Human Rights Day 2021: Daily Brief

Today is Human Rights Day, the anniversary of the 1948 adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and a day to celebrate our shared humanity. Looking back on this year, it does seem that every major challenge to our health, security and future has been grounded on threats to that common humanity. Our colleague, Tirana Hassan, took a moment to reflect on five areas where we can learn from the successes and failures of 2021, and bring those lessons into 2022. From ending the global pandemic to halting mass atrocity crimes in places like Xinjiang, China, and Ethiopia, the solutions have to start with recognizing that our common humanity means shared responsibility, demanding greater international cooperation.

This Human Rights Day comes at a difficult moment for many in the human rights movement generally, and Human Rights Watch in particular, falling just days after we lost Dewa Mavhinga, our Southern Africa director. Dewa was known not just for his passion, commitment, and leadership on human rights but above all for his great heart, his kindness, and solidarity with others. Because Dewa always valued partnerships and established strong bonds with many organizations throughout his career, we’ve been developing this Twitter thread throughout the day to help highlight some of the groups Dewa worked with so closely over the years.

The news out of Ethiopia continues to horrify, and the details of some earlier crimes are still emerging... Today, we’ve published a new report on how Tigrayan forces summarily executed dozens of civilians in two towns they controlled in the northern Amhara region between August 31 and September 9. As mentioned above in this Daily Brief, the situation in Ethiopia demands greater international action, and in particular, there’s an urgent need for the UN Human Rights Council to establish an international investigative mechanism into abuses by all warring parties in the expanded Tigray conflict.

The “Remain in Mexico” program at the US border has put asylum seekers at risk of kidnapping, extortion, rape, and other abuses. Border enforcement agencies on both sides have been implicated in a wide array of abuses endemic to the program and continue to operate with near total impunity. Now, the two governments are restarting it, and while the US and Mexico are promising some so-called “improvements” over the first iteration of “Remain in Mexico”, they’ve made such promises before, and those never materialized. The whole idea is rotten to the core. As our colleague, Ari Sawyer, says, “There is no way a program designed to postpone the right to seek asylum by making people wait in dangerous places can operate in a rights-respecting way.”

Kazakhstan has a very serious domestic violence problem, but authorities in the city of Almaty apparently don’t want people to pressure for change. They’ve denied a permit for a women’s rights march on March 8. As our colleague, Vika Kim says, “Women in Kazakhstan are demanding gender equality and better protection and support, calls to be heeded, not hindered.”