Human Rights Internet

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Conferences and Research

HRI has worked on a variety of issues connected to human rights. In addition to planning and executing events, HRI has put forward papers and proposals to numerous organizations and conferences.

Extreme Poverty, Human Rights, and Health (PDF)

On 23 January 2009, a symposium on Extreme Poverty, Human Rights and Health were held at the University of Ottawa. This symposium reflected the concerns of a research network of Health in an Unequal World: Global Ethics and Policy Choices, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Human Rights Internet. Very special thanks are due to CIHR for the additional resources that made it possible to hold this symposium and offer free admission to all those interested. The following is a brief synopsis of the presentations made at the symposium; full acknowledgements as well as a highly selective list of references appear at the end of this report.

Children

HRI was commissioned by the organizers of the Second World Congress against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children to research and produce a theme paper on the role and involvement of the private section in the commercial sexual exploitation of children. The paper drew on HRI's past studies in the area of children's rights, including the Canadian Component of the Protection Project published in 2000. The first draft of the theme paper was presented at a Symposium on Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children held in Kyoto in February. The final draft was published by UNICEF and used as an official background document for the World Congress itself. HRI continues to follow child protection matters and plans to launch a project on children's rights and the international corporate community.

Freedom of Religion or Belief

HRI, in partnership with the Oslo Coalition on Freedom of Religion or Belief, is currently maintaining an electronic library dedicated to freedom of religion or belief and all of its sub-topics. The library is an important resource for those working towards freedom of religion or belief at the national or international level. The focus of the material is on the international, regional and legal instruments which exist to protect these fundamental rights. It includes country-by-country analyses including details on the religious composition of each population, full text excerpts of relevant sections of national constitutions, HRI's For the Record summaries of the annual reports of the Special Rapporteur and links to related international reports. Individual pages are available for over 130 countries. The library also provides a searchable database of organizations working in the field, a documentation centre, a database of relevant books and articles, a comprehensive links section and a calendar of events. This project was made possible with funding from the Norwegian government and the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

Anti-Racism

The UN World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR) was held in South Africa in 2001. HRI was very active in the conference preparations, proceedings and follow-up. In March, HRI co-organized the WCAR civil society regional meeting for the Americas in Quito, Ecuador (see Networking for details). The centerpiece of HRI's contribution to the conference was our WCAR Website. The site was created early in 2000 and grew to become an important resource for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) preparing for the meeting. The portal includes Briefing Notes from the NGO Liaison, a calendar of events, accreditation information and WCAR related documents from the human rights community. During the conference, HRI provided daily updates from Durban on the Website and via a ListServ for its partners who were not able to make the trip to South Africa. In the next year the site will continue to provide a place for the human rights community to discuss the impact of events at Durban. Funding to support this initiative was provided by Canadian Heritage.

Human Rights Defenders

HRI shares the concern for human rights defenders expressed by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in December 1998 when it adopted the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, and by defenders from 18 countries of the Americas in their Final Declaration of the Latin American Consultation on Human Rights Defenders, held in Mexico City in June 2001. While local human rights defenders -- organizations, individual activists, lawyers, judges, journalists and others -- are better able to monitor a given regime's conduct and its policing methods, abusive arrests, improper judicial proceedings, prison conditions, torture and other violations, HRI assists the front line defenders by providing information and documentation as well as political and moral support. In this regard, HRI has developed and makes available on its Website a vast and varied collection of documents and information materials, as well as an extensive bibliography on education and training, country reports, case studies and calls for urgent action.

In response to the request of the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the UN for Human Rights Defenders for information relevant to her mandate, HRI delivered a statement before the UN Commission for Human Rights addressing the brutal assaults committed against a well-known human rights defender in Tunisia while underlining the continued harassment of all human rights defenders in that country. Following the Commission, HRI researched and published a report on Tunisian human rights defenders as part of its new Occasional Paper Series (see Resources for details).

Occasional Paper Series

In 2001 HRI reintroduced its Occasional Paper Series (OPS). The new OPS will include three issues per volume. The theme of volume one is Current Topics in Human Rights and the first issue focuses on The Repression of Human Rights Defenders. The 40-page original report, entitled Violence, menaces et représailles en Tunisie, documents Tunisia's failure to fulfill its international obligations and its own legislation regarding the protection of human rights defenders. The report was made public in Montreal and Quebec City. The OPS was subsequently distributed worldwide through the HRI network and on its Website and was forwarded to the Special Representative for Human Rights Defenders, the African Commission for Human Rights and the Canadian and Tunisian governments.