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On 27 October 2009, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Mr. Phillip Alston (Australia) addressed the General Assembly's Third Committee, reporting on murders by UN-supported Congolese troops, killings of civilians for reward by Columbian soldiers, police death squads in Kenya and targeted killings by US forces operating drones in Pakistan. In all cases, he blamed governments’ failure to properly acknowledge and investigate these killings for fostering a widespread culture of impunity. The fact that almost a quarter of the 47 Member States of the Human Rights Council (the Council) in Geneva had not agreed to allow the Special Rapporteur to undertake an official visit, despite pledges of cooperation, was in his view, an indication that 'there is something badly amiss with the system'.
Unlike some special procedures reporting to the General Assembly this year who avoided ‘naming and shaming’ States, Mr. Alston listed the eleven Council members that had refused or ignored his request to issue him a formal invitation to conduct a country visit.* He reminded these States that this was at odds with the pledges they had made when announcing their candidacy for the Council, given that most States undertook to fully cooperate with the Council and its special procedures.
Fresh from a recent visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the Special Rapporteur also had harsh words for the UN’s peacekeeping mission there, known as MONUC. Mandated by the UN Security Council to support the Congolese Army (FARDC), he warned MONUC that it needed to ensure it was not implicated in serious human rights violations committed by its partner, which he believed included the killing, rape and abduction of civilians as recently as April 2009. Further, he appealed to both MONUC and the Congolese Government to 'abandon their untenable "peace first, justice later" approach' and to do more to combat widespread impunity. In the first instance, he appealed to MONUC to document what actions it had taken to investigate alleged abuses by the FARDC, and to arrest General Ntaganda who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court, and whose whereabouts was well known to the mission.
Of the States that took part in the interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur, Kenya was the most hostile, accusing him of “completely rubbishing” the Code of Conduct for the special procedures and acting illegally by interfering in Kenya’s internal political structure. As he had done at the 11th session of the Council, the Special Rapporteur refuted the allegations as fabrications, and received support from several States, including the US, Sweden (on behalf of the EU), New Zealand, Switzerland, Botswana and India.
The US took issue with the Special Rapporteur’s view that his mandate covered the use of unmanned drones or predators to carry out targeted executions – a matter it believed was relevant to international humanitarian law and not human rights law. Nonetheless the US agreed to disagree on this point of interpretation and expressed its continued support for the mandate holder. In response, the Special Rapporteur asked the US to engage in an open discussion of what steps could be taken to have more accountability for these practices.
Interestingly the Special Rapporteur’s comments on vigilante and mob justice killings sparked the most interest, eliciting questions from Sweden, Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand and the US, as well as comments from India and Australia.
Also of note in the Special Rapporteur’s statement was his renewed call for the immediate appointment of a Special Rapporteur on the rights of detainees. Prompted by his recent visit to prisons in the DRC, which he compared to a “fate worse than hell”, the Special Rapporteur suggested the mandate could work with States to ensure basic minimum standards of detention. In response to a question from Switzerland, the Special Rapporteur suggested that existing mandates on this theme in the inter-American and African human rights systems could act as models for the development of an international mandate. This suggestion reinforced the call the previous week by the Special Rapporteur on torture, who appealed States to develop a convention on the human rights of detainees.
*Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Indian, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Pakistan, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. Only Mexico has indicated it might consider a visit. |
