Filthy US pot and grubby Cuban kettle

The annual US-driven condemnation of Cuba by the UN Human Rights Commission (UNHCR) has just taken place, enabling America to justify its blockade of its Communist island neighbour. Cuba does commit human rights violations – but then, so does America. Some of America’s violations occur, ironically, on the island of Cuba, at Guantanamo Bay, while others take place in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in arrests and kidnappings of suspects around the globe, who are then “rendered” to countries where the CIA hopes that useful information will be extracted from them by torture. There have been no verified accounts of torture in Cuba since 1959.



This ridiculous and hypocritical charade in the UNHCR shows the extent to which politics corrupts the important process of making accurate and objective judgements about human rights abuses by governments. The UN needs to reform the procedure by taking it out of the hands of politically driven committees and entrusting it to a specialist agency which can collate, evaluate and index human rights abuses in every country in the world, not just a few countries chosen arbitrarily by America for purposes of political convenience.



The resulting Index of Human Rights, put forward annually as an official UN publication, would have the same effect that league tables have on hospitals and schools. They would be unpopular, and countries would complain that they had been unfairly assessed. In response to this, the UN could fix a time to come and inspect their prisons. Prior to the inspections, regimes would release prisoners in order to obtain a better score. In this way, the sheer existence of the Index of Human Rights Abuses would lead to a lessening of the burden of injustice and oppression throughout the world. There would be other beneficial effects, as people could check on the Index before booking their holidays, or choosing which of two similar countries to trade with and could choose not to deal with countries which were not scoring well.



When well established, the Index could be used as the basis for legal investigations of the worst performers, providing another motive for abusive regimes to clean up their act.



The UN is beginning of a process of self reform. Much of the reforms will be driven by its own bureaucrats and national representatives . No abusive Government is going to vote for an Index of Human Rights that will cramp its style. The impulse for the Index must come from civil society – from concerned, intelligent citizens, and from the Non Governmental Organisations like Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and the World Development Movement. It will be a long campaign to establish the Index, but the journey of 10,000 miles must start with a single step – and America’s absurd machinations over Cuba are as good a place as any to start the process.



More on this at http://www.greenhealth.org.uk/Index%20of%20Governance.htm

Standing Out

(for heroes of the continuing Resistance)


Sheets and shards of colour
bleed from the dying sun
but they are lost to us,

as we are lost, and far from home.
The way has gone, each step
a foot placed into the unknown,

a stumble on hard rock.
Darkness has closed in
a gas mask with no air

stinking of vomit and black fear.
That simple threat :
say what you know, or die.

closed off from ever present air
held back by the infinity
of thin black rubber and a deadly will.

So dark now, waves of black
throb with each desperate heartbeat,
each chill with fear, so far from home

no breath, nothing to see.
Speak. Say to him what he wants.
Courage has brought you here,

there’s nothing more to prove,
and look, above the rocky,
the bruising weight of earth

there on that faint line
where the sun lay down
the Evening Star stands still,

and look too, one by one
first with great names
Sirius, Arcturus, Aldebaran

and in their patterns
known, half known, and lost,
the Bear, the Lion, the Dragon,

Winged Horse, the Giant
with his club, then
in a firework crackle

stretched across the magnificence
of space brilliant
outstanding, immovable, faint

standing visible against the black,
because of darkness
the universal lights stand out

their shout - being and energy,
their song – soft, low,
inaudible yet sweet their music

promising that darkness is
a temporary loss of that which
underpins
all being.





(c) Richard Lawson
Lancaster April 10 2005

Index of Governance Update

This is the second of a series of occasional updates on the Index of Governance concept, the proposal that before the UN resorts to the use military force against states that are abusing the human rights of their citizens, it needs to have in lace a non-violent system that disables oppressive regimes. The Index of Governance will measure objectively the human rights performance of all states at UN level, and will later set a tariff of targeted sanctions designed to disempower the ruling elite of states that abuse their citizens.

I have taken motions to the spring conferences of the United Nations Association and Amnesty International UK. The result is that both organisations are now committed to evaluation the Index idea at Board level.

A motion on the Index was referred back by the Green Party Conference, so it will come back to the October Conference.

It will be discussed at the Medact conference later this month. Medact is for social and environmental action by people in the health professions.

The application for a Joseph Rowntree Visionaries support will be considered later this month.

An article on the Index will be published in the academic journal "Medicine Conflict and Survival" in July.

A paper has been published on the http://www.visionforum.it/mission_en.php website.

The tactic at present is to get the idea to be familiar in peace and human rights circles, before attempting the to get it in to the United Nations itself, using the Simultaneous Policy ( http://www.simpol.org.uk/simpoluk.php ) method. If this seems impossibly difficult, I would point to the example of Aubrey Meyer, ( http://www.gci.org.uk/ ) who is succeeding, through sheer persistence, in moving the Contraction and Convergence solution for global warming up the political agenda. "Civil Society" is a buzz word in UN circles, and the Index of Governance and C&C are definitely civil society initiatives.

The explanatory page on the index at http://www.greenhealth.org.uk/Index%20of%20Governance.htm is updated from time to time. The main change is that the International Criminal Court will be invoked to look at the worst offenders, replacing the concept of "automatic" sanctions for the worst performers.
Finally, a couple of sympathisers have objected to the title "Index of Governance" as too cumbersome and unfamiliar. Is there a preference for reversion to the title of "Index of Human Rights", or "International Human Rights List?"

For peace and justice

Richard Lawson