Category: Asia

ASIA: Enforced Disappearances Continue With Zero Accountability and Blanket Impunity

51st - Regular Session - September 2022, ALRC AT THE UN, Asia, Oral Statements September 21, 2022 admin 0 Comments

An Oral Statement to the 51st Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council from the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) Mr. Vice President: The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) welcomes the comprehensive report of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) and appreciates its prompt interventions in response to reprisals against the victims’ families and human rights defenders who keep working on the issue defying multiple forms of challenges. We are seriously concerned over the behaviours of the states where documenting the cases of enforced disappearances and cooperating with the United Nations Human Rights Mechanisms is considered to be ‘anti-state activities’. In May 2022, Bangladesh officially replied […]

ASIA: Democratic Governance Equipped with the Rule of Law Required for Ending Arbitrary Deprivation of Life

50th - Session - June 2022, ALRC AT THE UN, Asia, Oral Statements June 22, 2022September 21, 2022 admin 0 Comments

An Oral Statement to the 50th Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council from the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) Mr. President The Special Rapporteur’s report on “Medico-legal death investigations” has comprehensively covered the highly necessary aspects regarding medico-legal investigation into deaths involving extrajudicial or summary executions. The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) is not surprised that in the report’s ‘Best Practices’ component there is no reference to the Asian states. The ALRC’s experience suggests medico-legal investigation and forensic examination as an integral part of the criminal justice mechanisms is not made a priority in the region. The policy of keeping a bad-governance coupled with dysfunctional justice mechanisms to […]

ASIA: Victims and Litigants Suffer in Absence of Independent Judiciary and Legal Profession

50th - Session - June 2022, ALRC AT THE UN, Asia, Oral Statements June 21, 2022September 21, 2022 admin 0 Comments

An Oral Statement to the 50th Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council from the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) Mr. President The Special Rapporteur’s report has substantively covered the aspects regarding the protection of the lawyers against undue interference and independent exercise of the legal profession. Echoing the Special Rapporteur the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) reiterates that many States in Asia are disempowering the Judiciary for enjoying authoritarian powers. The notion of separation of power is neither promoted nor respected in most of the countries. Judiciary suffers systematic setbacks as the Executive Branch of the State: i) controls the recruitment of judicial officers on political loyalty; ii) […]

ASIA: Protection of Rights Requires Investments in Justice Mechanisms

47th - Session - June 2021, ALRC AT THE UN, Asia, Oral Statements October 11, 2021 admin 0 Comments

An Oral Statement to the 48th Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council from the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) Madam President: The protection and promotion of all human rights – the civil, political, economic, social, cultural, and the right to development – rest on the foundation a State’s capacity to enforce the law for safeguarding these rights. Many international instruments enshrine these rights yet the realisation remains unsatisfactory. Inadequately developed law-enforcement mechanisms with poor education and absence of instructions to implement are key reasons. States’ failure to enforce the rights let the people consider human rights as empty promises devoid of any real value. Existence of rights must […]

ASIA: Human Rights Mechanisms Require Effective Approaches for Protection from Enforced Disappearances

48th - Session - September 2021, ALRC AT THE UN, Asia, Oral Statements October 11, 2021 admin 0 Comments

An Oral Statement to the 48th Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council from the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) Madam President: The Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) has commendably contributed to the United Nations Human Rights Mechanisms during the global pandemic. The incidents of enforced disappearances involving extraterritorial transfers, as identified in the report, is an important area of concern. The trend of transnational transfers of the victims of enforced disappearances needs to be understood in the context of a growing authoritarianism equipped with artificial intelligence and sophisticated technologies. The absence of administrative or judicial remedies for enforced disappearances and the pattern of guaranteeing blanket impunity is […]

ASIA: Human Rights Mechanisms Require Exploring Effective Redress for Reprisals

48th - Session - September 2021, ALRC AT THE UN, Asia, Oral Statements October 7, 2021 admin 0 Comments

An Oral Statement to the 48th Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council from the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) Madam President: The Secretary General’s Report on Reprisals reflects the manifold challenges the human rights advocates face across the world. Internationally reputed human rights organisation Odhikar and its leaderships have been facing reprisals for cooperating with the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process, Special Procedures, and the Treaty Bodies, as reflected in the report. On 14 February 2021, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh has vacated the stay order on the prosecution against Odhikar’s Secretary Adilur Rahman Khan and Director ASM Nasiruddin Elan while their review petition challenging this decision remains […]

ASIA: Human Rights Council’s Interventions Should be Contextually Realistic

48th - Session - September 2021, ALRC AT THE UN, Asia, Oral Statements September 30, 2021 admin 0 Comments

An Oral Statement to the 48th Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council from the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) Madam President, We wish to bring to the attention of the Human Rights Council that a serious undermining of the rule of law is happening in several countries of Asia such as the Philippines, Cambodia, Nepal, and Bangladesh that indicate the patterns similar to those mentioned by the High Commissioner for Human Rights in reports on Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Undermining of the criminal justice mechanisms leads to rapid and sharp decline of rule of law and the fair trial in a radical way. Arbitrary selections for non-investigation of […]

MYANMAR: International Community needs decisive actions to end militarism for establishing democracy and human rights

47th - Session - June 2021, Asia, Oral Statements July 8, 2021 admin 0 Comments

An Oral Statement to the 47th Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council from the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) Madam President: As there are profound concerns over the latest military coup in Myanmar and subsequent violence offends the conscience of humanity, the urgent questions before the international community should be what to do at this time by way of effective measures to reverse such blatant attack on democracy, international human rights law and attacks on lives and liberties of people. We have witnessed that around a million survivors of genocide were forced to take shelter in neighbouring Bangladesh, the international community was apparently relieved that the Rohingya exudes […]

ASIA: Arbitrary Detention Continues with Denial of Access to Justice and Increases Poverty

47th - Session - June 2021, Asia, Oral Statements July 6, 2021 admin 0 Comments

An Oral Statement to the 47th Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council from the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) Madam President: The report of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention focusing on drug policies sheds lights on the darker sides of the justice mechanisms of many States. It also indicates the attitudes of the legislatures towards the citizens lacking compassion and comprehensive programmes to address the holistic impacts involving drugs. The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) wants to emphasise that arbitrary detention without any credible system of accountability of the law-enforcement agencies is one of the core human rights violations across Asia. There are complicities among the three […]

ASIA: Extrajudicial Executions with Impunity Require Access to International Justice

47th - Session - June 2021, Asia, Oral Statements July 2, 2021 admin 0 Comments

An Oral Statement to the 47th Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council from the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) ASIA: Extrajudicial Executions with Impunity Require Access to International Justice Madam President: The report on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions by the immediate past Special Rapporteur Ms. Agnes Callamard has comprehensively expanded the area of normative principles with significant observations to the discourse on arbitrary deprivation of life. The former Rapporteur’s observations on ‘the relationships between the economic, social and/or cultural dimensions of arbitrary killings and unlawful deaths’ deserve urgent attention. In many Asian countries, arbitrary deprivation of life is adopted as the way of law-enforcement. The ALRC appreciates […]