Such testimonies come from young girls currently detained in Nauru, a remote island in the Pacific, which serves as one of Australia’s offshore detention centres for asylum seekers.

The testimonies introduce us to the hardships endured by those who survived a dangerous journey at sea, but are dying slowly in a land where the living conditions have been described as cruel and appalling.

A panel of journalists, migration experts and human rights advocates gathered at the Frontline Club on 27 September to discuss the Nauru files leak, published by the Guardian in August. The files showcased evidence of child abuse, sexual assault, self-harm and suicide attempts, as well as poor living conditions inside the camp.

The leak, which involved over 2,000 incident reports and is more than 8,000 pages long, sparked immediate international outrage.

Anna Neistat, Senior Director of Research at Amnesty International, tried to get inside the camp for two years when she succeeded she said:
“I was unprepared for the level of horror that I saw there. And I don’t say these things lightly. I have been covering conflict in the last 15 years, working in places from Syria to Chechnya to Afghanistan.

“I have never seen this in any war zone that I have worked in. Almost every person I spoke to say that they either attempted suicide or self-harm (…) and that includes 9-year-old children.”

Ian Woolverton, deputy editor of Guardian Australia, said some of his journalists could not cope with the horrors they had seen on the island over the course of two years and as a result are now suffering from PTSD.

Neistat said: “They claim they are saving lives because [refugees] are not drowning at sea. But they are dying anyway and in some ways more painfully and more slowly.”

In May, Omid Masoumali, an Iranian living in the Nauru detention centre for 3 years, set himself alight during a UNHCR visit. He stayed unattended for two hours before getting medical care.

“What’s the point of surviving at sea if you die in here?” a refugee girl asked a Guardian journalist.

CHANGING THE NARRATIVE

Day in and day out, images of floating life jackets and drowning bodies fill our social media and reports of abuse and institutional negligence make global headlines. However, as the images of human pain and hopelessness have made it to our screens, the panel discussed: Have they really made it into our hearts and minds?

Eiri Ohtani, Project Director of the Detention Forum in the UK, said the overwhelming flow of daily reports may be undermining how much we care.

“I worry that this is becoming too normal,” she said. “When there are so many similar stories out there, how do we then make that story special?”

The panel agreed the Nauru files went largely under reported, especially in Australia. Ohtani said that human rights advocates and particularly journalists have an important role to play by changing the narrative that has formed around refugee-related issues, not only by giving these stories a face, but also by connecting them to a wider political landscape.

Ohtari added that journalists should be very sensitive to the narrative of deserving versus undeserving migrants, which has been forming in the media.

She said: “As an organisation (…) we get quite a lot of requests from journalists (…) that say: ‘Can you find us somebody who has fled from Syria, was in Greece and then has got a wife in Germany and left handed.’ It seems like you have already decided what you are going to say.”

"In prison you count days down. In #detention you count days up and up" @EiriOhtani @frontlineclub #WithoutDetention #ThereAreAlternatives

— Mary Engleheart (@MaryEngleheart) September 28, 2016

Neistat said that since coming back from Nauru only one journalist had asked her the most important question – who are these people?

“I have to say they made an incredible impression on me. They all would be added value to the society and I’m saying it with no hesitation whatsoever,” she said. “None of them would be a burden, they are nurses, teachers, engineers. (…)They could buy their plane ticket and fly either to Australia or some other place, they just cannot.”

It is hard for Western audiences to relate to the horrors they flee from, but Neistat believes that is why it is important to know who they are. “Changing this narrative will affect a lot the public perception, which will in turn define government policies.”

She then concluded: “We need to stop using the term ‘refugee crisis’. It is not a refugee crisis; it is a crisis of refugee protection.”

The Australian government defended their asylum policies by disregarding the documents as false or unverified, and by stating it was an issue for the Nauruan government, despite the Australian government hiring camp employees.

As the country sinks into an increasingly repressive regime under the helm of current President Abdulla Yameen – and strengthens ties with China and Saudi Arabia – we will be joined by exiled former president Mohamed Nasheed, journalist and author of The Maldives: Islamic Republic, Tropical Autocracy JJ Robinson, and others, to discuss the current situation in this small yet turbulent archipelago.

With at least 100 Maldivian jihadists now fighting in Syria and Iraq, a significant share of the country’s modest population, we will also discuss the increasing role of Islamism – as well as the implications for the wider South Asia region. We will explore hopes for the future and the role of an increasingly-repressed media in supporting an eventual transition to democracy – all as the impending threat of climate change on the low-lying islands continues to loom large.

This event will be chaired by BBC News South Asia editor Charles Haviland.

Mohamed Nasheed is a politician, environmental and human rights activist, and served as the fourth, and first democratically-elected, President of the Maldives from 2008 until 2012. In 2010, Newsweek included President Nasheed in its list of the ‘World’s Ten Best Leaders’, and he is frequently dubbed the ‘Mandela of the Maldives’. Nasheed is the recipient of numerous international awards, including the Anna Lindh Prize in recognition of his work promoting human rights, democracy and environmental protection, and the James Lawson Award for the practice of non-violent action.

JJ Robinson is a journalist and author of The Maldives: Islamic Republic, Tropical Autocracy. He spent four years working as an editor of the Maldives’ first independent English-language news outlet, and was among the only foreign witnesses to the 2012 coup d’état that toppled Nasheed‘s government. He was the Maldives’ Reuters correspondent and its Reporters Without Borders representative, and has appeared on the BBC, Radio Australia, Al Jazeera and other outlets as a Maldives expert.

Abbas Faiz is an independent South Asia specialist focusing on a number of countries including the Maldives. Until early 2016, he worked as a senior researcher with Amnesty International. He has travelled widely within the region and has authored scores of reports, press releases and policy documents during his 30-year working time with Amnesty, covering human rights concerns in almost all countries of South Asia including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives. He has given in-depth interviews on human rights issues to a range of media, including Al Jazeera, ABC, CNN and the BBC, and has written for the Guardian, New Statesman and the Lancet amongst others. He has closely monitored the human rights situation in the Maldives over the past 20 years, and has provided strong support during this period to the country’s ongoing movement for democracy and human rights protection.

“The Journey towards you Lord, is life. To set off is to die a little.” (The Migrants’ Prayer)

On Monday 7 July 2014, the Frontline Club screened Who is Dayani Cristal? The film follows actor Gael García Bernal as he retraced the footsteps of a Honduran man found dead in the Arizonan desert – one of the thousands of lives snuffed out by the lure of the American Dream.

Director and cinematographer Marc Silver joined us for the Q&A.

Director Marc Silver

Silver began with how he discovered the story:

“We actually launched a website here, about five or six years ago, asking people to send in stories of resistance against walls and barriers, and just general economic division. And one of the stories that came in was this story of skulls, in the desert.”

Gael García Bernal was on board from the outset.

“He literally sat here and launched that website,” said Silver. “So he was on board before we knew what the film was, and we were just mulling over the subject of resistance. During that research period . . . we did four short films for Amnesty, called The Invisibles, which was just set in the Mexico part of the journey. Through that we were able to recce the river crossing, the trains, the shelter system and it started to inform Gael as to what kind of journey he would go on. Even though it’s a story about one person he takes on this everyman, following in the footsteps of a loose interpretation of the migrants’ journey.”

An audience member asked how the film was made.

“Basically, it sounds crazy,” explained Silver, “but we would just rock up at each of the locations, from Guatemala through Mexico to the border and literally just try to introduce what we were trying to do. I think we created this very reciprocal relationship with the people that we were filming. . . . As you said these voices are never ever heard – and I think there was some sense of empowerment that they were able to literally teach us, or guide us through that journey.

“I didn’t just feel that because of who we met and how those conversations went down on the road,” continued Silver, “but having spent time, for example, in that village in Honduras. No one talked about these issues at home. And I was really puzzled why. Literally every teenage boy has been to America already. And they get deported and they make their journey all over again. They literally said they just don’t want their mums to know how dangerous their journey is. Because they would fear that their mums wouldn’t let them go again.”

Great documentary and Q&A tonight @frontlineclub #WhoisDayaniCristal is beautifully made and really worth a watch #migration

— Flora Carmichael (@FloraCarmichael) July 7, 2014

On my way home from #WhoisDayaniCristal screening @frontlineclub. Once again, #GaelGarciaBernal shines a light on a secret american shame.

— Jonathan Campbell (@SoundbiteCultur) July 7, 2014

Another audience member said he was struck by compassion and anger of the [North] Americans. He asked how representative they were. Silver replied:

“We made a decision from the beginning that we only wanted people in the film who had physically been in touch with that body; which allowed us not to give voice to the other side of the debate. That was like a nice creative device. But partly also it was politically, I can’t see the point of giving voice to that other side, because it exists out there. And if people are interested they can just get on google. I think the humanisation of the subject of migration you can’t really get on google to find out. So that was a political decision on our part.”

“It depends when you ask me,” responded Silver to a question on the social impact films can make.

“Sometimes I think it’s really depressing and it doesn’t. And sometimes I think it’s really inspiring and I can see that it does. . . . This sounds really sick, but people have come up to me after US screenings and said, ‘Oh I might talk to my gardener a bit differently,’ which, isn’t as big a change as I was hoping for, but is actually really significant.

“Joking aside there are around 12 million undocumented people in the US, and if you can slightly change their perspective, and make them realise their story didn’t just begin on the other side of that wall; and actually there’s a massive trajectory that’s not so different to your own trajectory – of universal feelings of, ‘I need to support my family,’ or whatever the reason is that you’re leaving home – if you can shift perception and education then maybe you can shift politics.”

Silver concluded with the universal message of the film:

“It’s not just a Mexico–US issue. The story resonates with deaths in the Mediterranean and deaths in seas off north Australia, to build a bigger conceptual coalition around militarised borders; and the story of one skull in the desert leads to this bigger conceptual understanding.”

For upcoming screenings – and to take action – see the official website and social media:
whoisdayanicristal.com
Twitter: @DayaniCrystal
Facebook: facebook.com/whoisdayanicristal

A six-person panel, experienced with an array of whistleblowing cases, came together at the Frontline Club on Tuesday 17 June for the Amnesty International event, Protecting Whistleblowers.

Speaking to a sold out room, the panel – which included lawyers, a journalist and a whistleblower – discussed issues of truth, access to information and disseminating information, integrating their own experiences into the talk. All agreed that whistleblowers need to be protected when working in the interests of the people.

From left: Lieutenant Colonel the Reverend Nicholas Mercer, Peter Hounam, Avigdor Feldman, Nancy Hollander, Michael Garcia Bochenek, Kathleen McClellan and Frank La Rue in conversation at the Frontline Club.

United Nations special rapporteur Frank La Rue said whistleblowers are not only relevant for the news they carry, but because they make issues known to the people. He said the right to truth is not related to knowing individual events, but the reconstruction of history, mental health and the salvaging of the social fibres of society. La Rue said truth is very powerful in eradicating impunity, noting that this was the principle of his report to the UN General Assembly last year:

“Truth has the power to eradicate impunity, because many of the violations that have occurred were done – or many of the bad deeds, if you want to call them, are done – in the assumption that no one will ever find out, that no one will ever know.”

He also said people have a right to have access to information in a democratic society.

“The people always have a right to know – all the time – what is being done in their name,” he said. “This is why we call it democracy. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be the government of the people by the people, because it would always be some elite doing some issues in secret.”

At the @frontlineclub tonight for much needed discussions on the plight of #whistleblowers – hosted by @AmnestyUK pic.twitter.com/0Kd8qEhpHD

— Shoots&Leaves Films (@ShootsLeaves) June 17, 2014

Two of the panelists had worked with Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear technician who revealed Israel’s secret nuclear bomb programme to the press in 1986. Peter Hounam is the British investigative journalist who interviewed Vanunu for The Sunday Times when the initial story was published. Avigdor Feldman is an Israeli civil and human rights lawyer who has represented Mordechai Vanunu. Hounam noted that most whistleblowers’ stories end up with a story in a major newspaper or from a major broadcasting organisation: 

“Whistleblowers are a big issue, but you know, for every whistleblower usually, there has to be a whistleblowee. Someone like me, and investigative journalist that they can actually talk to.”

Hounam also said the reality is that the news organisation could never have protected Vanunu from a Mossad hit team. “I’ve thought a lot about how you protect whistleblowers, and I don’t think the press is competent to do it,” he said, suggesting that there are other ways to protect them. The law is not a great deal of help, he added, noting the idea that there could be an organisation like a “Whistleblowers Anonymous” that could publish the information in the public interest.

Investigative journalist Peter Hounam: however hard you try, often ends up with serious problems for whistleblowers @frontlineclub — Guy Smith (@GuySmithReports) June 17, 2014

Feldman touched upon elements of Vanunu’s case and how it relates to Israeli society. He pointed out that Vanunu spent 18 years in prison – 11 of which were in solitary confinement – is not allowed to leave Israel nor speak with anyone who is not an Israeli citizen on any subject, and he is not allowed to speak with strangers. He noted that he had never heard of such restrictions.

“I have no doubt that this was a punishment, a revenge of the Israeli authorities against Vanunu,” Feldman said.

Kathleen McClellan is the National Security and Human Rights deputy director for the United States Government Accountability Project.

Among other cases of whistleblowers facing persecution in the United States, she brought up the case of Edward Snowden. She pointed out that rather than investigating officials who invaded the privacy of innocent people, the intelligence community has spent untold resources investigating and attempting to discredit him.

“It can be an effective distraction, to focus the media and public attention on one individual, rather than exposing systematic, widespread illegality in a powerful government agency,” she said.

Nancy Hollander is lead counsel for Chelsea Manning on appeal and an internationally recognised criminal defense lawyer. In addition to speaking about cases she has worked on, she spoke about classifying documents and how they are over-classifying documents, which gives them an advantage in cases related to the Espionage Act.

“The government is violating the law,” she said. “What becomes classified comes out of an executive order from the president, and it lists what the rules are. And it also says what cannot be classified, and it specifically says – every executive order going back as far as when they started, including the recent one – says the government cannot classify information for the purpose of protecting the government from embarrassment. And yet, why is it that we can’t know about the torture of individuals in the black sites? Why is that we’re not allowed to know things that we should know? It’s because the government would be embarrassed.”

She pointed out the government does not punish everyone who leaks information, noting that someone leaked confidential information about Manning and no one was charged for that leak.

Reverend Nicholas Mercer

Reverend Nicholas Mercer, formerly Lieutenant-Colonel Nicholas Mercer, was on the panel as well. As the former legal advisor to the UK army in Iraq, he revealed information about the UK’s complicity in the abuse of detainees in Iraq which he described as “institutional”.

“I met an officer who said, ‘Look. I’ve got information about the Ministry of Defence, and I’m so petrified of giving that information, that I want you to do it for me, because I don’t want what happened to you to happen to me,’” Mercer said.

Watch and listen again here:

Governments often fail to protect whistleblowers and instead subject them to various forms of retaliation, including prosecution, for disclosing information governments wrongly want to keep secret. This includes information about human rights violations.

A panel of speakers with first-hand knowledge of these issues will talk about the experience of whistleblowers who face retaliation for their actions. They will explore how whistleblowers can be protected, and by extension protect the public’s right to information. This includes implementing measures such as those laid out in the Global Principles on National Security and the Right to Information (“Tshwane Principles”). These principles, which gained the support of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, provide critical guidance for ensuring that the public’s ‘right to know’ is protected.

Chaired by Michael Garcia Bochenek, senior director of international law and policy at Amnesty International.

The panel:

Frank La Rue has been the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression since 2008. He has worked extensively on a range of freedom of opinion and expression issues, including the links between the right to access to information and the right to truth. La Rue participated in the development of the Tshwane Principles. He has worked on human rights for over 30 years and is the founder of the Center for Legal Action for Human Rights (CALDH) in Washington DC and Guatemala. He also brought the first genocide case against the military dictatorship in Guatemala and has previously served as a presidential commissioner for human rights in Guatemala, as a human rights adviser to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Guatemala, as president of the governing board of the Centro-American Institute of Social Democracy Studies and as a consultant to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Avigdor Feldman has practiced law since 1974 and obtained his master’s in civil rights in 1985. He worked for the Israeli Association for Civil Rights (ACRI), is a key founder of B’Tselem (The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), and co-founded the Public Committee Against torture in Israel (PCATI). He founded the Litigation Center of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel and received the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Award in 1991. He has worked on many prominent criminal cases related to civil rights and of a political nature including Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear whistleblower who was abducted by Mossad agents in 1986 and brought to trial in Israel, charged for leaking information about Israel’s nuclear capacity to The Sunday Times newspaper. He represents Vanunu today mainly relating to a string of punitive restrictions, which include barring him from leaving Israel, and which, after over ten years of appeals to the Supreme Court, remain in force. Feldman has petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court many times on behalf of human rights organizations including in a case calling for a judicial inquiry into the Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982; the torture case relating to the use of physical force in Israel’s General Security Service’s interrogations; and Israel’s targeted killings police in 2006.

Peter Hounam is a British investigative journalist who has worked for The Sunday Times, The Mirror, the London Evening Standard, and the BBC, and has also published several books including The Woman from Mossad: The Story of Mordechai Vanunu and the Israeli Nuclear Program. Hounam interviewed Mordechai Vanunu in Australia in 1986 and, with other members of The Sunday Times Insight Team, investigated his story of the inside workings of Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant. The story was published that September but beforehand Vanunu was abducted by Israeli secret service (Mossad). On behalf of The Sunday Times and the BBC, Hounam went to Israel for Vanunu‘s release from his 18-year prison sentence in April 2004. He was arrested the following May by plainclothes officers of the Israel security agency, Shin Bet, while working on a documentary about Vanunu, allegedly for nuclear ‘spying’. The Jerusalem district court imposed a gag order preventing further details of the arrest being disclosed but after international protests he was released without charge the next day, though 10 years later he is still banned from returning to Israel.

Kathleen McClellan works for the US Government Accountability Project (GAP) as National Security and Human Rights deputy director. GAP is a leading whistleblower protection and advocacy organisation, which advocates for cases including Edward Snowden. McClellan supports national security and intelligence community whistleblowers, with a focus on the issues of torture, surveillance, excessive secrecy and political discrimination. She has represented whistleblowers from the National Security Agency (NSA), Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security, representing their interests in forums that include the Offices of Inspectors General, the Merit System Protection Board (MSPB), the Office of Special Counsel and federal court. Working with National Security and Human Rights Director Jesselyn Radack, she has represented NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou.

Nancy Hollander is lead counsel for Chelsea Manning on appeal. She is an internationally recognised criminal defence lawyer in the US firm of Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Urias and Ward P.A. as well as being an associate tenant with Doughty Street Chambers in London. Her work is largely devoted to representing individuals and organisations accused of crimes, including those involving national security issues. She has also been counsel in numerous civil cases, forfeitures and administrative hearings, and has argued and won a case involving religious freedom in the United States Supreme Court. Hollander served as a consultant to the defence in a high profile terrorism case in Ireland, assisted counsel in other international cases and represents two prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. She has qualified as a lead counsel for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and for the list of counsel for the International Criminal Court. She has written extensively on these and other criminal law topics.

Lieutenant Colonel the Reverend Nicholas Mercer was admitted as a solicitor in 1990, and commissioned into the Army Legal Service in 1991, serving in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus and Germany. Later, as the former legal advisor to the UK army in Iraq, he revealed information about the UK’s complicity in the abuse of detainees in Iraq which he described as “institutional”. He made recommendations to the UK authorities to ensure the protection of detainees from torture and other ill-treatment to which, as he later said, no response or action was taken. He was named Liberty Human Rights Lawyer of the Year 2011.

Read more:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/israel-lift-ludicrous-restrictions-whistleblower-vanunu-decade-after-release-2014-04-16
http://www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/usa-must-not-hunt-down-whistleblower-edward-snowden-2013-06-24
http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/chelseamanning
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE15/057/2004/en/490abaa8-d5cb-11dd-bb24-1fb85fe8fa05/mde150572004en.html

By Nicole Hunt

The World Health Assembly and the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review both open in Geneva on Monday. The WHA, which runs until 26 May, is due to agree on a Draft Global Vaccine Action Plan, while the UNHRC, which runs until 4 June, is due to consider the human rights situation in Bahrain, Tunisia, Morocco, India, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia and the UK, among others.

Following talks between the IAEA and Iranian officials last week, IAEA Director General Yukia Amano heads to Tehran to meet with Secretary of the Supreme National Council Saeed Jalili and other senior government officials. The visit comes two days before Iran is due to resume talks with its P5+1 partners in Baghdad on Wednesday.

Imprisoned Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko’s trial for embezzlement resumes in Kharkiv. Tymoshenko’s appeal trial for her earlier conviction on abuse of power charges was abruptly postponed last week to give the court more time to study new material. Awkwardly for Ukraine, that decision means that her next hearing on 26 June will take place during the Euro 2012 tournament, guaranteeing even more international attention.

Italy’s national statistics agency releases its annual report on the state of the nation on Tuesday, which in all likelihood is not going to be particularly positive. The report looks at socio-economic developments in the past 20 years, focusing on inequalities in the economic system, and considers prospects for the country’s economic future.

Other than that, Tuesday is all about big court dates. The European Court for Human Rights issues its judgement in the long-running case of Scoppola v. Italy, which considers prisoners’ voting rights in the EU.  In Port Louis, Mauritius, two men go on trial for the January 2011 murder of Northern Irish honeymooner Michaela McAreavey, daughter of Tyrone Gaelic football manager Mickey Harte.

In Ventersdorp, South Africa, the verdict is due in the case of two men, one of them an unnamed teenager, who are charged with the April 2010 murder of Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) leader Eugene Terre’blanche. And in Manama, a court hearing is scheduled in the re-trial of 21 activists charged with attempting to overthrow the monarchy, including hunger striker Abdulhadi al Khawaja,

After months of protests over military rule and weeks of legal wrangling over candidates and the election itself, Egypt’s presidential election is finally set to go ahead on Wednesday. Former Arab League Secretary General Amre Moussa and moderate Islamist Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh are front-runners in the campaign, which has seen several candidates disqualified. Voting continues on Saturday, with a second round scheduled for 16-17 June.

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy hosts an informal meeting of EU leaders in Brussels, the first for French President Francois Hollande and presumably the only meeting for Greece’s caretaker Prime Minister Panagotis Pikrammenos, who is keeping an eye on things while Greece prepares for new elections on 17 June. EU growth and ongoing political uncertainty are expected to dominate the agenda.

The European Parliament wraps up its four day session in Strasbourg on Thursday with a vote on a resolution regarding the situation in Ukraine and Yulia Tymoshenko. MEPs actually debate the resolution on Tuesday, but any official censure of the Ukrainian government will have to wait until today’s vote. Parliametnarians also vote on a resolution on the fight against homophobia in Europe.

Amnesty International launches its annual State of the World’s Human Rights report in London. Last year’s report focused on the use of new technologies to combat human rights abuses throughout the world, and particularly in the Middle East. This year’s update will allow us to see how or if human rights have progressed in those same countries, many of them under new governments or constitutions.

The Square Kilometre Array Organisation, which is responsible for deciding whether the €1.5bn telescope will be built in Australia or South Africa, meets in Amsterdam on Friday. A decision on the site had been expected in April, but the SKA instead set up a working group to look at maximising value from the investments made by both candidates. A final decision could be made at Friday’s meeting…or the members could instead decide to go away and think about it some more.

The UN Working Group on the use of mercenaries wraps up a five-day visit to Libya, the first to the country by independent experts designated by the UN Human Rights Council. A press conference is planned in Tripoli to discuss the Group’s preliminary findings regarding allegations about the use of mercenaries during last year’s conflict and an assessment of the measures taken by the Libyan government to address the issue and its aftermath.

The African nation of Lesotho is holding parliamentary elections on Saturday, hoping to choose a functioning government and avoid the years of political deadlock that followed polls in 2007. Prime Minister Mosisili Pakalitha recently made waves by defecting from the ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy, opting instead to create the Ntsu Democratic Congress.

Fans of Europop, Engelbert Humperdinck, and Central Europe are in for a treat, as Baku, Azerbaijan hosts the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest. Organisers have come under fire for holding this year’s contest in Baku despite strong criticisms of Azerbaijan’s human rights record and allegations that a park adjacent to the Baku Crystal Palace (where the contest is held) was created by illegally evicting homeowners and expropriating the land.

Nepal’s MPs have until Sunday to promulgate a new constitution, which was originally due in May 2010. The deadline has been repeatedly extended over the past two years, but lawmakers recently announced that they had come to an agreement on some of the most contentious issues, raising hopes that Sunday’s deadline may be the last.

In other international parliamentary news, Iran’s new parliament is sche
duled to begin a new session, with a customary opening speech from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini. Following elections in March, the new parliament includes nearly 200 new MPs and is dominated by conservatives, many of them opposed to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which means Ahmadinejad could once again find himself hauled before parliament for questioning.

By Nicole Hunt

A week filled with big summits and conferences kicks off in Seoul on Monday, where Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, US President Barack Obama, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, and Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti are among representatives from more than 50 countries that will convene to discuss nuclear safety, in all likelihood defying North Korean calls to leave their nuclear programme out of it. Obama is scheduled to meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on the sidelines of the summit.

With Afghanistan in the news for all the wrong reasons, Tajikistan hosts the fifth Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan in Dushanbe. The annual conference looks at reconstruction and promoting regional integration and stability, increasingly important goals as the eventual withdrawal of ISAF forces looms. Representatives from the UK, US, Afghan, Russian and Pakistani governments are expected, alongside officials from the UN, the World Bank, the WTO and the World Food Programme.

Amnesty International releases its annual report on Death Sentences and Executions on Tuesday. It will be interesting to see whether last year’s Arab Spring had any discernible effect on the number of people sentenced to death in the Middle East; the 2010 report recorded at least 53 executions in Yemen, 27 in Saudi Arabia, 18 in Libya, 17 in Syria, five in the Palestinian Territories, and one in Bahrain. Observers will also be keeping an eye out for Iran in the report, after several high-profile death sentences garnered worldwide criticism in 2011.

Just a week after Greece’s big debt repayment deadline passed, the OECD releases its Economic Survey of the European Union. Considering the last Survey was published in 2009, we can guess that this year’s report is going to be significantly different from its predecessor, which noted that the financial crisis ‘has already triggered reforms to tackle weaknesses in the financial system which, if implemented effectively, should support financial stability and longer term growth prospects.’

Dominique Strauss-Kahn faces two legal battles on Wednesday – he’s due to appear before magistrates in Lille to face questioning over his alleged links to a prostitution ring, while in New York, a hearing takes place in the civil case filed against him by Nafissatou Diallo, the chambermaid who accused Strauss-Kahn of raping her in May 2011.

In New Delhi, the Indian Supreme Court hears what may well be the last day of a six-year long legal battle involving Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis. Novartis is challenging provision 3(d) in Indian patent law, which allows companies in India to manufacture low-cost, generic drugs. The case centres on a leukemia drug called Gleevac, but the outcome of the case could have repercussions for the availability of cheap, life-saving medication for HIV/AIDS and other diseases in the world’s poorest countries.

Staying in New Delhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hosts the annual BRICS Summit on Thursday, welcoming his counterparts from Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa to discuss trade. Also on the agenda is the appointment of the new World Bank President to replace Robert Zoellick when his term expires at the end of June.

The oft-delayed Arab League Summit, which was last supposed to take place in May 2011 but was postponed due to widespread political unrest in the region, finally goes ahead in Baghdad amid a backdrop of very tight security following a spate of recent bombings in the country.  The summit is expected to focus heavily on Syria, which will not be represented at the meeting after being suspended from the regional bloc in November.

Spanish unions have called a general strike on Thursday to protest against what they say are unfair labour reforms, hoping to bring the country to a standstill the day before Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy presents his budget. Following a readjustment of Spain’s deficit target to 5.3%, Rajoy is under pressure from Brussels to implement yet more austerity measures to bring the deficit down to the EU-agreed limit of 4.4%. Spanish Finance Minister Luis De Guindos can expect to hear all about it – again – at an informal meeting of the EU finance ministers in Copenhagen on Friday.

The trial of Curt Knox and Edda Mellas – better known as the parents of Amanda Knox – is due to begin in Perugia, where they face charges of slander for repeating their daughter’s claims that she was beaten by Italian police into confessing to the murder of British student Amanda Knox in 2007. Knox went home to the US when her conviction was overturned on October 3 last year, but her lawyer announced in January that she may return to Perugia if necessary to testify at her parents’ trial.

The European Freedom Initiative, a loose collective of far-right groups in Europe which includes the English Defence League, holds a public meeting and rally in Aarhus on Saturday to discuss sharia law, halal food, and the ‘Islamification of our countries’. Speakers at the event, which is hosted by the Danish Defence League, include EDL founder Tommy Robinson (aka Stephen Yaxley-Lennon), Stop the Islamification of Europe founder Anders Gravers, and Austrian Elisabeth Sabbaditch Wolff, who was convicted last year of denigrating Islam.

The four-day Boao Forum for Asia begins in Boao, China, with Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, World Bank President Robert Zoellick, former Business Secretary Peter Mandelson, and Chinese Premier-in-waiting Li Keqiang among those gathering to discuss business and growth in the Asia Pacific region.

By-elections take place in 48 seats in Myanmar/Burma on Sunday, one of which will be challenged by National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The elections, and the democracy activist’s participation in them, are a sign of reform from the ruling military junta, who have also consented to have election observers from the US and the EU present for the first time during the polls.

Finally, jailed Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev (and 32 other people in unrelated cases) could find out the outcome of a review of the ‘legality’ and ‘basis’ of their December 2010 convictions for theft and money laundering. The two were accused of stealing billions from Yukos production subsidiaries, but their prosecution and conviction have widely been viewed as politically motivated. President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the Russian Prosecutor General to review t
heir case by 1 April.

By Alan Selby

Much has happened since this time last year. The 15th of February 2011 saw the first Libyans take to the streets of Benghazi against a brutal dictatorship which ruled over them for 42 years. The events that followed sent shockwaves around the world, led to a NATO intervention and culminated in victory for the Libyan people, albeit at a heavy cost. An estimated 30,000 people lost their lives during the campaign and the dust is still settling following Muammar Gadaffi’s death four months ago.

A panel came together at the Frontline Club to discuss how far Libya has come, as well as what the future holds. A tone of cautious optimism prevailed as each member of the panel delivered their own frank assessment of the work of the National Transitional Council (NTC), as well as its ability to uphold the promise of democracy for the people of Libya. Ian Black, The Guardian’s Middle East editor, steered a discussion which exposed differing views on the NTC’s work to date.

Ahmed Gebreel, deputy head of the Libyan embassy in London, suggested that “The NTC has been established for less than a year, with limited resources, and they’re doing their best.”

However, Khaeri Aboushagor, a Libyan writer and spokesman for the Libyan League for Human Rights, made his view that the NTC has a lot of work to do abundantly clear:

The reality sometimes hits us in the face. The ex-prime minister recently said that Libya is not a functioning state, has no proper army, no proper police and that the militias run the show… Democracy is not just elections. It’s much broader and deeper than that. We have to recognise this, if we deny that problems exist it won’t work.”

Carsten Jurgensen, Libya researcher for Amnesty International, echoed this view as he made reference to human rights abuses which have taken place in detention centres:

“What struck us was that those who committed the abuses were quite open about it… No investigations are conducted. The judiciary is totally weak. Prosecutors say that they can’t go and interrogate the chiefs of the militias. It’s quite worrying.”

The panel also suggested that post traumatic stress is now a real issue facing many of the young men who must now try to re-integrate with society and rebuild their country. However, Dr. Faraj Najem, a Libyan writer and historian, made it clear that the damage runs much deeper than at first glance:

I was horrified when I heard that 400 women were raped, but then it was announced that 8000 women had suffered. We need help from psychologists and social workers. We need to reinvent a culture where we can talk openly about the sexual violence that these women suffered for no reason.”

The panel largely agreed that it will be a long road to recovery, as Rana Jawad, a Tripoli-based BBC journalist and author of Tripoli Witness, observed:

“Overall I am optimistic of the journey Libyans will take, but I don’t doubt for a second that it will be extremely difficult. Anyone who thinks it will happen in the next year or two is quite delusional. It’s a very long process and it’s going to take a long time, but ultimately Libyans are striving for it.”

The executive producer for BBC Four’s international documentary strand Storyville, Kate Townsend, was at the Frontline Club last night to introduce the film Amnesty! When They Are All Free, which marks its 50th anniversary.

The film goes on to tell the story of not so much an organisation, but a movement, that began 50 years ago and is still going strong, despite some questions about its objectives and the way it goes about achieving them.

After the screening James Rogan, the film’s director, Claudio Cordone, senior director at Amnesty International, Patricia Feeney, former Amnesty researcher for Argentina, and Dr Stephen Hopgood, reader in international relations at SOAS and Amnesty biographer, answered questions about the film and the organisation.

Claudio Cordone classed it as the best documentary about the organisation so far, acknowledging that 50 years was a long time to condense into just over one hour, and that the issues chosen were necessarily limited but still representative of Amnesty’s work, successes and difficulties.

With a remit that has widened from pressing for the release of prisoners of conscience in the beginning to take in other human rights issues, like ending poverty, violence against women, and homophobia, tensions have appeared between the broad base of the membership, which is predominantly European and North American and middle class.

The campaign against homophobia in Uganda was cited as an example where Amnesty as a Western NGO might not be as helpful as it would like to be, due to the perception there of homosexuality as an essentially Western evil.

A long-time worker for Amnesty International in the audience defended the organisation against the  “McDonald’s of human rights” label, which was used at the beginning of the film, pointing out that Amnesty had always worked by asking those affected what kind of help they needed. There was no “set menu” that did not necessarily fit the purpose of those whom they tried to help.

Other questions probed changes Amnesty International made after being criticised for their hesitant response to Rwanda, the rift at times between its principles and practice, as in the controversial pay-off of its General Secretary Irine Khan at a time when the organisation was fighting poverty elsewhere, as well as Amnesty’s role in the Arab Spring.

James Rogan said that in initial talks about the documentary questions had been raised about whether Amnesty had lost its way. However, there was a bigger message, he said: Amnesty International as a movement is about people who are free to protest using that freedom on behalf of those who don’t have it. As a principle, there is little in that anyone could find fault with.

As awareness of the crisis afflicting the world’s oceans grows, in part as a result of campaigns such as The Fish Fight fronted by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, tomorrow evening we will be bringing together a panel of experts to discuss the problems and how we can begin to resolve them.

Next week we will be joined by award winning journalist Bill Neely of ITV News as he reflects on the past two decades covering stories from the troubles in Northern Ireland to the uprising in Libya. An evening of inspiration and insight into the craft of journalism.

Screenings in the month ahead include Amnesty! When They Are Free, which is an unprecedented look into the world of human rights organisation Amnesty International and its ability to affect change since its inception fifty years ago. Donor Unknown documents the funny, moving and provocative journey of JoEllen Marsh as she sets out to find her father and discovers 12 half-siblings and explores the strange power of genetic connections.

And if you are a member of the Club, don’t forget our member’s social evening on Thursday, which is sponsored by Chivas Regal and is a great opportunity for old and new members to meet and mingle.

Follow us on Twitter and catch up on any events you missed on the Forum blog or download our podcasts on iTunes.