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Introduction





Asia

Europe and Central Asia

Middle East and North Africa

Special Issues and Campaigns

United States

Arms

Children’s Rights

Women’s Human Rights

Appendix




United Nations and Organization of American States
After almost three years, the U.N. terminated its military mission in Haiti in late 1997. The U.N. Civilian Police Mission in Haiti (Mission de la Police Civile des Nations Unies en Haiti, MIPONUH), with 285 officers, commenced a twelve-month mandate in late November 1997, with a focus on training Haitian police supervisors. In a May 1998 report to the Security Council, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged Haiti and the international community to resolve Haiti’s political crisis and back institutional reforms to diminish police abuses. The U.N./OAS International Civilian Mission provided police training, human rights education, and human rights monitoring. In December 1997, the U.N. extended the mission’s mandate through December 31, 1998. The secretary-general’s independent expert on Haiti, Adama Dieng, continued his excellent work with an October 1997 report on human rights in Haiti. In April 1998 the Human Rights Commission extended Dieng’s mandate for another year. Haiti failed in 1998, as it had since 1989, to comply with its reporting requirements before the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

United States
The Clinton Administration continued to block efforts to establish truth and justice for past abuses in Haiti. In April 1998, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright stated that Haiti could take possession of materials seized by U.S. forces in September 1994 from the Haitian military and paramilitary organization FRAPH. However, more than four years after the seizure, the items, which reportedly included some 160,000 pages of documents, videotapes, “trophy” photographs of torture victims, passports, and identification cards, remained under U.S. control. Reportedly founded with Central Intelligence Agency assistance, FRAPH was responsible for atrocities under the military government that ruled Haiti from 1991 to 1994. The U.S. continued to insist that the documents would only be returned after U.S. citizens’ names had been excised, apparently for the illegitimate purpose of covering up U.S. complicity in political murder and other abuses, particularly the role of U.S. intelligence assets with the military government and FRAPH. The U.S. also acted to prevent the deportation of FRAPH leader Emmanuel Constant from New York and failed to disclose U.S. documents detailing U.S. investigations of atrocities.


Countries


Argentina

Brazil

Colombia

Cuba

Guatemala

Haiti

Mexico

Peru

Venezuela


Campaigns



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