UN expert applauds Africa convention to protect displaced persons

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UN expert applauds Africa convention to protect displaced persons

December 6, 2012 11:26:14 am

[JURIST] A UN independent expert on Thursday praised [statement; UN News Centre report] a convention passed by the African Union (AU) [official website, English] to protect internally displaced persons (IDPs). The African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa (Kampala Convention) [text, PDF] was passed in 2009 and came into full enforcement on Thursday. It is the world’s first set of guidelines for the protection of individuals who are displaced within their own country. Other conventions have been passed throughout the world protecting refugees who have been forced out of their home countries due to violent conflict or natural disasters, but they did not deal with IDPs. In his statement, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of IDPs Chaloka Beyani outlined the importance of the Kampala Convention:

Out of the 26 million persons internally displaced due to conflict or human rights violence in 2011, an estimated 10 million were in Africa, with at least a further half million internally displaced due to sudden onset natural disasters, such as floods. … However, I believe that the significance of the Kampala Convention goes beyond Africa—as an international model this comprehensive Convention represents the culmination of over two decades of work during which Governments, civil society and the international community have sought to improve the way we address the plight of millions of internally displaced persons across the globe.

The Kampala convention has been signed by 37 member states of the AU. Beyani urged the remaining members of the AU to consider signing the historic convention to ensure the protection of IDPs throughout Africa.

In July the AU announced [JURIST report] that it will vote on whether to establish a continental criminal court to try human rights crimes. The African Court on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) currently does not have jurisdiction to try criminals and asked the AU to pass a resolution granting it the authority to sentence human rights criminals. Last year, African Union Commission (AUC) [official website] Chairperson Jean Ping had accused [JURIST report] former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court [official website], Luis Moreno-Ocampo, of targeting African citizens for prosecution. The accusation came amid a vote by Africa’s foreign ministers, who supported Kenya’s bid to defer the trials of numerous suspects who allegedly planned the 2007 post-election violence [Reuters backgrounder]. In 2010 the Kenyan Parliament approved a motion to withdraw the country from the ICC [JURIST report]. The vote came a week after Ocampo presented [JURIST report] cases against six individuals believed to be responsible for the 2007 post-election violence that resulted in more than 1,000 deaths in the country.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.