At the 8th United Nation Human Rights Council, FORUM-ASIA urged the international community to develop a comprehensive, thorough and specific plan to establish an effective international mechanism for the protection of human rights of IDPs, marked with accountability and responsibility, such as a new UN convention on the protection of IDPs.
Oral Statement delivered by Ms. Giyoun Kim on behalf of
Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA)
8th Session of the UN Human Rights Council
Item 3: General Debate / Wednesday, 4 June 2008
Mr. President,
We would like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation to Mr. Walter Kaelin, the Representative of the Secretary-General on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, for his comprehensive analysis and strong emphasis on the protection needs faced by IDPs in the Asian region.
We look forward to his visit to Southeast Asia next year, which he mentioned in his statement last Monday, and we hope that the consultation process will serve as an opportunity to assess how natural disasters have been transformed into man-made disasters due to negligence, lack of rights-based approaches, and parochial political agendas, exemplified by the government of Burma in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. And we hope his consultation with the people in the Southeast Asian region will lead to concrete recommendations to address these challenges.
While some of the factors leading to displacement are imposed by nature, many are entirely man-made, including but not limited to armed conflict, assimilationist government policies, and migration and development policies which have led to the loss of ancestral lands, identity and livelihood. Increasingly more people are being displaced due to ‘development aggression’ – the forcible implementation of development projects linked to urban development, energy generation, natural resource extraction, agribusiness and tourism.
Furthermore, in these last eight years, Mr. President, terrorism has emerged as a contemporary cause of displacement. The threat of terrorism continues to be used by some governments in Asia to justify increased military operations and aggressive campaigns against dissident movements and their suspected sympathizers. Counter-terrorism measures in countries such as the Philippines, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka often fail to differentiate between combatants and civilians and are thereby causing displacement on a massive scale.
We would like to echo those recommendations made by the Representative in his report submitted to the current session of the Council with regard to the human rights of returnees. Seconding the notion of durable solutions, local reintegration is often impossible due to insecurity and various forms of discrimination, as witnessed in Timor-Leste. In Burma in particular, returnees risk brutal retaliatory attacks and imprisonment by government forces.
Mr. President, while it has been 10 years since the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement were adopted by the Commission on Human Rights in 1998, we still see the urgent and imminent need to address the wide range of human rights violations against IDPs around the world. In this regard, we urge the international community to develop a comprehensive, thorough and specific plan to establish an effective international mechanism for the protection of human rights of IDPs, marked with accountability and responsibility, such as a new UN convention on the protection of IDPs.
Thank you, Mr. President.
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