Youth on the Frontlines: Preventing Human Rights Abuses in Violent Contexts, A Case Study of LUCHA in the DR of Congo

Human rights violations and violent conflicts in the Niger Delta of Nigeria have elicited interest from scholars and international agencies. Although studies provide significant insights into the conflicts in the Niger Delta, the issue of transitional justice has not been adequately considered. This article examines human rights violations and transitional justice in the Niger Delta. It begins with the conceptualization of human rights violations and transitional justice. It then offers a historical contextualization of oil production in Nigeria and an overview of the human rights situation in the Niger Delta. The key argument of the article is that efforts to ensure peace in the Niger Delta have not been associated with an effective transitional justice system. Since transitional justice is a requirement for sustainable peace after periods of gross human rights violations and violent conflict, efforts should be made to put transitional justice mechanisms in place to punish perpetrators of human rights violations and provide redress for victims.

This article focuses on the role of the Indonesian State in fighting human rights violations during the 1999 East Timor Upheaval. The 1999 East Timor Upheaval was one of the most serious human rights violations that occurred in Indonesia. The Indonesian state has an important role in eradicating human rights violations that occurred in East Timor in 1999, namely by carrying out investigations and trials against perpetrators of human rights violations, providing compensation to victims of human rights violations, and reforming military security law. The method used in this paper is qualitative research through a literature review. Primary sources from books and articles. The Indonesian state needs to increase its role in eradicating human rights violations during the 1999 East Timor Upheaval by holding trials for perpetrators of serious human rights violations, providing adequate compensation to victims of human rights violations, carrying out reforms in the security and military sector, and implementing reforms in the security and military sector. consistently and sustainably, as well as providing education to the community. about the importance of human rights and preventing human rights violations. By taking these steps, the Indonesian state can demonstrate its commitment to fighting human rights violations and protecting the human rights of all its citizens.

A recent United Nations report on North Korea reports of widespread human rights violations inside North Korea.1 The right to life, liberty, freedom of religion, freedom of association, and assembly are regularly violated by the government and its agents.2 Over the years, many people have been subjected to detention, torture, and forced labor in government-operated detention camps in North Korea. Oppressive rule is always associated with gross violations of human rights. One of the challenges that a unified democratic Korea would have to face is how to deal with human rights violations perpetrated in the past. In transitional justice literature relating to societies transitioning from oppressive and authoritarian rule or conflict to democratic governance, one of the major points of discussion is always what to do with perpetrators of past human rights violations when conflicts or oppressive regimes have ended. The United Nations has a long history of assisting societies devastated by conflict or emerging from repressive rule to reestablish the rule of law and develop mechanisms to deal with large-scale human rights violations. For the United Nations, transitional justice is the full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society’s attempt to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale human rights abuses, in order to ensure accountability for the abuses, serve justice, and achieve reconciliation and the transformation of society to establish a democratic society that is underpinned by human rights values.3

The Nuremberg tribunal was the expression and the beginning of states' recognition of their duty to prosecute genocide and other gross human rights violations. It was a first step towards fulfillin...

Since 1999 independence referendum, Timor-Leste (East Timor) has struggled to achieve justice for human rights atrocities committed throughout Indonesia's 25-year de facto administration from 1975 to 1999. In particular, efforts have focused on violations committed prior to and following referendum of 1999, including during three-week scorched earth campaign that was actively encouraged by Indonesian military (Tentara Nasional Indonesia, TNI). During this time, it was estimated that 2,000 people were murdered, 60-80 per cent of physical infrastructure across East Timorese territory was destroyed and 400,000 people were displaced. (1) Timor-Leste provides a unique case study on international dimensions of pursuing post-conflict transitional justice as many alleged perpetrators of human rights violations have escaped prosecution with assistance of Indonesian state. This presents challenges for Timor-Leste as it balances competing international and domestic imperatives. On one hand, since attaining sovereignty in 2002 Timor-Leste has been responsible for establishing legitimate democratic institutions that possess widespread public support and encourage socio-political order through respect for rule of law. On other hand, Timor-Leste's national security interests and development capacities depend upon a strong bilateral relationship with Indonesia. This article examines establishment of world's first bilateral reconciliation commission, Indonesia-Timor-Leste Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF) in 2005. The Commission, comprising half Indonesian and half Timor-Leste Commissioners, was established independently of United Nations (UN). The CTF was responsible for finding conclusive truth about the perpetration of gross human rights violations and institutional by conducting an inquiry and arriving at recommendations and lessons learned. (2) The Commission employed a definition of crimes against humanity that accorded with international law under Rome Statute, including torture, rape and murder. (3) In addressing past crimes, Commission made recommendations regarding institutional reform, development of joint policies, creation of new human rights institutions and provision of material and symbolic reparations. This article argues that since release of CTF report in 2008, both Indonesia and Timor-Leste have demonstrated a lack of political will in implementing many of Commission's recommendations. This suggests that core aim of CTF was to promote cooperation between Timor-Leste and Indonesia through a unique form of international reconciliation designed to set aside past conflict. (4) Timor-Leste's prioritization of reconciliation with Indonesia was evident in ways it permitted Indonesia's avoidance of responsibility for human rights violations committed by senior military and civilian figures in 1999. Following independence referendum in 1999, Timor-Leste faced a number of divergent challenges in implementing post-conflict, transitional justice mechanisms to promote democratization and a human rights culture. (5) The first challenge involved achieving substantive justice, including punishing major human rights crimes committed in past. This was necessary for instituting rule of law, which requires an understanding among citizens that no one is above law. Punishment allows states to deter crime and instil trust in new judicial structures. Democratization and internal sovereignty is supported by establishment of a socio-political order based on widespread public acceptance that state-based laws and judicial institutions are valid and effective. Timor-Leste's second objective was fulfilling international legal commitments. International justice is characterized by global articulation of basic human rights and peremptory norms outlawing crimes against humanity. …

For the past two decades, transitional justice has been a worldwide political agenda. The issue of how to deal with the past human rights violations is an important task to reconstitute democratic normality and reconciliatory relationships. Current researchers and human rights activists generally take two kinds of perspectives or approaches: one is the moral philosophy of universal human rights and law; and the other is transitology on types of regime change and balance of power elites Perspective of moral philosophy and law requests to take the political and legal responsibility of perpetrators, compensation for the victims and to emphasis on human rights and the reconstruction of democracy and the rule of law. About guilt and responsibility, they prefer to prosecute perpetrators of human rights violations. Transitology suggests the balance of political power matters most for transitional justice decision. They concern about the reality of political bargaining between old and new political elites. Most political scientists consider the character of the third wave democracy, and take practical use of amnesty and pardon. In other words, forget is the cost of social reconciliation. This article considers that they both neglect the role of the civil society, symbolic meanings, emotions, collective choices, and the effects of the passage of time. I theorize the framework of politics of memory and bring up the framing effect of public discourse and political memory. The interaction of discourse-memory and institutional decision contributes to realize the consciousness of guilt and accountability. Finally, Spain's case proves that politics of memory is a promising and useful perspective to observe transitional justice policy selection and change.

This chapter details the place of the emotions in the development of transitional justice. It demonstrates that transitional justice has always been concerned, in part, with mediating and regulating the emotions of individual victims and perpetrators of human rights violations, groups engaged in violent conflicts, and societies marked by grievances, antagonisms, and division. In doing so, it details four phases in transitional justice’s engagement with the emotions. First is an initial emphasis on the idea that the resentment and anger felt by members of ousted authoritarian regimes present a risk to democratic transitions. Second is acknowledging victims’ negative emotions as legitimate but undesirable responses to human rights violations. Third is accepting that anger and resentment may play a positive role in motivating justice. And, lastly, is recognition of the significant role played by hope in sustaining the pursuit of justice in the face of setbacks and challenges.

In Digging into Human Rights Violation project we developed an algorithm that leverages machine learning and visualization techniques to facilitate large‐scale analysis of human rights violation data. To make the algorithm more accessible to human rights workers and researchers, we conducted iterative user interface design to explore usability issues of integrating the visualization output of the algorithm into their existing data analysis process. We report our lessons learnt from the user interface design process.

Responding to sexual violence in armed conflict

The coronavirus pandemic has, since its outbreak in late 2019, not only caused a global health care crisis but has also had a negative impact on the exercise of social, economic, cultural and political rights. Vulnerable and marginalised groups in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania are among the worst affected. To respond to the crisis, the three East African countries imposed several measures aimed at curtailing the spread of the disease, which included a mandatory 14 days of self-quarantine for persons arriving from abroad; the closure of borders, religious and educational institutions; the suspension of international and domestic flights; the suspension of public court proceedings and gatherings; the imposition of a dusk to dawn curfew; and the restriction of people’s movement in certain areas. All these measures in one way or another affect the exercise of fundamental human rights. In the past few months, the number of reported cases of human rights violations has been escalating. This article seeks to highlight the three states’ practice of avoiding the ‘naming, shaming and prosecuting’ of perpetrators of human rights violations during the coronavirus pandemic. It also exposes instances of human rights violations in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania during the pandemic. In addition, the paper proposes measures to be undertaken to intensify legal protection against human rights violations during the coronavirus pandemic. Finally, the paper explores the elusive option of making the top state officials legally accountable for individual human rights violations.

The protection of the rights of life of humans is part of the category of non-derogable rights, namely rights that cannot be reduced. the existence of a separatist movement or KKB in Papua is considered an act of human rights violation, but in handling it through law enforcement officials resulted in not a few KKB members losing their lives, which for these actions is also a gross human rights violation. To analyze and find out about gross human rights violations by law enforcement officials against KKB members in Papua and the role and existence of the Human Rights Court in handling gross human rights violations. This research uses normative juridical legal research methods, because the topic studied can be resolved through analysis of secondary data or literature sources, without requiring primary data collection. The right to life in its regulation is contained in the provisions of the 1945 Indonesian Constitution, Law Number 39 of 1999 and Law Number 12 of 2005. The existence of the KKB in Papua is in fact a violation of human rights, but its handling by law enforcement officials, in fact, is not carried out through legal procedures, namely through the process of investigation, prosecution and court hearings, but unscrupulous law enforcement officials have in fact taken action to violate human rights by eliminating the lives of several KKB members. the existence of a human rights court until now has not optimally carried out its function to take action and prosecute the perpetrators of human rights violations both KKB members and law enforcement officials involved in eliminating the lives of several KKB members.

After 15 years of dictatorship, the Brazilian military leaders issued Law No. 6683, an amnesty law that started a slow process of democratic transition in the country. The law granted an official pardon to individuals accused of political crimes and to those who had their political rights suspended between September 1961 and August 1979. Ann Schneider's Amnesty in Brazil: Recompense after Repression, 1895–2010 examines this amnesty law, contextualizing it as part of a long history of amnesty laws in Brazil. Schneider shows that to understand how Law No. 6683 was interpreted and contested after the 1980s, we need to study the history of how Brazilian politicians, lawyers, writers, and other members of civil society developed a tradition of demanding and creating amnesty policies to resolve conflicts and crises since the First Republic—in 1891, when the first amnesty decree was issued. She demonstrates that throughout the twentieth century amnesty became an “institution to secure rights” in Brazil (p. 24).Schneider shows that the Brazilian state resorted to amnesty laws since the First Republic as a political solution to reconcile civil and human rights violations and that the first one, enacted by President Prudente de Morais, set a precedent for the use of amnesty in Brazil. Throughout the twentieth century, politicians and activists deployed the arguments that jurist Rui Barbosa first drafted in 1895 as a key part to settling civil and political conflicts. Amnesty became a government tool to both secure peace and turn toward new political regimes in Brazil.One of the book's main contributions is to illustrate that while amnesty laws and decrees of the post-1979 era in various countries often granted amnesty to the perpetrators of human rights violations, shielding them from accountability, in Brazil they also provided mechanisms for possible restitution to victims. Chapter 8 shows that because perpetrators were amnestied, the families of disappeared members of the Araguaia guerrilla movement never got justice. One example that the author discusses is the case of Major Curió, accused of the aggravated kidnapping of five guerrillas who were last seen in 1974. The judge assigned to his case rejected the complaint against him, suggesting that it would not be in the public's interest to rule against the amnesty law. Nonetheless, Schneider shows that while the law worked for state agents, it also benefited victims of the dictatorship. In 2001, for example, the Brazilian state created an amnesty commission that formally acknowledged state repression and offered monetary restitution and an official apology to the victims of the 1964–85 dictatorship. With this, amnesty in Brazil became associated not only with the pardoning of crimes and accusations but also with reparation and compensation. Schneider examines how amnesty laws in the late twentieth and early twentieth-first centuries came to incorporate the civil justice principle that quem causa dano repara (the one who harms must repair).In addition to discussing the amnesty laws, this book examines the crises and conflicts that led to their creation—over public health, racial relations, and class difference. One of the many valuable aspects of Schneider's analysis is the focus on the perspectives of victims—such as João Cândido, a Black sailor who rebelled against the navy's punitive methods, and Victória Grabois, whose husband, father, and brother, members of the Araguaia movement, disappeared during the 1970s. Schneider differentiates the anistiados (amnestied) from the anistiandos (those in the process of seeking amnesty). One important consequence of highlighting this difference is to show that the history of amnesty is ongoing. Those who got amnesty only considered themselves amnestied after they received reparations for the violence that the state subjected them to. Those who did not continued fighting for restitutions.While claiming amnesty became associated with restitution in Brazil, Schneider understands the limits of this legal framework. She disagrees with the idea that amnesty was triumphal or that it ended in the recognition and restitution of all rights in Brazil. Yet her argument that these laws and decrees represented an important legal basis for how people framed their access to rights is still valid and important. She provides a careful examination on the multiple groups who participated in the processes leading to the creation and application of amnesty laws. Even though amnesty did not benefit all groups who claimed to have a right to it, the groups who demanded amnesty influenced a tradition in which these laws were created and used this legal framework to their advantage. Schneider's analysis, therefore, provides a novel perspective for understanding how different groups in Brazil negotiated their rights in the public sphere.Lastly, Schneider's writing is accessible, and her narrative style is easy to follow. All students interested in human rights and transitional justice across disciplines will benefit from reading this well-researched and carefully organized book.

<p>The critical drivers and triggers of conflicts on the African continent include legitimate governance deficits, human rights violations, and a lack of respect for the rule of law and constitutionalism. This chapter discusses the African human rights system and delineates the broad framework of that system as relevant to the objectives of transitional justice. Next, the chapter surveys the contours of the institutional landscape of transitional justice in Africa, drawing attention to the various forms and approaches adopted to offer redress for human rights abuses and violations in the transitional justice context. Third, the chapter analyzes the relative strengths and weaknesses of the African human rights and transitional justice architecture that has been discussed in the previous sections. The concluding section reflects on the prospects for strengthening human rights and transitional justice in Africa.</p>

<p>The critical drivers and triggers of conflicts on the African continent include legitimate governance deficits, human rights violations, and a lack of respect for the rule of law and constitutionalism. This chapter discusses the African human rights system and delineates the broad framework of that system as relevant to the objectives of transitional justice. Next, the chapter surveys the contours of the institutional landscape of transitional justice in Africa, drawing attention to the various forms and approaches adopted to offer redress for human rights abuses and violations in the transitional justice context. Third, the chapter analyzes the relative strengths and weaknesses of the African human rights and transitional justice architecture that has been discussed in the previous sections. The concluding section reflects on the prospects for strengthening human rights and transitional justice in Africa.</p>

Protection related to human rights (Human Rights) is one of the principles that must be owned by the Indonesian state. Constitutional protection of human rights with legal guarantees for demands for enforcement through a fair process. A true rule of law is a country that upholds justice in the legal process such as the occurrence of human rights violations. The purpose of this research is to examine human rights violations in Indonesia and their enforcement. The research method used is a qualitative method. This research is library research so the sources come from books, scientific articles, and other relevant sources. The results of the research show that human rights are rights that are indeed owned by all people. However, there are still violations of human rights law. The punishments received by human rights violations have not fully had a deterrent effect. Therefore, law and human rights in Indonesia must coexist to uphold the fairest law against perpetrators of human rights violations.