Daily Brief Audio Series
On the morning of April 15, 2023, residents of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, faced the shock of fighting breaking out in their city, which rapidly spread to other parts of the country.
Two years on, the war in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and a multitude of armed groups and militias allied to these forces has led to the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world.
An estimated 12.9 million people have fled their homes; half the country’s population faces acute hunger, and famine is spreading.
Innumerable abuses have been committed by all parties involved, shattering lives of tens of millions, while tens of thousands of civilians have died.
Since the beginning of Sudan’s conflict, we’ve been ringing alarm bells about the crisis, again and again, and highlighting the international community’s failure to address it.
As the war rages on and some displaced people return to Khartoum images are emerging confirming massive destruction of civilian infrastructure: “We came back to Khartoum to find it in ruins. We found out that people are using a playground nearby as a graveyard because they couldn’t bury their loved ones properly in the cemetery”, a woman told HRW.
Meanwhile, civilians are still under attack. This grim anniversary takes place as horrific attacks unfold in El Fasher and the Zamzam displacement camp, where around half a million people have been sheltering and where famine has been underway since August.
This is a disaster foretold by many. Today, world leaders are gathering in London for a conference on the dire situation in Sudan, co-hosted by the United Kingdom, the European Union, France, and Germany.
They should urgently act to rein in abusive forces attacking civilians in and around El Fasher. More generally, HRW has three key recommendations:
- Leaders should urgently work to protect civilians – including through the deployment of a mission to protect civilians – and guarantee safe, unfettered aid provision.
- The existing arms embargo on Darfur should be expanded to the rest of Sudan. The UN should also hold violators of this embargo to account, as warring parties have acquired apparently new foreign-made equipment.
- Impunity for the crimes in Sudan has led abusive forces to commit even more grave crimes. Justice efforts through various international and national avenues should be encouraged by all countries involved.
Given the scale of death and suffering – and demonstrated by the current events in Zamzam – something must be done.
Governments can – and urgently should – relieve some of Sudan’s suffering.
Have you ever phoned or emailed someone in another country? A friend, a relative, or maybe a work colleague?
It seems almost a silly question. In today’s hyperconnected world, where communications are incredibly inexpensive and easily available, these are things people do countless times a day without giving it a second thought.
If you’re Tibetan, however, you have to think about it very carefully first. For years, China’s government has arrested people in Tibetan areas for politically motived phone and internet-related offenses.
Contacting people outside China, even relatives, is just one action that can get you into trouble with the authorities. Another is having images or text on your phone the government doesn’t like – so-called “banned content.” Another is sharing material the authorities frown on. It might even be just a funny video.
Such things, which are everyday trivialities in much of the world, can lead to arrest, detention, and torture in Tibet under Chinese rule.
Tibetans have to keep these dangers in mind pretty much every time they touch their phone. This is because there, a mobile phone is essentially a government tracking device.
Now, people say this about mobile phones all over the world, and there’s surely some truth in it, generally speaking. But in Tibet, surveillance though your cell phone is next level.
The authorities use mass phone searches, and everyone is required to have, installed on their phones, mandatory phone apps with built-in government surveillance.
The full scale of arrests and prosecutions for these telecoms-related “crimes” is unknown. Chinese authorities do not disclose official data for political offenses. A new HRW report found more than 60, but this is surely just the tip of the iceberg.
Some of the cases give you an idea of just how draconian the situation is, especially around the wildly broad definition of “banned content.”
In many cases, those arrested for “banned content” have possessed or shared nothing more than references to Tibetan religious figures, like the exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
In one case, a man was arrested for setting up a WeChat group celebrating the birthdays of 80-year-old Buddhist monks. The police said it was “illegal” to form such a chat group “without permission.”
Chinese authorities are making a mockery of Tibetans’ rights. They don’t allow Tibetans to freely express themselves nor access information. They are even taking away Tibetans’ basic right to stay in touch with their loved ones.
Global communications are expanding rapidly in most parts of the world. Being in touch with others has never been easier.
In China, things are heading in the opposite direction, as the government increasingly seeks to close off and control entire populations.
Do you ever think about whether you can afford a health care service, for example seeing a doctor?
If the answer is no, you are probably among the “lucky” minority of people that have access to publicly funded health care.
The vast majority of people around the world – 84 percent or 6.6 billion people – live in countries where their access to health care is undermined in part by low public funding.
Sometimes this is because of major constraints like war and natural disasters, but in most cases, governments cannot raise the funds because of lack of international regulations, or they just don’t prioritize it. Either way, people suffer.
But health is a human right, not luck.
Most governments are not spending enough to ensure that health care systems can deliver on this right to health.
Human Rights Watch analyzed the most recent World Health Organization data, including health care spending from 2022 for more than 190 countries around the world.
We found that in 2022, 141 governments spent less than 5 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on health care through public means, a widely accepted international spending benchmark.
This means, most people have little access to even healthcare services considered most “essential” by the United Nations.
In many countries, including some of the world’s poorest, big parts of the population have no choice but to pay for health care costs themselves – or to or not receive care altogether.
If people have to pay for their own health care, they often cannot pay for goods and services essential for the realization of other human rights, like housing, food, and education.
In short: The data indicates that there are vast inequalities in access to healthcare, and that it is at least in part the result of policy choices.
These policy choices are not fulfilling obligations under international law. Countries must put as many resources as possible into the right to health.
As global health systems worldwide struggle with the US sudden termination of much foreign aid and assistance, richer governments can and should step up.
Those with more resources and power have a particular responsibility to ensure everyone is able to access quality health care.
This could mean increasing contributions to development aid, of course, but also, most importantly, to change the rules that make it so difficult for some countries to raise public funds for health care.
This could be fixed: countries will be negotiating at the UN over the coming years to increase cooperation on tax and avoid competition that harms the poorest countries. And the right to health of millions.
Restructuring debt or relief combined with global tax cooperation can and will make a big difference for public health care.
Essentials, such as health care, should not be expendable for billions of people, but should be equally available to everyone.
There are dozens of bad arguments governments give for not tackling human rights abuses as they should – and as they are often legally obliged to.
You’ll sometimes hear their leaders simply issue denials of the evidence: “it never happened,” or “it wasn’t us.” Sure. And all the videos, satellite images, and eye-witness testimonies?
Or sometimes they’ll attack the messenger: “you and your organization are imperialist dogs,” or “you’re paid agents of our enemies.” A classic.
Another bad excuse abusive governments occasionally give for their appalling record on human rights is along the lines of: “give us more time.”
The argument goes more or less like this: we’re a new government, or we’re a new country, or we have a new political system. We’re young, and still learning how to do things. We just emerged from a terrible dictatorship, and you can’t expect us to be a fully-fledged democracy that always respects human rights like in western Europe right away.
This is an argument I heard fairly often from government officials and government supporters in eastern Europe and central Asia 25-30 years ago. The idea was the countries were new, they had just gained independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and they were slowly “in transition” to western-European-style democracy.
The argument is flawed in so many ways.
First, it’s founded on a false idea that there are somehow established “stages of development” governments go through like a player in the video game Civilization. Supposedly, democracy and respect for human rights are the inevitable end point, but a country has to go through other stages – like autocracy – first.
That’s a pretty dubious notion on its own, but the idea that western-European democracies were the model and the end point make it even more problematic.
The reference to western Europe – which is the comparison I heard most often in the 1990s – came with the implication western European countries didn’t have human rights problems of their own. They did then, and, as any reader of this newsletter knows, they still do.
Finally, the suggestion that democracies never backslide is ludicrous. You merely have to look around today at the human rights horrors in some countries that used to pride themselves on being “democracies.” The backsliding on fundamental rights is all too depressingly obvious.
The “give us more time” argument just falls apart on every level.
Here’s the reality: Countries whose governments signed international agreements to protect universal human rights – universal, not western European – have committed themselves to uphold those rights.
New country, old country, transitioning country, whatever. Stop making excuses, and instead, work on fulfilling your promises.
The horrific numbers may not surprise you, but the timing might.
Nearly 250 people, including 60 children, have been killed by landmines and other war-related explosives in Syria. Close to 400 people have been injured.
These are the casualty figures from just the last few months – since December, when the Assad regime was overthrown.
The country and the world may have heaved a sigh of relief for the apparent end of Syria’s brutal 14-year civil war. However, conflict-related deaths don’t conveniently stop when the fighting does.
In fact, casualties from landmines and explosive remnants of war in Syria have dramatically increased since December. One key reason is: more people are on the move. Specifically, many people displaced by the war are finally able to return home.
But the country is still widely contaminated by landmines and other weapons used by all sides during the war. Prior to December last year, these frequently injured and killed civilians.
Today, with more areas accessible since the collapse of the Assad government, people are coming across more land contaminated with landmines and explosive remnants.
Sometimes, people don’t know about the danger underfoot until it’s too late. Other times, they see something interesting on the ground, and go for a closer look, maybe even pick it up, not realizing the deadly charge it contains.
Syria’s new transitional government needs to make this issue an urgent priority, as a new HRW report makes clear. Authorities need to ensure suspect areas are surveyed and then cleared of landmines and explosive remnants of war. International donors and expert organizations can and should help.
Public education is also essential. The victims and witnesses we interviewed in Syria told us they had not been given any information about the dangers of unexploded weapons in their area.
What’s more, there isn’t yet a country-wide system for anonymous reporting of explosives contamination. So, even where there may be some local knowledge, it isn’t shared more widely.
It’s going to take years to survey all the suspect areas in Syria and then clear landmines and other explosive remnants of war. It’s slow, difficult work. Just think: Bosnia and Herzegovina still has a landmine problem today from a war that happened in the early 1990s.
As these painstaking efforts unfold in Syria, the transitional government should also be flooding all possible information channels – from TV to social media to posters on walls – with warnings about the dangers and a way to report anything that looks suspicious.
Landmines and explosive remnants of war can kill and maim people for a long time. Spreading public awareness about them won’t stop that entirely, but it can help bring the number of victims down.