04 May 2007
Human Rights Review Includes “Sobering Realities”, May 2, 2007(States Lowenkron cites negative findings, hope for optimism)
Washington – The latest State Department review of the human rights situation around the world contains broad, discernible patterns as well as “sobering realities,” a State Department official tells a congressional subcommittee.
Barry Lowenkron, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, testified before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight May 2 as part of the subcommittee's review of the State Department's 2006 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. (See related article.)
While the report for each country “speaks for itself,” Lowenkron said, broad patterns are discernible. “In 2006, men and women continued to press for their rights to be respected and their governments to be responsive, for their voices to be heard and their votes to count. This is a hopeful trend indeed.”
But the reports also “reflect a number of sobering realities,” he told the panel. Lowenkron listed five developments in this category:
• Advances in human rights and democracy are hard-won and challenging to sustain. Liberia and Indonesia are countries that met those challenges effectively in 2006, but Russia and Venezuela have not.
• Internal or cross-border conflict can threaten gains in human rights and democratic government, as it has in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Countries in which power is wielded by regimes not accountable to their citizens continue to be the world's most systematic human rights violators. Examples include Burma, Cuba, North Korea, Eritrea, China, Iran, Belarus and Zimbabwe.
• Stronger pushes for greater personal and political freedom are being met with increasing resistance from those who feel threatened by change. Examples include countries with laws and regulations restricting nongovernmental organizations and the media, such as those in place in Russia and Venezuela, and to Internet restrictions by China and Cuba, Egypt’s detention of an Internet blogger and Uzbekistan's May 1 sentencing of Human Rights Watch staff member Umida Niyazova to seven years of prison without due process.
• Perhaps the most sobering situation in 2006 is the humanitarian crisis that continued in the Darfur region of Sudan, from which the United States receives almost daily reports of obstruction of vital aid.
The U.N. secretary-general is trying to gain Sudan's commitment to allow a heavy support package and acceptance of a combined African Union-U.N. force, Lowenkron told the subcommittee.
"We've decided to allow [the secretary-general] some additional time to pursue diplomacy," Lowenkron said, but "as President Bush and Deputy Secretary Negroponte made clear, the United States will not wait much longer."
The full text of Lowenkron's prepared testimony is available on the State Department’s Web site, as is the 2006 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.
A webcast of the hearing may be viewed from the committee's Web page.
For more information, see Human Rights.
