NGOs addresses Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on situation in Colombia, Algeria, Mauritius, Kazakhstan and Afghanistan

AFTERNOON

3 May 2010

The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights this afternoon heard statements from a series of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on the situation of economic, social and cultural rights in Colombia, Algeria, Mauritius, Kazakhstan and Afghanistan, whose reports will be considered during this session.

NGO representatives spoke about, among other things, malnutrition, food insecurity, lack of job stability, and discrimination against women, indigenous peoples, people of African descent and people living with HIV/AIDS in Colombia; the lack of cultural rights for the Berber people of Algeria; high drug use in Kazakhstan and Mauritius; and the challenges of rebuilding civil society in Afghanistan.

The representatives of the following NGOs took the floor: International Harm Reduction Association, Colombian Coalition for Human Rights, Colombian Commission of Jurists, FIAN International, Coordinacion Regional del Pacifico Colombiano, Wayuu de Wepiapaa Indigenous Community, Seeds Group, Tamazgha, Collectif Urgence Toxida, Global Health Research Centre and Afghan Council for Reconstruction and Development.

The next meeting of the Committee will be at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, 4 May, when it will start its consideration of the fifth periodic report of Colombia (E/C.12/COL/5). It is scheduled to consider the report of Columbia over three meetings, concluding on Wednesday, 5 May at 1 p.m.

Statements

General Statement

DAMON BARRETT, of International Harm Reduction Association, an organization focused on human rights and public health based drug policies, spoke about the impact of drug policies on several countries that would be appearing before the Committee including Colombia, Afghanistan, Mauritius and Kazakhstan. Mr. Barrett said that drug control and its impact on human rights was not often raised before this Committee which he felt was a mistake as it was not just a domestic concern. He pointed to a number of unintended consequences of drug control policy. For example, it created a criminal black market and thus organized crime which led to corruption and posed a threat to human rights and security. He said this could clearly be seen in Colombia ad Afghanistan. It also diverted money from programmes like HIV prevention to the fight against drugs and due to the attempts to eradicate cocoa crops, there were now 4 million internally displaced people in Colombia. He also said that people who used drugs were stigmatized and driven to the margins of society, thus increasing the likelihood of human rights abuses for this group.

Columbia

AURA RODRIGUEZ, of Colombian Coalition for Human Rights, spoke about the issues of malnutrition, food insecurity, bad housing, the lack of job stability and discrimination against women, indigenous peoples, people of African descent and people living with HIV/AIDS in Colombia. There was a failure by the State to provide economic, social and cultural rights to people from various groups in Colombia. Internal displacement was a serious problem because it denied people access to housing, healthcare, education and other social services. There were also difficulties in providing a proper education to children of certain groups, including children from poor and indigenous communities, children from displaced families and people of African descent, so school enrolment was very low among these people. Also, Ms. Rodriguez said expenditure on education had been cut because of changes in the tax law and this had weakened education services even further.

ANA MARIA RODRIGUEZ, of Colombian Commission of Jurists, said three regressive policies were recently passed by the Colombian Government. One of these measures was a change in labour law which affected the rights of workers with results that were clearly regressive. There was also the transfer regime reform which impacted the transfer of money from the federal government to regional governments. These changes had led to cuts in funding for education, health, sanitation and drinking water. She also pointed to an intellectual property law treaty between the United States and Colombia, the implementation of which she said would be detrimental to the Colombian health system because people would have less access to certain medicines, affecting approximately 5 million people.

JUAN BERNADO ROSADO, of Colombian Commission of Jurists, told the Committee that Colombia had a very serious employment situation. The number of women and men who worked in the shadow economy had increased to 58 per cent, underemployment had increased to 40 per cent and 43 per cent of workers made less than the minimum wage. Women felt the effects of the unemployment crisis more than men. They earned 85 per cent less than men and the situation was even worse in rural areas. According to Mr. Rosado, the situation was even more difficult for young people, whose unemployment rate was ten per cent higher than the general unemployment rate. Violence was also a problem faced by Colombian workers. Violence perpetrated against trade unionists went unpunished as 679 trade unionists were assassinated between 2002 and 2009.

ANA MARIA SUAREZ FRANCO, of FIAN International, presented a report to the Committee on food insecurity in Colombia. Between 1996 and 2005 there was a 2.3 per cent increase in the number of hungry people in the Colombia, when the rest of the region had a drop in the hunger rate of 12 per cent. She pointed out that indigenous groups were disproportionately affected by malnutrition and that there were structural causes for this problem such as unequal access to resources, unequal land distribution and the concentration of wealth that the Government had not tried to address.

JOSE OBREGON, of Coordinacion Regional del Pacifico Colombiano, a group that represented Black Pacific communities in Colombia, said that the State of Colombia had endorsed economic policies that changed the use of land, customs and the daily lives of these communities. The policies jeopardized the economic, social and cultural rights of African descendents to bring in large scale projects and natural resource exploitation in the mining and lumber industries without consultation with the communities that would be affected. There was also the issue of displacement of some 587,000 people of African descent who were evicted from areas due to these policies. Ninety five per cent of them left their assets behind and the State had done nothing to return their property to them.

ARELIS BEATRIZ OJEDA JAYARIYU, of Wayuu de Wepiapaa Indigenous Community, said her people had been displaced in 2005 after a paramilitary group killed her uncle. She said her people did not have the right to food, education or a decent life. Children had died of malnutrition and the situation was worsening. They would like to be resettled and given land so that they could grow food and live self sufficiently. Ms. Jayariyu said that their right to education was not guaranteed and they had to give their children a western education, which was not what they wanted. Despite the fact that they had set up a school for the education of their children, the Government would not recognize it as an ethnic education centre. Paramilitaries continued to be in the region and they felt their community had been forgotten. She urged the State of Colombia to pay reparations to the Wayuu and guarantee their rights to food, health and education.

GERMAN VELEZ of Seeds Group, an environmental organization based in Colombia, spoke to the Committee about the dangers posed by genetically modified organisms to the cultural and economic rights of indigenous groups in Colombia. According to the report presented by the group, for the indigenous peoples of Colombia a diverse stock of native seeds provided a crucial source of food and represented a fundamental element of their cultures, a source of health, and a key part of their traditional agro-ecological methods of farming, which helped to protect and preserve the environment in which they lived.

The Seeds Group asserted that the policies and practices of the Colombian State concerning genetically modified organisms violated the rights of indigenous people in Colombia, including their rights to self-determination, prior consultation, participation, property, culture, food, health and a healthy environment.

The Seeds Group called on the Colombian Government to halt the release of genetically modified seeds and to work in consultation with indigenous peoples on the use of such seeds while it asked the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to study these issues and the impact they had on the rights to health and food in Colombia.

Committee experts had several questions for the non-governmental organizations, including requesting clarification on the number of displaced people within Colombia, the causes of displacement, the continued effect of armed conflict on the realization of rights in Colombia, and women and children used as pawns in the armed conflict.

ANA MARIA RODRIGUEZ, of Colombian Commission of Jurists, responded to the question on the figures on displacement by saying that while the numbers of displaced people were not exact, they were still quite high, no matter which numbers were used, and they pointed out that some of the displacement was due to government action, not just to paramilitary activity.

Algeria

NASIM FERKAL, of Tamazgha, a group that dealt with the defence of the rights of the Berber people, particularly in North Africa, spoke about the exclusion of the Berber people from the economic, social and cultural life of Algeria. There was a gap between what the Algerian Government said was its protection of Berber people and culture, and what it actually did. For example, the State party did not protect the Berber language in practice as there was a law on the books to promote Arabic, which was done at the expense of the Berber language. In 2001, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed its concern on the situation and requested the State party to revise this law. There were inconsistencies and contradictions in other Algerian laws as well. The State continued with policies to exclude Berber speaking individuals from the Government administration. For example, Berber speakers could not get documents in their language from the Government including notarized documents and court documents. In addition, literacy efforts for the Berber people were marginal as there were not sufficient teachers to teach the language, the Berber language received very little support in the media, both print and television, and Berber language films were also not supported. Tamazgha urged the Algerian Government to modify its Constitution to be in compliance with its international obligations.

In response to a question by a Committee member, Mr. Ferkal said there had been some improvement over the years since Algeria designated the Berber language as an official language, but he pointed out that only 2.15% of the children who needed access to instruction in the language were getting it. He asserted that the law that stated that official documents must be printed in Arabic was tantamount to linguistic imperialism.

Mauritius

PERCY YIP TONG, of Collectif Urgence Toxida, an organization which focused on HIV prevention and the fight against drugs, spoke about the nexus between drug use and HIV/AIDS. He said Mauritius, according to a UN report, was the second largest consumer of opiates based on population. The HIV/AIDS rate in Mauritius was four times higher than in France and 92 per cent of HIV infections were due to intravenous drug use. He went on to say that drugs were an economic problem governed by supply and demand and the State had to scale down demand but it also needed to improve the social lives of citizens and provide greater forms of entertainment. The drug problem had also led to higher crime rates which could affect the tourist trade and thus the economy and the larger society. Elections were just a few days away in Mauritius and there was a question of re-establishing the death penalty which was abolished 15 years ago to combat the drug trade. He felt this was not the solution and would only raise the price of drugs and make it more profitable. As a human rights issue, the return to the death penalty was not a positive development.

Kazakhstan

ASSEL TERLIKBAYEVA, of Global Health Research Centre, gave a presentation about drug use in Kazakhstan. She said there were 154,000 drug addicts in Kazakhstan and that alternative forms of treatment were not provided which meant that criminalizing drug use was the main approach to dealing with drug addiction, not medical care. It was not humane or effective. Many people started using drugs because of the social and economic situation in the country so there was a need to address the sources of the problem. It had become a public health issue as well since drug use led to infections like hepatitis and in some cases drug overdose.

Afghanistan

KHAN AGHA DAWOODZEI, of Afghan Council for Reconstruction and Development, an organization that worked for capacity building of civil society, said that Afghanistan continued to face many issues including drought and high unemployment. He said that in order to improve the security situation, the State must improve the economic and social conditions and standard of living of citizens in Afghanistan. Lack of a strong civil society to promote and protect human rights and demand accountability was also an issue.

Committee members had follow up questions for some of the non-governmental organizations including what led Mauritius and Kazakhstan to such high drug use.

Mr. Yip Tong from Collectif Urgence Toxida in Mauritius said the UN’s report on the country’s drug use was shocking to them as well and after they studied the issue they came to the conclusion that the drug trade was a very lucrative business which was why it became so pervasive. The other issue was the geographic reality of Mauritius being an island and in the transit path between Afghanistan, Africa, and Europe.

Kazakhstan was also on the drug traffic highway, according to Ms. Terlikbayeva of the Global Health Research Centre. As a result, heroin was very popular there. The situation was also connected to the collapse of the Soviet Union which led to high unemployment and economic depression, an especially acute problem among young people.
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