Full Transcript
As highlighted in the report presented earlier this morning by the Assembly’s Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee, many serious abuses continue to mar Europe’s human rights record, including forced disappearances, secret detention, unlawful inter-state transfers of detainees, and torture and ill-treatment. These and other concerns highlighted in the report—the treatment of migrants and asylum seekers, failed integration policies that perpetuate discrimination and alienation of marginalized migrant communities, and inadequate government response to discrimination and racist violence against members of ethnic and racial minorities—are all concerns that Human Rights Watch shares. Indeed, we have documented many of them through our research and reporting.
In discussing the state of human rights in Europe, however, it is important to shine a spotlight not only on the shortcomings of individual governments at home but also on Europe’s performance as a whole in protecting human rights throughout the continent and beyond. I will devote my brief remarks today to discussing whether the Council of Europe and its member governments are doing what they should to identify and address abuses wherever in Europe they occur. The topic is especially important because the U.S. government has lost much of its credibility to promote human rights in light of the Bush administration’s abusive counterterrorism policies. A firm and effective European voice is thus especially needed to protect human rights.
There can be no doubt that Europe has a great potential to act as a powerful force for human rights. Every major multilateral institution in Europe—the Council of Europe, the European Union, the OSCE, and even Europe’s primary financial institution, the EBRD—is founded on human rights principles. Countless monitoring bodies and mechanisms have been set up for the sole purpose of overseeing how European states comply with their voluntarily assumed human rights obligations.
Despite this unparalleled institutional framework, however, Europe has not lived up to its potential. The clearest example is the Council of Europe’s striking failure to respond effectively to the continuing, pervasive impunity for grave human rights violations in Russia’s Chechnya, the single largest human rights crisis in Europe today, and the only place on the continent where the civilian population faces a day-to-day reality of systematic torture, often perpetrated in unacknowledged, illegal places of detention, as well as summary executions and forced disappearances.
The problem cannot be chalked up to a lack of information about conditions on the ground. Over the years, a range of Council of Europe bodies have extensively documented atrocities in Chechnya, including the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, the Commissioner for Human Rights, the Secretary-General’s office, the Assembly, and the Committee of Ministers itself. They have also issued detailed recommendations for urgently needed remedial action. On top of all that, eight recent rulings by the European Court of Human Rights have found Russia responsible for serious abuses in Chechnya, and hundreds more cases are pending.
Russian authorities, however, have persisted in their refusal to take any meaningful steps to curb these atrocities. The Kremlin has the power to rein in its Chechen proxies, which are behind most of these abuses, but instead it supports them unconditionally and blocks investigations into their misconduct.
Over the past five years, the Russian government has also managed to rid itself of virtually every international human rights monitor with a presence in the region, starting with the OSCE Assistance Group in late 2002. The Council of Europe departed shortly thereafter, in the spring of 2003, when the Secretary-General’s experts were withdrawn after a bomb attack on their convoy, and a new agreement brokered with Russia left the experts without a permanent presence in Chechnya.
Illustrative of this lack of cooperation on human rights, the Russian government last October prevented a long-awaited visit to the region by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, by refusing to allow unannounced visits to places of detention and private interviews with detainees, ostensibly because it would violate federal legislation. At least two other UN human rights monitors have pending, unfulfilled requests to visit Chechnya.
Just last month, the CPT for the third time felt compelled to resort to the extraordinary measure of making a public statement on Chechnya, due to the Russian government’s “refus[al] to improve the situation in the light of the Committee’s recommendations.”
Shockingly, Russia has faced no adverse consequences for this stone-walling and cover-up. Its partner governments in Europe have greeted its abusive policies and bullying tactics with deafening silence—a silence that certainly has not gone unnoticed by the Kremlin.
It is instructive to contrast that governmental silence with the firmer voice of the Parliamentary Assembly. In January 2006, the Assembly expressed “deep[] concern[]” that the Council’s Committee of Ministers as well as individual member states had failed to address human rights violations in Chechnya and the accompanying impunity “in a regular, serious and intensive manner.” The resolution went on to express the Assembly’s “fear[] that the lack of effective reaction by the Council’s executive body in the face of the most serious human rights issue in any of the Council of Europe’s member states undermines the credibility of the Organisation.”
Unfortunately, the Committee of Ministers’s reply, issued a leisurely eleven months later, did nothing to demonstrate a more vigorous approach. Meanwhile, the Assembly’s Bureau, in a decision we remain hard-pressed to comprehend, decided not to renew the Assembly’s dedicated monitoring and reporting mandate on Chechnya, silencing this important voice.
How could this possibly happen? In Human Rights Watch’s most recent World Report, issued this past January, we examined the European Union’s underperformance as a leader on human rights. Much of the same analysis could apply to the Council of Europe. For example, both the EU’s Council of Ministers and the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers are plagued by a policy of reaching decisions only by consensus. A system that allows any single member state to stand in the way of the defense of human rights is one that prefers unity over effectiveness, a recipe for weakness. It inevitably yields a lowest-common-denominator position. It means that on human rights, Europe is led by its most reluctant member.
Indeed, the problem is worse for the Council of Europe than it is for the EU. Many of the human rights problems addressed by the EU lie outside its territory. But when the Council of Europe takes up a government’s abuses, that government is almost always seated at the table with an effective veto in hand. The forcefulness of the Council’s interventions is thus limited by the target government’s willingness to confront its own wrong-doing. If the target government raises objections, silence will prevail.
Part of the blame can be placed on the Council of Europe’s dual imperative of carrying out its mandate effectively while keeping all of its members fully engaged. Obviously, the two goals cannot always be reconciled. Yet the paralysis is undermining the Council’s credibility, as the report of the Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee warns.
To break this paralysis, the consensus rule should be modified. Rather than insisting on unanimity, one option would be to allow decisions to be taken by a supermajority. Another option would be to exempt the government being addressed by a Council action from the unanimity requirement—much as the so-called Moscow mechanism, however underutilized, does for the OSCE.
But the problem is not only the consensus rule. Much as for the EU, many Council members compound this weakness by treating the common position as a ceiling rather than a floor. Even if the 46 members cannot collectively act beyond the wishes of their most recalcitrant member, there is no reason why individual members cannot do more for human rights on their own, whether through public statements, diplomatic representations, or other forms of pressure. But all too often member states find it convenient to justify their own inaction by the inaction of the Council as a whole. No one should be taken in by that excuse.
And there are countless opportunities to act. The key to being serious about protecting human rights is not to leave Council actions confined to Strasbourg but to ensure that what happens in Strasbourg makes its way back to national capitals to influence bilateral and multilateral relations with the government concerned. Member governments should make it their business to pro-actively advance the recommendations formulated by the PACE, the CPT, the Commissioner, and other Council of Europe institutions. That is the only way that these recommendations stand a chance of implementation.
For example, the European Court of Human Rights has issued a growing number of rulings on Russian abuses in Chechnya. Russia has a duty to implement these rulings, meaning that it must not only compensate the victims and their relatives in the individual cases before the court, as it tends to do, but also remedy the underlying, systemic problems that led to the violations. Absent pressure, however, Russia is unlikely to take these systemic, remedial steps. Both the Council as a whole and its individual members should make full Russian compliance with these judgments an integral part of their dealings with Moscow.
The Assembly has a special role to play here. As parliamentarians, you have a responsibility to act as a check on your governments, to ensure that they live up to the commitments they have embraced, including to protect human rights throughout the European continent. When they fail in this duty, you should speak out. Such parliamentary oversight is essential because the protection of human rights often bumps up against other governmental interests. Through your scrutiny, pressure, and public voice, you can ensure that, when these conflicts arise, the rights of the people of Europe prevail.
The need for this oversight has been particularly acute when it comes to European governments’ complicity in the CIA’s secret detention and illegal transfer of terrorist suspects and its direct and indirect role in their torture and mistreatment. In many quarters, the investigation led by Swiss senator and Assembly member Dick Marty has been met by stonewalling at best. Despite these challenges, Mr. Marty’s work—as well as that of the European Parliament’s Temporary Committee—has made a significant contribution by shining a spotlight on European complicity in CIA abuses and pressing for accountability. But a lot more remains to be done. National parliaments should use their investigative powers to counter governmental attempts to cover up. Only when this complicity is exposed and its authors pay a price will we have any assurance that, when the next crisis arises, such abuses will not be repeated.
Human Rights Watch has deeply appreciated our partnership with the Council of Europe. Much has been accomplished in the defense of human rights, but there is so much more that could be achieved if these shortcomings in Council practice were addressed. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you on this important day of debate. I hope that what emerges is a stronger, more effective defense of human rights for everyone in Europe, even those whose governments’ commitment to human rights is weakest.
