Daily Brief Audio Series

In theory, the European Union’s Border and Coast Guard agency – Frontex – has all the tools, equipment, and mechanisms at their disposal to rescue boats in distress in the Mediterranean Sea.

In practice, people are dying at sea by the thousands.

Over the last decade, more than 30,000 people have died or been reported missing in the Mediterranean, making it one of the deadliest migration routes anywhere in the world.

HRW and others have extensively documented that the agency’s practices make them complicit in human rights violations at Europe’s borders and beyond.

As European leaders double down on plans to prevent people from arriving on EU soil, they are increasingly shifting responsibility to third countries like Libya, Tunisia, Lebanon, Turkey, and Egypt, where people are facing serious abuses.

Currently, when Frontex planes and drones detect boats, the agency alerts rescue coordination centers in EU member states as well as in Libya and Tunisia. It does not, however, systematically inform nongovernmental rescue ships in the area or regularly issue emergency alerts to mobilize all nearby vessels.

Apart from interceptions, forcible returns and possible rights violations in third countries like Tunisia or Libya, the failure to issue emergency alerts can also contribute to avoidable delays and tragic shipwrecks.

What can be done?

HRW has launched a new campaign, asking Frontex to uphold its EU and international law obligations and act #WithHumanity. Because properly used, support from Frontex planes and drones can help save lives at sea.

Frontex should use its aerial surveillance capacity to ensure timely rescues of vessels in distress and more generally, do all it can to help ensure people on unseaworthy boats are rescued and brought to safety.

In our campaign, we are asking you to take a closer look at the lives and rights at risk in the Mediterranean Sea and your shared humanity with those making the crossing, and demand action by the responsible authorities.

The EU should act now, to ensure safe and legal channels to Europe.

Today, we’re going to be looking at violations of the laws of war.

We’ve had to do this far too often in recent months, when discussing hostilities in Israel and Gaza and in Lebanon. Regular Daily Brief readers will by now be all too familiar with at least one of the foundations of international humanitarian law. This is: all warring parties must distinguish between military targets, which are legitimate, and civilian targets, which are not.

Deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian structures are war crimes.

This brings us to Sunday’s attacks by Israel on al-Qard al-Hassan, the Hezbollah-affiliated financial institution in Lebanon. The Israeli military struck nearly 30 of its offices in southern Lebanon, the southern suburbs of Beirut, and the Bekaa Valley, according to media reports.

Israeli officials have alleged the financial group is providing funding for Hezbollah, which is engaged in an armed conflict with Israel. They have not, however, claimed the group is directly involved in hostilities.

That’s a telling admission of an important difference.

A bank is a civilian object, not a military one. Therefore, it’s not a lawful military target under the laws of war. 

Yes, the financial association al-Qard al-Hassan has links to Hezbollah and its supporters. It’s also been sanctioned by the US. But its financial services do not amount to an effective contribution to military action, and so as far as the laws of war are concerned, it is a civilian object.

Much of what the financial group does, by the way, would be called micro-lending. It reportedly has hundreds of thousands of clients who receive zero-interest loans, typically up to US$5,000. Clients come from predominately Shia-populated areas of Lebanon, where other options for such small loans are hard to come by, particularly in the country’s recent economic slump.

That such financial associations and banks be considered civilian objects under the laws of war makes a lot of sense. Just imagine if they weren’t – if any bank used by any military, any soldier, any rebel was considered a legitimate military target. Chaos and harm would spread exponentially, to the bank’s civilian employees, its civilian clients, and others.

The laws of war exist for a reason, and Israel’s attacks on the financial association al-Qard al-Hassan were war crimes.

With Election Day in the US fast approaching, it’s time once again to discuss voting with human rights in mind. Regular readers of the Daily Brief may recall we did this a couple weeks before the European elections earlier this year, too, and much of what I’m about to say will sound familiar. You can accuse me of repeating myself. I prefer to think of it as being consistent.

Our advice is the same everywhere, whether it’s in Europe or the US, whether it’s a presidential battle or a Congressional contest. We don’t endorse candidates, of course. We talk about issues.

From the human rights standpoint, there are many key issues at stake in the US elections – we’ve even produced a guide to them. Not least among the concerns is a wave of threats to the democratic process itself.

To that guide, I would personally add two simple bits of advice.

First, beware of any politician who blames vulnerable groups for your problems. You can usually spot them easily enough: they’re the ones not talking about making your life better but about making someone else’s life worse.

Their target may be refugees or a religious group or an ethnic group or trans folks. But whoever the vulnerable minority is, the message is basically the same: you’re supposed to believe that denying these people their rights will somehow help you and your family. It won’t, of course. Don’t buy it.

Second, maybe think a bit more long-term when you vote. This can help you see the value of universal human rights. Let me explain with a bit of personal history.

I look back just four generations, and I see my 16 great great-grandparents. All of them spoke a mother tongue different to mine. All of them had religious beliefs different from mine. They were all born in countries different from the one where I was born, none of which even exist anymore.

Now, if you have kids or plan to, think about your descendants, a few generations down the line. You don’t know what they'll look like, what language they’ll speak, what religion they’ll follow, who they’ll marry, where they’ll live and work… Things change, and you have no idea where they’re going to end up.

If you vote for politicians who aim to punish one group in society, and they then make laws to do just that, you may ultimately be putting your own grandchildren at risk.

Taking the long view with your family in mind, it makes sense for you to get behind universal human rights – rights for everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, and so on.

It’s in your own self-interest to vote for politicians and parties that are more likely to support universal human rights. It’s the best bet for the people who come after you.

Oh, and one last thing: remember, the people who come after you will also need a habitable planet to live on.

Jailing 10-year-old children sounds extreme. That’s because it is.

Yet, the idea is all too common in Australia. Last week, the Northern Territory of Australia passed a new law lowering the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 10 years old. It’s not alone: the Australian states of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia also have the age of criminal responsibility at just 10.

The Northern Territory’s new move unfortunately marks a reversal of progress, too. Just two years ago, the former government raised the age from 10 to 12.

That was in response to a 2017 Royal Commission report that found youth detention centers in Northern Territory, “were not fit for accommodating, let alone rehabilitating, children and young people.” They documented, among other things, children being “denied access to basic human needs such as water, food and the use of toilets.”

Another key point to understand is the make-up of the kids who are jailed. First Nations children are massively overrepresented in the Northern Territory criminal justice system, comprising 94 percent of children put in detention.

Now, the age of criminal responsibility in the Territory is going back from 12 to 10, but even 12 was awful. International standards recommend setting the age of criminal responsibility at no younger than 14.

This is not just a randomly chosen number. It’s based on the science of our human brains.

A child below this age is still developing the prefrontal cortex in the frontal lobe – that’s the bit of the brain behind your forehead. It’s involved in cognitive processing, such as planning, strategizing, and organizing thoughts and actions.

One key thing this part of the brain does is help you understand risk and the potential consequences of your actions. It’s one of the last parts of brain to fully finish developing, not until your twenties, in fact.

It’s highly doubtful a 10-year-old child or even a 12-year-old child is capable of completely comprehending something they are doing is wrong. Making them take criminal responsibility for their actions at that age simply flies in the face of the science.

OK, you say, but even a 10-year-old child can do a lot of damage and harm through their actions, and the authorities have to do something, right?

Yes, but there are other options apart from labelling them criminals and jailing them in horrible facilities. There are many alternatives to detention and interventions in response to unlawful behavior that would be much more age-appropriate.

Instead of pursuing polices that violate children’s rights, the government of Northern Territory – and governments elsewhere in Australia – should raise the age of criminal responsibility to at least 14 and invest more in these alternatives.

Authorities should not be jailing 10-year-old kids. 

Some folks reading this have children. Others don’t.

There are lots of reasons why your family is made up as it is, and frankly, it’s none of my business what those reasons are. It’s up to you, not me. It’s personal.

And no government or politicians should be telling you or me to have children or not. Nor should authorities be attacking or stigmatizing people for having children or not having children.

These are basic concepts of individual freedom, privacy, and non-discrimination – understood widely around the world, though apparently not by authorities in Russia.

A new draft law, which passed its first vote in Russia’s State Duma last week, aims to ban “propaganda” about so-called child-free lifestyles.

There would be widespread censorship of anything that suggests not having children is okay. Whether you’re speaking earnestly or jokingly, you can’t imply being childless is acceptable. The ban would cover mass media, advertising, publishing, film, and the internet. Stiff fines would await individuals, organizations, and companies who fall afoul of the new law.

If you want to understand how this censorship would work in practice and what its impacts would be, look at the similarly framed ban on “gay propaganda” in Russia. For more than a decade, this law has prohibited all public information, representations, or activities in support of LGBT folks, that is lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.

To avoid penalties, Russian publishers have been recalling books with content on LGBT people. Book stores and libraries have been put under tremendous pressure. Earlier this year, for example, a court in the city of Nizhny Novgorod fined a bookstore chain 500,000 rubles (about US$5,155) for selling a novel including depictions of same-sex relations.

Russian courts have also been increasingly fining television channels and streaming services featuring LGBT people.

And, of course, it’s not just about the censorship and the fines in themselves. It’s also about the stigma they create. With representations of LGBT people erased from public view, society gets the message LGBT people are unacceptable. It’s unsurprising the law helped usher in “a decade of violence” and hate crimes against LGBT people in Russia.

The newly proposed ban on “propaganda” about so-called child-free lifestyles comes with similar issues and risks.

Both moves are part of what Russian authorities say is a defense of “traditional values” and “family values,” but of course, they decide what’s “traditional” and what’s not. As we’ve discussed before in the Daily Brief, the word “tradition” is all too often used to try to justify human rights abuses.

Rather than bringing in yet another wave of mass censorship and making more people scapegoats and targets of hate, Russian authorities should just leave people alone.

Who you love and whether you have children or not – these things are not any government’s business, and authorities should stay out of it.