PRESS CONFERENCE BY AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

Press Briefing

PRESS CONFERENCE BY AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

At a Headquarters press conference this morning, the Secretary-General of Amnesty International, Pierre Sane, said he had told the Security Council today that, in preventing and managing conflicts and in ensuring the rebuilding of societies, serious consideration should be given to human rights and reports of human rights violations.

Mr. Sane was introduced by the Permanent Representative of Portugal to the United Nations, António Monteiro. The Ambassador said Mr. Sane had participated this morning in an ad hoc meeting at his invitation, with members of the Council, also including personnel of United Nations agencies and of the Secretariat.

Mr. Sane said his briefing to the Council had reflected the growing importance that Council members attached to considering the human rights dimension, particularly when designing their response to crises and when planning operations aimed at producing long-lasting solutions in the field. The analysis of human rights reports for patterns of violations allowed early identification of signs of impending conflicts, Mr. Sane said. The Council should consider such country reports in its conflict-prevention efforts. An example could be found in the 1993 reports of the Rapporteur on Summary and Arbitrary Executions for Rwanda and Burundi. Those reports had warned the international community that unless rapid, decisive action was taken, the two countries would be entrenched in blood. "No action was taken -- we've seen the results."

Mr. Sane said he had also told the Council that respect for human rights should be central to how it monitored and managed conflicts. "We tend to think that when a conflict erupts, then human rights have to be suspended because it is war." As conflicts continued, it was important that reports on human rights violations should continue to reach the Council. Such reports had the effect of changing the behaviour of the belligerents.

"If they know that human rights reports are being considered as they go on, that is the first step to establishing accountability", he said. Continuous reporting was also one way to understand the causes of the conflict and provide solutions aimed at addressing deep-rooted problems.

There had also been a brief discussion of the role of human rights in post-conflict peace-building, Mr. Sane said. If such efforts and investments were to have a lasting impact, the building of human rights institutions had to be taken seriously -- including the creation of national human rights commissions and retraining of the police and military -- in order to avoid renewed cycles of violence.

On the establishment of an international criminal court, which "hopefully will see the light of day next year", Mr. Sane said that the court should be truly independent and be perceived as such. Its prosecutor should have the power to commence cases independently, and there should be no circumstances in which the Security Council could intervene in its work.

The failure to monitor the transfer of arms, especially light weapons, had contributed to the gross violation of human rights in areas of conflict, Mr. Sane said. He had, therefore, suggested that the Council follow up on its initiative in investigating the flow of arms to the former Rwandan army. The Council should also look into the flow of arms into the entire Great Lakes region, including both illicit transfers and "certain government-authorized arms transfers" that fuelled the crisis and led to gross human rights violations.

Mr. Sane said he had drawn the Council's attention to the need for the United Nations to be sensitive to violations of women's rights when it investigated human rights abuses. It should also ensure that women with the appropriate qualifications were included in human rights investigative teams, so that violations committed against women, such as rape and sexual slavery, might be properly documented and the perpetrators brought to justice.

The importance of the protection of children in armed conflict was also highlighted, Mr. Sane said. In view of the existence of some 250,000 child soldiers, a number which was increasing, the Council should consider that issue in its peace-keeping and demobilization plans. Otherwise, those children would be used in attempts to refuel the conflicts.

He added that Amnesty International was pleased to be able to contribute further to the Council's work. It was hoped that other organizations would also be invited to interact with the Council on other important issues.

Asked what questions had been raised by Council members during his briefing, Mr. Sane said the meeting had been more of a dialogue. The members who spoke had welcomed the opportunity to interact with his organization. Members also promised to look at his recommendations. Asked which members had spoken, Mr. Sane said the majority of Council members had participated.

Might Amnesty International present its reports to the Council formally? a correspondent asked. Mr. Sane said Council members regularly received his organization's reports, which were sent to delegations' offices. However, Amnesty International would like the Council to make more use of those reports when there were potential conflicts.

Had there been any discussion of specific country situations? a correspondent asked. Did Amnesty International have any suggestions on how the United Nations could proceed with the human rights investigation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo? Mr. Sane said there were policy discussions, based on the United Nations experiences in countries like Angola,

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Liberia and Guatemala. The situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo had also been discussed. There was an urgent need to establish a certain level of confidence between the United Nations, the human right organizations operating there and that country's Government, to ensure that the investigative team would be able to do its work properly and ensure that the truth came to light.

Asked if the issue of the accountability of the new Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the $14 billion debt of the Mobutu regime had been discussed, Mr. Sane said it was not. The discussion with the Council had focused on the ability of the international investigative team to do its work.

A correspondent asked Mr. Sane to cite some examples of successful United Nations human rights operations that he had commended to the Council today. Mr. Sane said that, following the conflicts in Haiti and El Salvador, some investment had been made and continued to be made, in building human rights institutions. Although there was still a long way to go, such investment should lead to serious improvements in the human rights situations in those countries.

That was not the case in such African countries as Angola and Liberia, where the same commitment did not seem to exist for long-term investment in building national human rights institutions, he went on to say. In cases where peace-keeping was "contracted out to regional bodies" such as the Economic Community of West African States' Monitoring Observer Group (ECOMOG), there must be United Nations oversight of the human rights conduct of troops who might feel "they could do basically whatever they want because the accountability is not there".

Asked if there had been any discussion of the human rights situation in the former Yugoslavia, Mr. Sane said such discussion had been very brief. His objective had been to have an input in the Council's policy formulation; country situations were used to illustrate the direction that the Council should be taking in designing future programmes.

In the case of the former Yugoslavia, the setting up of the Tribunal to establish individual accountability had probably led to changes in behaviour with respect to human rights, Mr. Sane said. That was not the case in Cambodia and Burundi, where there had not been individual accountability through the establishment of international tribunals. A permanent tribunal was essential to address impunity and all situations in which there were crimes against humanity.

Ambassador Monteiro said the initiative of meeting with the Secretary- General of Amnesty International had been timely. He reminded corespondents that the new Commissioner for Human Rights had taken up her appointment today and reiterated that human rights was a very important element of the Council's work.

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