About Interights: Annual Report 1999-2000: 3.

ANNUAL REPORT 1999-2000

3. DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN RIGHTS STANDARDS

In addition to and complementing its regional programmes, INTERIGHTS aims to improve legal protection of certain key rights worldwide through development of jurisprudence, strengthening relevant mechanisms and providing education and training. Those rights are to freedom of expression, liberty and security, equal treatment without discrimination and economic and social rights. In the first of these areas, INTERIGHTS has developed a dedicated programme. In each of the others, work is conducted primarily under the regional programmes, except as noted below.

3.1 FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION (top)

The Freedom of Expression Litigation and Education Project seeks to strengthen the right to freedom of expression and freedom of the press across the world through litigation, litigation support and education. The Project aims to create strong legal protections to the right to freedom of expression worldwide and to help lawyers use positive precedents gained in one jurisdiction to win similar victories in other jurisdictions.

We do this by providing advice to lawyers litigating important free expression cases on the use of international and comparative law, by filing amicus curiae briefs in important free expression cases, by offering direct representation before international tribunals and by providing information and training to those litigating free speech cases. The Project is unique because it is the only legal initiative whose purpose is to ensure that lawyers across the world are able to make effective use of legal developments in international and comparative free speech law.

Legal advice and assistance

During the last year, the programme has assisted lawyers from a number of jurisdictions on a range of issues. In particular, we have been focussing on Asia, for example in Sri Lanka where in September we provided lawyers acting in a criminal defamation case with written advice on relevant international and comparative law rules governing this area. This case involved a suit by the Sri Lankan President against two newspapers for erroneously reporting that the President had attended a late night party given by a Parliamentarian. Harassment of the press via criminal prosecutions such as this one is all too common in Sri Lanka. Our brief seeks to aid the lawyers for the newspapers by arguing that this prosecution violated internationally established free speech norms. We will now seek to have our brief submitted to the Sri Lankan appeal court as an amicus curiae.

Also in Sri Lanka, we advised on the protection of academic freedom under international and comparative law. That research was for lawyers challenging (ultimately successfully) new legislation that was feared would prove an incursion into the crucial right of academic freedom. In Bangladesh, we advised lawyers who are undertaking a legal challenge to the state broadcasting monopoly, while in Hong Kong, we advised lawyers on a case concerning the symbolic right to deface national flags in protest. In Malaysia, we provided a lengthy written opinion for lawyers defending a human rights activist charged under a draconian provision of the penal code with 'spreading false news'.

In Europe, we provided a written opinion for lawyers in the Ukraine involved in a law reform initiative aimed at strengthening the right to criticise public officials. In Africa, we have been approached by litigators in Egypt asking us to seek to intervene as a third party in a suit challenging criminal libel laws there, following a detailed piece of advice we provided the lawyers last year on this subject. We also wrote a short brief for a journalist in South Africa on the subject of media access to criminal trials. In the Caribbean, we assisted the editor of a major Jamaican newspaper in writing an article on the 'right to reply', while in Grenada we advised lawyers acting for a journalist charged with criminal defamation of a politician.

Education and Training

In addition to providing litigation and litigation support, the programme undertakes an important role in educating lawyers and human rights activists on the laws relating to press freedom worldwide, through internships, seminars and publications.

Internships

This year we started our internship programme, hosting first a young Polish lawyer for a four month period (February through May 1999) and then a Pakistani lawyer for a further three months (May through July 1999). Both internships afforded us a much needed opportunity to work with young human rights lawyers from different parts of the world but also, we hope, equipped those lawyers with increased knowledge of how to use international and comparative law to further the right to freedom of expression in their own regions. The next internship is planned for the autumn of 2000 but applicants are accepted on a rolling basis throughout the year.

Seminars

In November, the Project co-hosted (with the British Institute of International and Comparative Law) a roundtable discussion on current developments in political libel across the Commonwealth, focussing on the recent landmark UK decision, Reynolds v. Times Newspapers. The event took place in London and was addressed by counsel for both sides of the Reynolds case, as well as distinguished lawyers from South Africa, Australia and Pakistan. The meeting was attended by approximately 75 journalists and media lawyers and provided a rare opportunity for members of the two professions to come together to discuss this important issue.

Publications

The Project produced an issue of the INTERIGHTS Bulletin entitled 'Censoring Cyberspace'. The publication focussed on the regulation of speech on the Internet in articles addressing the application of international human rights standards to the Web, defamation and the Internet, the technology of censorship on the Internet and the implications of cyberspace for traditional rules governing contempt of court.

The Project has also made available an off-print of an article on contempt of court laws and international jurisprudence, written by one of the Project's interns, Zahed Ibrahim, for the Project, and published by the Indian newspaper Frontline.

As in other years, the Project continues to produce an annual survey of European Convention on Human Rights jurisprudence relating to free expression for the Oxford University Press' Yearbook of Copyright and Media Law.

Strategic Planning

This November, the Project hosted a weekend long meeting of its International Advisory Panel. The Panel, chaired by Lord Lester of Herne Hill QC, consists of eight expert free expression lawyers from Europe, Africa, Asia/Pacific and North America. After a review of the Project's recent work, the Panel helped set priorities and develop strategies for the coming years. As in earlier meetings, the Panel approved the continued focus of the Project on the protection of political speech. Following the meeting, Gabor Halmai, a distinguish professor of law from Hungary, agreed to join the Panel.

The Project's staffing has changed over this year. Originally conceived and implemented in conjunction with the NGO Article 19, last autumn both groups mutually agreed that the future running of the Project would most efficiently be handled by one group only, and that INTERIGHTS was the more appropriate organisation to house the Project. Since that time the Project has been administered solely by INTERIGHTS, but the two organisations intend to continue working collaboratively on specific cases and projects where appropriate.

Finally, at the end of this reporting period, INTERIGHTS' legal officer responsible for the Project left the organisation to have a baby. Recruitment for her successor began in the Spring of 2000.

3.2 LIBERTY AND SECURITY OF THE PERSON (top)

Work in this area continued to focus on the death penalty, impunity and compensation for human rights violations. We have advised on casework before the International Criminal tribunal for Rwanda, worked on the subject of compensation for victims of extra-judicial executions in Africa, as well as compensation for victims of the Rwanda genocide; advised on cases of disappearances in Algeria and on prolonged detention in the Caribbean. A cluster of initiatives before the African Commission have addressed the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and the consequent population transfers.

3.3 ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RIGHTS (top)

While seeking funding to develop a coordinated programme on the justiciability of economic and social rights, we undertook a number of initiatives this year in individual programmes, described above, relating to economic and social rights. Amongst these were the start of a consultation on behalf of the African Commission examining the application of the provisions of the African Charter relating to economic and social rights, and participation in a consultation on a draft manual on economic and social rights by ForumAsia and IHRIP, which provided the opportunity to discuss further projects, including the inclusion of economic and social rights as a topic in planned judicial colloquia in Asia and Africa.

Casework in this area has addressed the right to education, discriminatory treatment of the disabled and the right to shelter.

3.4 A GENDER PERSPECTIVE (top)

Rights related to gender do not form the focus of a specific programme within INTERIGHTS. Rather we aim to ensure that all our programmes, thematic as well as regional, are informed by a gender perspective. To ensure that this occurs, a gender working group within the organisation monitors work done on gender related issues under the different programmes and works to ensure that staff are aware of the implications of this approach and are equipped to bring such a perspective to their work.

Gender-related initiatives are reported fully under the programmes where they originate. One major new project this year, on 'honour crimes' is described under our South Asia programme, though affecting women in other regions as well. Under this project, we have submitted information to the Special Rapporteurs on Violence against Women and on Summary and Arbitrary Executions in relation to honour killings in various countries. Special attention has been paid to one aspect of this issue, forced marriage, including submissions to attendance at the UK Working Group on Forced Marriage. Alison Symington, an LLM student at the University of Toronto, conducted research on women's rights to nationality and citizenship while an intern with the South Asia programme. She reviewed in particular the extent of consular assistance available to dual nationals, in the context of the abduction of nationals of one country to the country of their other nationality for the purpose of forced marriage.

In Africa, INTERIGHTS has been working with the Special Rapporteur to the African Commission on Women's Rights to help her define her mandate, and also with a project addressing citizenship and human rights of women in West Africa, a multiple country project. The Commonwealth Human Rights Case Law Project, described below, has also targetted cases related to women's rights for both Database and Digest.

Cases raising gender-related issues in which we have been involved this year, again reported more fully elsewhere in this report, include the Magaya case from Zimbabwe, about women's inheritance rights; and cases concerning 'safe custody' in Bangladesh and India and maintenance in Sri Lanka.

Sara Hossain presented a paper on 'Enforcing Women's Human Rights in Commonwealth Courts' at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London in October, 1999. She also participated in a consultation on 'Women's Human Rights Resources', organised by the University of Toronto, and held in Montreal, Canada in September 1999. Emma Playfair participated in a roundtable on 'The Exclusion of Women in the Arab World from the Effective Protection of International Human Rights Law' organised by the Women's Legal Aid and Counselling Centrein November 1999, in Adna, Lebanon.

4. Dissemination of Information

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