UN Renews South Sudan Rights Monitoring: Daily Brief

Starting with good news! The UN Human Rights Council on March 31, 2022 voted to renew in full the mandate of the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, despite opposition from the government. The decision by the UN’s top human rights body to renew its investigative mandate on South Sudan sends a powerful message to the country’s leaders that accountability remains essential to the transition process. In the face of a deteriorating human rights and humanitarian crisis, the government should cooperate with the commission, implement its recommendations and urgently fulfil their commitments to ensure justice for serious crimes.

A leaked Chinese government document revealed that students of the Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti could still in prison, even though they have completed their sentences. Ilham Tohti, 52, who began writing about social problems facing Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region in 1994, was arrested in January 2014 on charges of “separatism” and sentenced to life in prison. “China’s severe repression in Xinjiang raises serious concerns that the seven students are still under some form of detention or movement restriction,” said Maya Wang, senior China researcher at HRW.

Syria has passed a law that criminalizes torture and assigns a penalty of at least three years imprisonment, and up to the death penalty where the torture results in death or involves rape. It also prohibits any authority from ordering the torture of anyone, and states that evidence gathered through torture is invalid. It is hard to take the move seriously, given how pervasive the use of torture is by Syrian state authorities. The passage of the law could be a response to ongoing efforts to prosecute the use of torture by Syria officials in the conflict.

On March 29, following a motion by the Prosecutor General’s Office, a Bishkek district court in Kyrgyzstan found that a privately owned media outlet, Next TV, was “extremist” for reposting a commentary by a Ukrainian media outlet, Ukraine Now. The post implied that Kyrgyzstan would lend its military support to Russian forces in Ukraine. The court sent Next TV’s director, Taalaibek Duishenbiev, for pretrial detention on charges of inciting inter-ethnic hatred for reposting the commentary. This is but one instance in a worrying trend by Kyrgyzstan who have stepped up the harassment of journalists and independent media with a slew of criminal investigations. 

Gaps in US labor law allow children under 18 to work for hire in agriculture at younger ages, for longer hours, and in more hazardous conditions than in any other sector. A bill reintroduced in the United States House of Representatives on March 31, 2022 would protect child farmworkers in the US from danger. The law would raise the minimum hiring age in agriculture to 14, and the minimum age for hazardous work to 18, matching the minimum ages for other areas of work.

April marks the beginning of Ramadan for Muslims worldwide, a month of fasting, patience, and compassion. But for some Canadian-Muslims, there is little to celebrate given the desperate plight of loved ones unlawfully detained in northeast Syria. An estimated four dozen Canadian Muslims have spent three or more years arbitrarily detained in squalid prisons and camps for people suspected of ties to the Islamic State (ISIS). Canada has an obligation under international human rights law to protect its citizens if they face serious human rights abuses abroad and to provide consular assistance without discrimination.

And more good news! On March 31, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution to establish a group of human rights experts on Nicaragua with a mandate to “conduct thorough and independent investigations into all alleged human rights violations” in the country since April 2018. This is a critical step to promote justice for human rights violations in Nicaragua as it sends a clear message to President Ortega that the international community will not tolerate the government’s abuses.