LIBYA: EU MUST PRIORITIZE ENDING THE CYCLE OF IMPUNITY AND REFOCUS MIGRATION COOPERATION ON PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Following a vote today rejecting a that would have forced women seeking an abortion to view an ultrasound scan of the embryo or foetus, Amnesty’s Senior Campaigner on Women’s Rights, Monica Costa Riba, said:

The European Union’s top court has today cast serious doubts over the independence of the bodies responsible for disciplining and nominating judges, Poland’s Supreme Court Disciplinary Chamber and the National Council of the Judiciary. Responding to the news from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), Eve Geddie, Director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office, said:

On 11 November 2019, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch submitted a joint third-party intervention to the European Court of Human Rights in a case involving Libya’s abuses against migrants during operations at sea and upon return to the country in November 2017. 

One year after the killing of Mexican human rights defender (HRD) Julián Carrillo, our organisations call for the European Union (EU) and its member states to step up efforts toward justice for his killing and to reinforce their support to HRDs throughout the country.

Ahead of the appeal hearing tomorrow of Pierre Mumber, a mountain guide who offered hot tea and warm clothes to four West African asylum seekers in the Alps and was then convicted of “facilitating irregular entry”, Amnesty International is calling for the conviction to be overturned.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) issued its landmark judgment in the case of D.H. and Others v. Czech Republic (“D.H.”) on November 13, 2007. More than a decade since the judgment and three years after the new legislation was put in place in September 2016, the Czech authorities still fail to abolish systemic discrimination of Roma children in education. 

I watched on as EU high representative Federica Mogherini and Vitalina Koval, an LGBTI rights activist from Ukraine, shook hands.

In this submission, Amnesty provides comments on the Introductory Memorandum published by the Committee of Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, in preparation of the forthcoming baseline study on drug policy and human rights in Europe. The current document presents human rights standards relevant to the several issues covered in the Memorandum and recommends additional topics that the organization considers to be crucial to be included in any future draft of the study.

European Union governments should improve on and then sign up to a plan to ensure timely disembarkation and relocation of people rescued in the Mediterranean Sea, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said today, on the sixth anniversary of the “Lampedusa shipwreck,” in which at least 368 people died. EU interior ministers gathering in Luxembourg on 8 October, 2019 are expected to discuss a joint declaration agreed upon by Germany, France, Italy, and Malta on 23 September in Valletta.

We the undersigned civil society organisations and trade unions, are calling for effective EU legislation that establishes a mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence framework for business, companies and financial institutions operating, or offering a product or service, within the EU. Such legislation should establish a corporate duty to respect human rights and the environment and require companies and financial institutions to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for abuses and harm in their domestic and global operations, activities, products, services, supply chains and exports. The legislation should hold such companies legally accountable and provide access to justice for victims.

Responding to the tragic fire in which a woman died in Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesvos yesterday, Amnesty International’s Research Director for Europe Massimo Moratti said: