Topic A: Plight of Human Rights in Yemen
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UNHRC Introduction to the Committee: The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) was established by the General Assembly in 2006. It consists of 47 members elected for three-year terms and their headquarters are located in Geneva, Switzerland. They have sessions three times a year in March, June, and September. The UNHRC is an inter-governmental body within the United Nations system responsible for the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe and for addressing situations of human rights violations and make recommendations on them. It addresses important human rights issues in specific countries of the entire world to guarantee a fair life for every citizen. For example, freedom of association and assembly, freedom of expression, freedom of belief and religion, women’s rights, the rights of migrants, and the rights of racial and ethnic minorities. While the UN has adopted the broad goal of addressing human rights in the UN Charter, UNHRC serves as the main forum for dialogue and intergovernmental cooperation on a variety of human rights issues and situations that require its attention throughout the year. It replaced the former Commission on Human Rights, which operated from 1946 to 2006. Topic A: Plight of Human Rights in Yemen. Introduction: The Yemen Crisis started in 2011. The conflict has its roots in the failure of a political transition supposed to bring stability to Yemen following an Arab Spring uprising that forced its longtime authoritarian president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to hand over power to his deputy, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, in 2011. As president, Mr Hadi struggled to deal with a variety of problems, including attacks by jihadists, a separatist movement in the south, and the continuing loyalty of security personnel to Saleh, as well as corruption, unemployment and food insecurity. The Houthi movement, which champions Yemen's Zaidi Shia Muslim minority and fought a series of rebellions against Saleh during the previous decade, took advantage of the new president's weakness by taking control of their northern heartland of Saada province and neighboring areas. Disillusioned with the transition, many ordinary Yemenis - including Sunnis - supported the Houthis and in late 2014 and early 2015, the rebels took over Sanaa. The stalemate has produced an unrelenting humanitarian crisis, with at least 8.4 million people at risk of starvation and 22.2 million people - 75% of the population - in need of humanitarian assistance, according to the UN. Severe acute malnutrition is threatening the lives of almost 400,000 children under the age of five. UNHRC Human Rights Violations: Due to lack of proper management and law enforcement, human rights had essentially gone down the drain. The multiple violations included: unlawful or arbitrary killings, including political assassinations; forced disappearances; torture; arbitrary arrest and detention; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; political prisoners; arbitrary infringements on privacy rights; criminalization of libel, censorship, and site blocking; substantial interference with freedom of assembly and association; the inability of citizens to choose their government through free and fair elections; pervasive corruption; recruitment and use of child soldiers; and criminalization of consensual same sex-sexual conduct. 1. Unjust and Unlawful Killings: Mainly, one of the most pertinent violation of human rights remains to be arbitrary and unlawful killings. There were numerous reports that current or former members of the security forces committed arbitrary or unlawful killings. Politically motivated killings by non-state actors, including Houthi forces and terrorist and insurgent groups claiming affiliation with AQAP or ISIS, also increased significantly during the year. Following the assassination of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh in December 2017, Houthis actively targeted members of his political party, the General People's Congress (GPC). Press reported that during the year Houthis either abducted or executed hundreds of GPC members in a crackdown on Saleh loyalists. 2. Increase in Missing Persons and Kidnappings: There were reports of politically motivated disappearances and kidnappings of individuals associated with political parties, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and media outlets critical of government security forces and the Houthi movement. Houthis and their allies sometimes detained civilian family members of government security officials. Non-state actors targeted and detained foreigners, including those believed to be working for foreign diplomatic missions. The government’s National Commission to Investigate Alleged Violations to Human Rights (NCIAVHR) documented 3,697 cases of arbitrary detention, torture and enforced disappearance committed by parties to the armed conflict from February 1 to July 31. Of these, 3,036 cases were committed by Houthi militias. 3. Derogatory and Unfair Punishments: Due to the lack of implementation of law and lack of fair trial, the criminals are often given punishments that are not included in the law. Even though the constitution prohibits torture and other such abuses. Yet still, the law lacks a comprehensive definition of torture. However, there are provisions allowing prison terms of up to 10 years for acts of torture. During 2018, UNOHCHR continued to receive information concerning ill treatment and torture of detainees at the Political Security Organization (PSO) and the National Security Bureau (NSB), as well as the Criminal Investigation Department and in the Habrah and al-Thawra prisons in Sana’a, as well as other facilities under Houthi control. Torture and other forms of mistreatment were common in Houthi detention facilities and by Houthis, according to NCIAVHR, international NGOs, and media reporting. An HRW report released in September documented 16 cases in which Houthis treated detainees brutally after arbitrarily arresting them, often in ways that amounted to torture, including whippings and hanging on walls with arms shackled behind the back. A December 7 AP report documented numerous cases of torture, including hanging prisoners by their genitals and burning them with acid. In some cases, UNHRC Houthi minders would torture detainees to obtain information or confessions. An advocacy group associated with families of detainees alleged that 126 individuals died from torture in Houthi detention since 2014. 4. Bad Conditions of the Detention Centers: Prison conditions were harsh and life threatening and did not meet international standards. The ROYG exercised limited control over prison facilities. In past years, government officials and NGOs identified overcrowding, lack of professional training for corrections officials, poor sanitation, inadequate access to justice, intermingling of pretrial and convicted inmates, lack of effective case management, lack of funding, and deteriorating infrastructure as problems within the 18 central prisons and 25 reserve prisons (also known as pretrial detention centers). Without special accommodations, authorities held prisoners with physical or mental disabilities with the general population. The UNOHCHR reported during the year that conditions of detention facilities deteriorated, including overcrowding, damaged buildings, and shortages of food and medicine. 5. Denial of Fair and Free Trial: The UNOHCHR reported the criminal justice system had become largely defunct in the areas where pro-government forces reclaimed control, with Coalition-backed forces filling the void. In most cases, as documented by the UNOHCHR, detainees were not informed of the reasons for their arrest, were not charged, were denied access to lawyers or a judge, and were held incommunicado for prolonged or indefinite periods. The constitution provides for an independent judiciary, but under Houthi control, the judiciary was weak and hampered by corruption, political interference, and lack of proper legal training. Judges’ social and political affiliations and occasional bribery influenced verdicts. The government’s lack of capacity and reluctance at times to enforce court orders, especially outside of cities, undermined the credibility of the judiciary. Criminals threatened and harassed members of the judiciary to influence cases. 6. Lack of Health Care Facilities: Yemen's health system has all but collapsed, while the world's largest cholera outbreak has killed thousands. An outbreak of cholera began in Yemen in October 2016, and is ongoing as of April 2019. In February and March 2017, the outbreak seemed to decline during a wave of cold weather, but the number of cholera cases resurged in April 2017. As of October 2018, there have been more than 1.2 million cases reported, and more than 2,500 people—58% children—have died in the Yemen cholera outbreak, which the United Nations has deemed the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Vulnerable to water-borne diseases before the conflict, 16 months went by before a program of oral vaccines was started. The cholera outbreak was worsened as a result of the ongoing civil war and the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen against the Houthi movement that began in March 2015. Airstrikes damaged hospital infrastructure, and water supply and sanitation in Yemen were affected by the ongoing conflict. The government of Yemen stopped funding public health in 2016; sanitation workers were not paid by the government, causing garbage to accumulate, and healthcare workers either fled the country or were not paid. UNHRC 7.