From Gaza to Ukraine and Sudan, 2023 was a “terrifying year” for human rights which have further deteriorated around the world, deplores Human Rights Watch (HRW) in its annual report published Thursday.
In this document of more than 700 pages reviewing nearly 100 countries, the organization catalogs the “immense suffering” caused by the war between Israel and Hamas, by that between the two rival generals in Sudan, or by the continuation of conflicts in Ukraine, Burma, Ethiopia and the Sahel.
“In 2023, civilians were targeted, attacked and killed on a scale unprecedented in the recent history of Israel and Palestine,” notes the report.
He accuses Hamas of “war crimes” for the unprecedented October 7 attacks against Israel, and Israeli forces for the reprisals against the population of Gaza.
Concerning Gaza, “one of the most important crimes committed is the collective punishment” of all civilians, “which corresponds to a war crime”, just like the fact of “starving” the population, underlines in an interview with AFP the boss of HRW Tirana Hassan.
Human Rights Watch also denounces the “massive violations” of civilian rights in Sudan by the two rival generals Abdel Fattah al-Burhane and Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, criticizing the “impunity” which has led to “repeated cycles of violence” in the country. Since twenty years.
Beyond armed conflicts, the NGO notes the catastrophic impacts of climate change during this year 2023, the hottest in history, and identifies several trends marking the “erosion of human rights”.
Thus, “it has been a terrifying year not only for human rights repression and wartime atrocities, but also for selective government anger and transactional diplomacy,” the report insists.
“Hypocrisy”
These behaviors send “the message that the dignity of some deserves to be protected, but not that of all, that some lives are worth more than others.”
A situation that the head of the NGO sums up in one word: “hypocrisy”. Hypocrisy of Westerners “who turn a blind eye to human rights violations, at the national or international level, just to promote their own interest”.
The report criticizes in particular the European Union whose “foreign policy priority with its southern neighbors remains to contain the departures of migrants towards Europe at all costs, persevering in a failed approach which has highlighted the erosion of commitments of the bloc towards human rights.
Also targeted by this “double standard”, the difference between the “rapid and justified condemnation” by many countries of the Hamas attacks of October 7 but the “much more contained” responses, notably from the United States and the EU facing Israeli bombing of Gaza.
Or the absence of condemnations of the “intensification of repression” in China, particularly in Xinjiang and Tibet.
In this context, Human Rights Watch describes an international human rights system “under threat”. But not broken.
“We have also seen that institutions can mobilize to resist and fight,” assures Tirana Hassan, referring in particular to the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The human rights system is still there. The only thing we lack is the commitment, coherence and political will of the States which constitute the system and give life to human rights,” she insisted, emphasizing the need to do better in 2024 as ‘much of the world’s population, from the United States to Russia, will go to the polls.