New Global Survey Analyzes War and Human Rights

[Resistance]

Human Rights Watch

(London, January 26, 2004) — The invasion of Iraq ended the reign of a brutal government, but coalition leaders are wrong to characterize it as a humanitarian intervention, Human Rights Watch said in the keynote essay of its annual global survey released today.

The 407-page World Report 2004: Human Rights and Armed Conflict includes 15 essays on a variety of subjects related to war and human rights, from Africa to Afghanistan, from sexual violence as a method to warfare to the new trends in post-conflict international justice.

“Waging war is no excuse for ignoring human rights,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “In 2003, we saw too many governments invoke the demands of warfare to excuse their own misdeeds.”

Armed conflicts this year posed a particularly salient challenge to human rights — and not only the armed conflict in Iraq. One essay documents how human rights abuse in the war in Chechnya, which Russian authorities now justify as their contribution to the global war on terror, is being thoroughly ignored by European and other governments. A more hopeful entry on Africa’s “forgotten wars” analyzes efforts by regional leaders, especially in the recently formed African Union, to take a more active role in curbing armed conflict and human rights abuses. Those efforts may bring renewed energy and increased resources to address devastating conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), West Africa and Sudan, among others.