Source The United Nations
Media www.rajawalisiber.com – Briefing by Michelle Bachelet, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, on Strengthening accountability and justice for serious violations of international law.
Distinguished President, Excellencies,
I thank Albania for organizing this important Open Debate on accountability and justice.
Impunity fuels and intensifies many of the crises currently on this Council’s agenda. This emboldens perpetrators, silences victims and undermines prospects for peace, human rights and development.
Our collective experience has shown that justice and accountability are fundamental to the pursuit of peace and security.
So I am encouraged by the international community’s growing resolve to fight impunity, through the United Nations system and beyond, including through a renewed focus on both State and individual responsibility for serious violations of international law.
In this context, I am privileged to sit on this panel with the President of the International Court of Justice, an institution central to the common objective of upholding the rule of law at the international level.
UN inter-governmental organs have taken significant steps to advance accountability, often with a specific focus on fostering individual criminal responsibility for international crimes. This Council’s creation of UNITAD to enhance criminal accountability for crimes of Da’esh/ISIL/Daesh accompanies the General Assembly and Human Rights Council establishing independent investigative mechanisms to do likewise for Syria and Myanmar. And through further action of the Human Rights Council, there are currently no fewer than twelve specific human rights mechanisms active, addressing various forms of accountability.
Today, I wish to highlight three ways in which my Office is contributing to efforts to strengthen accountability and justice for serious violations of international law.
First, the UN Human Rights Council has stepped up its response to serious human rights violations that may also amount to international crimes. This includes creating mechanisms with mandates to establish facts and the circumstances of violations, to collect, consolidate, preserve and analyse information and evidence, to identify those responsible, and to make recommendations towards future accountability. My Office is continually strengthening its support to such mandates, which we see as key contributors to justice and rule of law, including through accelerating and streamlining the operationalization of mandates. The work of these mechanisms has been used by international courts addressing both State and individual criminal responsibility, as well as national prosecutors and judges pursuing international crimes, including under principles of universal and extraterritorial jurisdiction. The conviction in Germany of Syrian Colonel Anwar Raslan for overseeing torture at a Syrian detention center nearly a decade ago adds to the growing number of jurisdictions working with diverse partners, including vital society actors, towards delivering accountability for international crimes.
My Office is committed to providing the support necessary for each mandate entrusted to us to operate in line with the highest standards of human rights fact-finding, including through the use of modern methodological and investigative techniques. Efforts have focused on the gathering and preservation of information, with a view to increasing the likelihood that it can be used in diverse legal proceedings; on strengthening chain of custody; on explaining and procuring fully informed consent of victims, witnesses and other information providers in accountability contexts; and, on effective preservation of and access to digital materials.
Second, together with the Executive Office of the Secretary-General and the wider UN system, my Office is working to enhance the UN’s support to national transitional justice mechanisms, including truth commissions and reparations programmes.
An important element emerging from this work is the need to tailor transitional justice initiatives to address adequately and comprehensively respond to underlying patterns and root causes of violations.
Our work indicates that for justice responses to be truly effective, they must be people centred and gender sensitive, seeking, respecting and acknowledging the views of victims. This means, in particular, promoting the meaningful involvement of both victims and marginalized communities, and emphasising their access to remedies and reparation, including rehabilitation, with particular focus on mental health and psychosocial support.
It also means supporting national stakeholders, including civil society actors, to identify innovative, pragmatic and context-specific justice solutions, to achieve tangible differences in people’s lives.