Riccardo Noury, spokesman for Amnesty International Italy, draws the international community’s attention to the war in Ukraine, which is entering its second year. But more than 40 “ignored” wars are being fought in the world. Are we in the process of institutionalizing a double standard on human rights?
Russian aggression against Ukraine has not only provoked a horrific human rights crisis, but has also highlighted how political, economic, and short-sighted pros and cons decisions are made precisely in relation to human rights. So if the West’s response to Putin was robust and swift, if Russia’s war crimes received the attention and condemnation they deserved, if there was finally a dignified, lavish and rights-respecting reception for the Ukrainian men and women who died before the bombs fled, then elsewhere have noticed the opposite: disinterest in other conflicts (first the terrible one in Ethiopia); Complicit silence about crimes committed elsewhere, obstacles, rejections and delayed or non-existent aid to those coming from the South and East, for reasons no less pressing than those coming from the North. In short, if during the course of the day a story is condemned and a similar one passes in silence, if the system of the grape prevails, from which the grapes are selected for eating and those for throwing away, so is the international system for the protection of human beings as a whole has a profound inadequacy. The mechanisms of the United Nations suffer from constant politicization. For years we have been calling for a reform of the working methods of the Security Council, which, in the event of a human rights crisis, involves the renunciation of the right of veto. But still no way.
Stay on the Ukrainian war. Because Amnesty International has documented human rights violations in the conflict, including by the Ukrainian army, Amnesty International has been accused of being pro-Putin. But a recent United Nations report proved you right.
This UN report says one simple thing: that even the armed forces of an attacked state are not unassailable and can commit crimes of their own, albeit on vastly smaller scales. In 2022, the year Amnesty International issued around 80 reports and press releases detailing Russian war crimes, we issued a three-page note noting that in some specific cases, fewer than 20 Ukrainian forces used tactics had applied, which the civilians they defended, for example by settling in population centers and civilian structures. That has cost us the accusation of being pro-Putin, even though our Moscow office was closed a month after the war began. Of course, we were accused of the opposite when expressing our appreciation for the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Putin. In addition to this accusation, another accusation has been added, which always refers to the actions of the international judiciary: compromising peace efforts. It’s as if the conjunction “not” has suddenly been removed from the old slogan “there is no peace without justice” (the name in whose name the International Criminal Court was born 25 years ago). Or, even worse, it was turned into a cruel “no peace without impunity.”
What are the most striking instances of this “double standard” documented by Amnesty International in its 2022-2023 report?
The states of emergency declared by Poland, Lithuania and Latvia legitimize the refusal of asylum seekers to accept refugees from Ukraine. Condescension towards the Gulf States, whose international reputation improves the worse the human rights situation in them deteriorates. The condemnations for suppressing protests in Iran and Afghanistan and then blaming the people fleeing those countries. The silence about the apartheid system of the State of Israel towards the Palestinian people is becoming increasingly cruel. The US still keeping the Guantánamo detention center open, a violation of international law for over 20 years, as if it were a normal thing. A special case is China, where a campaign to repress the cultural and religious rights of Muslim minorities in the autonomous region of Xinjiang has been underway since at least 2017. The Beijing government managed to prevent the publication of the report by UN human rights rapporteur Michelle Bachelet practically until the very last days of her term.
Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Egypt. The southern coast of the Mediterranean is shaped by authoritarian regimes that have filled opponents’ prisons and, see Libya, created real concentration camps for migrants. Yet Europe and Italy continue to do business with the al-Sisi, the Saied, and continue to arm the so-called Libyan Coast Guard.
Not only that, but the need to diversify energy sources to avoid funding Moscow’s war against Ukraine has made us even more dependent on authoritarian governments in the region like Algeria and Egypt. Business with Al-Sisi’s Egypt continues to thrive. July marks the tenth anniversary of his coup: ten years in which not the slightest criticism of very serious human rights violations has been heard, even when they were painful events that directly affected our country. The renewal of the memorandum with Libya, one of Italy’s missed opportunities for progress on human rights in 2022, has confirmed that our institutions are ready to do whatever it takes to continue their anti-immigration policy: not to mention the so-called Libyan coastguards continue to intercept thousands of people at sea and bring them back to the very places from which they tried to flee, not to mention those who are drowning at sea; and patience when the investigations of the International Criminal Court and not least the report of the United Nations describe us as accomplices in committing crimes under international law. The developments in relations with Tunisia are confirmation of an approach that does not take human rights into account at all. It is certainly right to help a friendly country in a severe economic crisis, even if in this case the goal seems more cynical than supportive: to avoid the conditions that favor departure. But speaking of that goal, I have not heard a single voice condemning Tunisian President Saied’s hate speech and xenophobic statements about the “hordes of irregular migrants from sub-Saharan Africa (…) to change the demographic composition” and Tunisia ” another African state” that no longer belongs to the Arab and Islamic world”. Isn’t that a push factor?
And what about human rights in Italy?
In 2022 a very tentative human rights legislation ended and another very aggressive anti-human rights legislation began. Last year was a year of missed opportunities: I am thinking of citizenship reform, an unresolved issue for thirty years, as well as the disallowance of the Zan Law and consent-based rape crime reform. On issues of fundamental importance, such as the cruel anti-immigration policies and the criminalization of NGOs that conduct search and rescue operations at sea, there has been continuity from one government to another, or rather, from several previous governments to the present one. The start of this legislature has clearly shown the danger we face: that steps will be taken backwards, that areas of freedom will be further eroded, that conquests that have taken decades can be reversed in a short space of time. The example of the debate over the past few weeks on the crime of torture (launched in 2017 after a 28-year campaign) is eloquent.
But in short, is there really nothing to save, nothing positive to emerge from the 2022-2023 report?
Certainly! Despite furious repression, activism resists and shoulders the powers in the streets and squares of the world. In Colombia, the persistence of women’s rights activism and legal action contributed to the Constitutional Court’s decision to decriminalize abortion in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. After years of electoral campaigning, the Spanish Parliament passed legislation that puts consent at the center of the legal definition of rape. Kazakhstan and Papua New Guinea have abolished the death penalty. So there’s a lot to save, even if it often doesn’t make the headlines. Massive peaceful protests broke out in 87 states. Hence the urge for change. That’s why governments are cracking down on them. As one Algerian activist told me: “Once you go out into the street, it’s unlikely that you’ll be herded back in. They can put you in jail, but someone else will take to the streets in your place.”