rights violations. “But this type of scrutiny is also necessary in conflicts that do not make the headlines, like Sudan,” said the HRW director.
According to HRW, the resurgence of the armed conflict in Sudan – which began in April last year as a result of the power struggle between the two most important generals of the military junta, which has governed the African country since the 2021 coup – would be a product of the lack of attention from the international community, which allowed impunity for abuses committed in the past.
While the UN ceased its political mission in Sudan last year, and very few efforts were made to promote an accountability mechanism, much of the international community has turned to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The issuance of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court against Putin, the opening of an ICJ office in Kyiv to register possible war crimes or international collaboration with Ukrainian prosecutors’ offices, were some of the advances of 2023 pointed out by Rachel Denber , director of HRW’s Europe and Asia division. “Ukraine should be leading the way,” Denber declared during the press conference dedicated to the presentation of the HRW report.
Not all abuses should or can go to international courts. The HRW team highlighted other measures to ensure justice in terms of human rights such as sanctions, the ban on travel to other countries or the possibility of trying serious crimes committed abroad in domestic courts.
They warned that if the “selective indignation” driven by “transactional diplomacy” continues, which leads governments to act based on their commercial or strategic interests, the message that some lives are worth more than others will be perpetuated. This discourse is used by countries such as Russia or China to attack the human rights system, for example by trying to “reduce the resources allocated to human rights in international organizations,” said Tirana Hassan.
