Showing posts with label UN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UN. Show all posts

Feb 3, 2015

Commission: Mexico has 'serious problem' with disappearances

AP:  Mexico has a "serious problem" with disappearances and lacks a comprehensive national list of the missing to effectively deal with the problem, according to a report the country's National Human Rights Commission will present Monday to the U.N.

Commission chairman Luis Raul Gonzalez Perez will ask the United Nations Committee On Enforced Disappearances in Geneva to make several recommendations to Mexico's government on the issue, said the document, which The Associated Press was allowed to see. Read more.

Mar 15, 2013

An Ugly Truth in the War on Drugs

The NY Times 
By Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Ruth Dreifuss
Published: March 10, 2013

This week, representatives from many nations will gather at the annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna to determine the appropriate course of the international response to illicit drugs. Delegates will debate multiple resolutions while ignoring a truth that goes to the core of current drug policy: human rights abuses in the war on drugs are widespread and systematic.

Consider these numbers: Hundreds of thousands of people locked in detention centers and subject to violent punishments. Millions imprisoned. Hundreds hanged, shot or beheaded. Tens of thousands killed by government forces and non-state actors. Thousands beaten and abused to extract information, and abused in government or private “treatment” centers. Millions denied life-saving medicines. These are alarming figures, but campaigns to address them have been slow and drug control has received little attention from the mainstream human rights movement.

This is a perfect storm for people who use drugs, especially those experiencing dependency, and those involved in the drug trade, whether growers, couriers or sellers. When people are dehumanized we know from experience that abuses against them are more likely. We know also that those abuses are less likely to be addressed because fewer people care.  Read more. 

Sep 13, 2012

UN corruption panel to stay in Guatemala till 2015

By The Associated Press

GUATEMALA CITY — The director of a United Nations commission investigating and prosecuting corruption in Guatemala says the team will extend its work in the Central American country three more years.

Director Francisco Dall'Anese said Tuesday the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala needs to keep working until 2015 to bring change.

The commission began operating in January 2008 to dismantle illegal security groups and to bring officials under the law. It has also taken on rampant vigilante justice, which includes contract killings of criminals.

The U.N.-backed investigative team of police and prosecutors from 25 nations has been highly effective in prosecuting crime in Guatemala, which has one of the highest murder rates in the region. Nearly 2,000 police and government officials have been fired or sent to jail since its creation.

The Associated Press