Human Rights Watch : - World Report 2003 by Human Rights Watch 1:39pm 15th Jan, 2003   Leadership requires more than a big stick and a thick wallet. It also requires a positive vision shared by others and conduct consistent with that vision.    The campaign against terrorism is no exception to this rule. The United States, as a major target, has taken the lead in combating terrorism. But the global outpouring of sympathy that followed the attacks of September 11, 2001 has given way to growing reluctance to join the fight and even resentment toward the government leading it.    How was this goodwill depleted so quickly? In part the cause is traditional resentment of America and its role in the world--resentment which was softened only temporarily by the tragedy of September 11. In part it is opposition to U.S. policy in the Middle East. and in part it is growing disquiet that the means used to fight terrorism are often in conflict with the values of freedom and law that most people uphold and that U.S. President George W. Bush has said the United States is defending.    Despite its declared policy of supporting human rights, Washington in fighting terrorism has refused to be bound by human rights standards. Despite its tradition at home of a government under law, Washington has rejected legal constraints when acting abroad. Despite a constitutional order that is premised on the need to impose checks and balances, Washington seems to want an international order that places no limits on a nation's use of power save its own avowed good intentions. These attitudes jeopardize the campaign against terrorism. They also put at risk the human rights ideal.    This is hardly to say that Washington is among the worst human rights offenders. But because of the U.S. government's extraordinary influence, its willingness to compromise human rights to fight terrorism sets a dangerous precedent. Because of the leadership role it so often has played in promoting human rights, the weakening of its voice weighs heavily, particularly in some of the front-line countries in the war against terrorism where the need for a vigorous defense of human rights is great. For this reason, Human Rights Watch devotes much of the introduction to this year's World Report to highlighting this unfortunate trend in U.S. policy.    The European Union might have been expected to fill this leadership void. Instead, its excessive preoccupation with achieving consensus, and other concerns, frequently left it paralyzed. At a moment when Europe's growing unity might have enhanced its influence on human rights, the opposite occurred. Other voices, such as the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, were also compromised by governments' failure to require at least a modicum of interest in promoting human rights as a condition of membership. On many human rights issues, the burden of moving forward fell on a handful of principled but less powerful governments acting alone or in small groups, such as Mexico, Canada, and Senegal.    Despite these troubling trends, there were some positive developments in 2002. The treaty to establish the International Criminal Court (ICC) went into effect, launching a tribunal with global scope to prosecute anyone responsible for genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia began the long-awaited trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. After an intense campaign, a new treaty entered into force banning the forced recruitment of children under the age of eighteen or their use as combatants.    The people of East Timor gained their independence under an elected government, a fitting retort to the severe repression they had faced under Indonesian rule. Devastating civil wars ended in Angola (after twenty-seven years) and Sierra Leone (after a decade). In Sierra Leone, a special court and a truth commission were established to address atrocities of the recent past. Steps were also taken toward ending vicious civil wars in Sri Lanka and Sudan, where cease-fires were in place after some two decades of armed conflict.    African leaders made significant new commitments to transparent and accountable government and respect for human rights with the creation of the African Union and its adoption of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). The Organization of American States applied the newly created Inter-American Democratic Charter to thwart a coup attempt against a freely elected government in Venezuela.    In the Middle East and North Africa, Egypt's domestic courts convicted police officers of torturing detainees to death, and the Court of Cassation for a second time rebuffed a security court's conviction of democracy activist Saadeddin Ibrahim. In Algeria and Tunisia, activists and torture victims bypassed compromised local courts to seek justice in France. In Bahrain, women voted and stood for office in national assembly elections, a first in the Arabian Peninsula, and two local independent human rights organizations were allowed to register. Saudi Arabia adopted a criminal procedure code that prohibited torture and other ill-treatment and provided for oversight of prisons to ensure against unlawful detentions. Turkey, bidding to enter the European Union, abolished the death penalty and removed restrictions on the use of the Kurdish language; despite past interventions, its staunchly secular military accepted the electoral victory of a moderate political party with Islamist roots.    Yet serious problems remained in many parts of the world, from the continued killing of civilians in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a surge of communal violence in Gujarat, India; from the eruption of full-scale civil war in Nepal to continuing atrocities during wars in Colombia, Chechnya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. There was a surge in large-scale deliberate attacks on civilians elsewhere as well, including Russians in Moscow, Australians and others in Bali, Germans in Tunisia, Israelis and Kenyans in Kenya, and French in Pakistan. Repressive dictatorships remained in such places as Burma, China, Iraq, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam. Industrialized governments continued to tighten their restrictions on refugees while doing far too little to provide treatment and care for the fifty-five million Africans who are predicted to die prematurely of AIDS between 2000 and 2020.    This report is Human Rights Watch's thirteenth annual review of human rights practices around the globe. It addresses developments in fifty-eight countries, covering the period from November 2001 through November 2002. Most chapters examine significant human rights developments in a particular country; the response of global actors, such as the European Union, Japan, the United States, the United Nations, and various regional and international organizations and institutions; and the freedom of local human rights defenders to conduct their work..    This report reflects extensive investigative work undertaken in 2002 by the Human Rights Watch research staff, usually in close partnership with human rights activists in the country in question. It also reflects the work of the Human Rights Watch advocacy team, which monitors the policies of governments and international institutions that have influence to curb human rights abuses. Human Rights Watch publications, issued throughout the year, contain more detailed accounts of many of the issues addressed in the brief summaries collected in this volume. They can be found on the Human Rights Watch website, www.hrw.org    Click on the link below to access the World Report Visit the related web page
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