JURIST - Paper Chase: Sunday, July 1, 2012

[JURIST] The UN-backed Action Group on Syria generated an agreement [UN News Centre report] on Saturday designed to aid Syria in ending the violence that has occurred in the country over the last 16 months. The plan [text, PDF] outlines six steps the international community must take as well as steps Syria must take for a successful transition, including ending violence, providing access for humanitarian groups to reach those in need, releasing detainees, beginning inclusive political dialogue and unrestricted access to both Syrian and international media outlets. Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan [official website] said in his concluding remarks [text]: "Today the international community has taken its cooperation to a stronger level, by being clearer and more specific. They have laid out a path that we hope the Syrian people can embrace and work with. And they have given me their support in my difficult task as Joint Special Envoy." US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered support [press briefing transcript] for the plan and said that the US "will not waiver in our conviction that the future of Syria belongs to the Syrian people." The Action Group is comprised of the Secretaries-General of the United Nations and the League of Arab States [official website]; the Foreign Ministers of the five permanent members of the Security Council; the Foreign Minister of Turkey; the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy [official website]; and the Foreign Ministers of Iraq, Kuwait, and Qatar. Although the agreement recognizes and condemns the government's use of force, it does not call for the removal of any government officials, including Syrian President Bashar al-Assad [BBC backgrounder].

Syria has been plagued with violence over the past year and a half, and human rights groups have blamed both the government and anti-government groups for the resulting deaths. Last week, a UN commission said [JURIST report] Syrian forces "may have been responsible" for the killing of more than 100 civilians in Al-Houla last month. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, however, said earlier this month that the government had nothing to do with it [JURIST report] and that "not even monsters" would carry out those attacks. In April, the UN Security Council approved a resolution [JURIST report] to send 300 unarmed soldiers and other humanitarian aid to supervise the implementation of a peace plan. This came after Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] released a report [JURIST report] stating that Syrian security forces had killed more than 100 civilians and opposition fighters in recent attacks. In March, HRW also reported on and linked to videos of Syrian forces rounding up civilians [JURIST report], including women and children, and forcing them to walk in front of soldiers and tanks during troop movements and attacks so that opposition fighters would not shoot at them.

[JURIST] Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] issued a statement [press release] today advocating for governments to more fully support the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website]. The statement, which marked the tenth anniversary of the ICC coming into effect, called on nations to demonstrate their support for the court by "publicly committing to backing up the court politically and financially." According to Marek Marczynski who manages Amnesty International's International Justice Research, Policy and Campaign office, the ICC should be supported as it gives "hope for justice to victims of heinous crimes around the world that justice will be done."

The ICC came into effect July 1, 2002 as a result of the passage of the Rome Statute [statute text] which sought to "establish an independent permanent International Criminal Court in relationship with the United Nations system, with jurisdiction over the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole." Since then the ICC, sitting in the Hague, has conducted numerous high profile cases of international crimes, notably the recent conviction [JURIST report] of former Congo militia leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, the first conviction of the court.

[JURIST] The UN Working Group on Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises [official website] expressed its concern on Friday that Rio+20 [official website], the recent UN Conference on Sustainable Development, failed to expressly state that businesses must respect human rights. The Rio+20 conference, which took place June 20-22, concluded with an outcome document [statement, PDF] entitled "The Future We Want," which sets forth the "common vision" for sustainable development. The outcome statement listed many of the shared objectives of the nations participating but failed to specifically insist that private businesses must also serve to protect human rights. According to Puvan Selvanathan [UN News Centre report], head of the UN Working Group on Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises: "Businesses will play a major role in developing the green economy and human rights safeguards are necessary to ensure that policies and business plans intended to advance environmental or development goals do not negatively impact people, communities and their livelihoods."

The Rio+20 conference, held in Rio, Brazil, twenty years after the first "Earth Summit" was held there, was viewed as an opportunity for nations to strengthen their commitments made at the first conference as well as address newer concerns to sustainable development. The conference did ellicit a number of voluntary commitments [official list] from many national governments as well as some NGOs but many felt that the conference's achievements failed to live up to expectations. Other UN bodies made similar requests that the Rio+20 conference sustainable development [JURIST reports].