Laos urged to implement rights recommendations News
Jakub Hałun, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Laos urged to implement rights recommendations

Human Rights Watch (HRW) called on the Laotian government on Friday to implement key recommendations regarding enforced disappearances and violations of fundamental civil and political rights. The recommendations include ratifying effective legal measures to prevent enforced disappearance, eliminating all forms of discrimination against women in education, and applying international human rights instruments.

After criticizing the lack of progress on Laos’ human rights situation in May, HRW welcomed Laos’ support of many Universal Periodic Review (UPR) recommendations. However, it expressed concerns about the government’s dismissal of several proposed measures to conduct credible investigations into cases of enforced disappearance. HRW also voiced alarm over Laos’s rejection of recommendations concerning fundamental civil and political rights, such as freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly. It further emphasized particular concern about proposals calling on the government to protect people from unjust law enforcement, including harassment, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, and enforced disappearance.

The case of Sombath Somphone, a Laotian activist, remains unresolved 12 years after his disappearance. Somphone was last seen in 2012 at a police checkpoint on a busy street in the Laotian capital. CCTV footage captured him being stopped by police officers and forced into another vehicle. His wife, Ng, stated that “[t]he Lao government authorities have ignored my appeal for 12 years and they continue to tell the people who asked about what happened to Sombath that the investigation is still ongoing.”

HRW has described Somphone’s disappearance as emblematic of Laos’ broader impunity for rights violations committed against its critics, calling on Laos to conduct a full and impartial investigation of Sombath’s enforced disappearance and to disclose his fate.

During this UPR cycle, Laos supported 189 out of 257 recommendations received. HRW is urging UN member states to press Laos to implement more UPR recommendations, including fully and impartially investigating reports of attacks against dissidents and ending arbitrary arrest and detention.

THIS DAY @ LAW

WWII National War Labor Board established

On January 12, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt revived the National War Labor Board (NWLB) for World War II. In order to prevent wartime labor stoppages, the NWLB was set up to arbitrate labor disputes that arose during the war. The NWLB also managed wage controls over the airplane, automobile, shipping, mining, telegraph, and railway industries during the war. The original NWLB was created by President Woodrow Wilson during World War I for largely the same purposes. Read Cornell University's collection of NWLB files from both World Wars.