For example, this week activists in Los Angeles have been protesting against the U.S. Trade Representative’s secret talks with negotiators from around the world aimed at establishing the so-called Trans Pacific Free Trade Agreement (TPP ), which could eventually include every Pacific Rim nation from Vietnam, Thailand, and Japan to Australia, Canada, Mexico, and Russia. Among other things, the TPP would include a radical expansion of patents that would shore up profits for Big Pharma and restrict affordable generic medicines.

It’s not only the U.S.—next week, after protracted and largely secretive negotiations, and despite unyielding protests, the European Community and India will likely make a deal on an FTA—a so-called Free Trade Agreement. Contrary to what the name suggests, it contains provisions that would further strengthen monopoly rights for pharmaceutical companies and limit India’s capacity to prioritize patient rights over patent rights, and supply the rest of the world with cheap generic medicines.

Along the same lines, the U.S., Japan, Australia, Switzerland, and several EU countries have already signed ACTA—the secretive  Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement—a proposed multilateral agreement which would establish a new international legal framework far more restrictive than currently exists under the WTO, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), or the United Nations. Have a look at this great little video to see what it means.

The U.S. has also been pushing many African countries to pass their own restrictive intellectual property legislation, again committing them to policies that are much more restrictive than what is currently permitted under TRIPS—the WTO agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights.  Some of this takes the form of so-called “anti-counterfeit” laws, which purport to protect consumers by outlawing fake products, but really apply heavy-handed solutions to problems best dealt with by other means (such as in the case of medicines, strengthening medicines regulatory authorities).

Now the U.S. Department of Commerce is organizing an Africa-wide intellectual property forum in Cape Town in early April. Again, this is presented as an effort to protect starving African artists and musicians from exploitation, or to promote African growth through innovation. But the agenda is all about IP strengthening and enforcement and not about stimulating innovation. There is no discussion planned of the risks that strict IP enforcement holds for health (limited access to generic drugs), agriculture (expensive genetically-modified seed), and education (access to educational resources), among many others. Africa has far, far more to lose than to gain from stricter IP regulation and enforcement—not least because the EU, U.S., and Japan own the vast majority of patents as this great visual shows.  And if African nations want to stimulate innovation, it is highly questionable whether patents are the right way to go. Intellectual property protection has never been shown to promote economic development in developing countries.

While many have rejoiced at the recent defeat of SOPA and PIPA, these other measures pose far more threat to the interests of ordinary people around the world—and because they’re being negotiated in secret, or through laws in a range of developing countries, they’re much harder to defeat.

Civil society organizations across the continent and the globe—from MSF to HealthGAP, to the Third World Network and librarians’ groups—are alarmed and outraged at the upcoming meeting and are mobilizing against it. We should all join forces with them.

Labour and Conservative MPs David Lammy and Elizabeth Truss defiantly opposed decriminalization. Jeremy Browne, Liberal Democrat MP and minister of state in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, was cautiously and uncomfortably ambivalent. And Melanie Phillips, columnist for the Daily Mail, vehemently criticized the drug policy reform movement.

The panel was asked whether drug users should go to jail, a question which was raised during Sir Richard Branson’s appearance at the Home Affairs Select Committee enquiry on drug policy earlier in the week. Sir Richard is a Commissioner on the Global Commission on Drug Policy and an advocate of drug policy reform.

The Question Time debate challenged the conventional wisdom that the UK public is unequivocally opposed to drug decriminalization and that political support for a more liberal drug policy is untenable.

On the contrary, it was fascinating to see that the arguments put forward by audience members echoed the views of experts working in the field of drug policy who advocate for decriminalization, such as those put forward by Release in a letter [pdf] to the prime minister last June.

“Addiction is a complex issue and difficult discussions are necessary to understand what works well for those who suffer because of drug abuse,” said one audience member. “If they legalized all drugs tomorrow, I’m pretty sure that everyone here would not go out and buy some heroin…The amount of money that is spent on incarcerating drug users could be better spent on treatment,” said another.

Mark Steel, an isolated voice of reason on the panel, noted that “if you listen to almost anybody who’s close to the problem, they will say the same. Just criminalizing it doesn’t work.” Indeed, a pharmacist in the audience explained that he dispenses methadone to people who use the medicine to break dependence on heroin. Such measures help individuals overcome problematic drug use and can lead to reduced crime rates in communities.

Another audience member pointed to recent cutbacks in law enforcement and questioned whether limited police resources should be devoted to going after people who use drugs.

Has this long-neglected debate shown that there has been a fundamental change in the public mood about drug decriminalization or that the public was not so starkly opposed in the first place? Is it time for UK politicians to follow the lead of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform by not only listening to the expert evidence in support of decriminalization, but also the views of their own constituents?

Can you tell us in a nutshell what your film is about?

They Go to Die is about the lives of four former mineworkers who were sent home from the mine after contracting TB and HIV in the South African gold mines. These men—like thousands of men each year—are affected by a process known as “sending them home to die” that occurs in the industry, where migrants become sick and are sent home with little or no continuation of care, follow up, or chemotherapy.

As we work on the film, I think the surprising feature is that it will bring out the life and joy that these four men share with their families. We all know that diseases cause morbidity and mortality, right? We don’t need to be told that again. That’s what we learn in school. But what is often overlooked is the human story; the way it affects an organic, ever-changing infrastructure of family and community that plays a role in how an individual copes with disease. I am working as hard as I can to turn this human rights violation—all of this human suffering that goes on in this issue—into a positively cathartic experience. Not to just show the face of those “sent home to die,” but to show why it is important that this problem is resolved, because there are common threads of humanity to which we are all connected.

What is your background and how did you end up making a documentary about this issue?

I’m an epidemiologist, not a filmmaker. I actually chuckle when people refer to me as the director or producer. I don’t know what a producer even does. Alongside this film, I am concurrently doing a research project that defines potential contextual factors that increase TB and HIV vulnerability in male migrant populations in South Africa, specifically gold miners. I love research, but this film is important for a few reasons. First, the research showing that this is a problem is already there. We know what’s happening. We know what’s causing it. We know what to do. We know how to stop it. This is an issue that needs very little further information to solve it. To me, given the body of research that exists, doing more research borders the line of unethical as a researcher.

As far back as the 1903 South African Presidential Commission, we see this problem: “The extent to which miner’s phthisis [TB] prevails at the present time is so great that preventative measures are an urgent necessity, and that the number of sufferers in our midst is a matter of keen regret.” That was more than a century ago. In 1995, Judge Ramon Leon’s commission issued a damning report on health in South African mines and said “radical” steps needed to be taken to address this. Today, his findings still hold true.

So those in decision-making power—the government, union, and industry leaders—know the issues, and know how to solve it. It is a matter of accountability; the historical narrative over the past century has been one of diffused accountability between these groups. They continue to pass the ball of responsibility. So the purpose of the film is to raise awareness and education in both the research/global health community and in civil society, placing outside accountability on the issue as a whole.

It is such a huge issue and a strong story. Why do you think the problem does not get much media coverage, even within the region?

This is a problem is out of sight, out of mind. When a physical collapse in a mine occurs, you hear about it immediately. It's there, it's in your face as a tangible, discreet occurrence. But with disease, it is behind the curtain, and much harder to pinpoint. TB deaths far outweigh the casualties of a physical injury, but if the miner has been sent home, his death is not in the spotlight – it falls in the cracks and crevices of the African continent. Coupled with this diffused accountability, certainly no one notices. And certainly, no one cares.

This is a frightful situation. We have seen amped up rhetoric: on paper, everyone is greatly concerned about health and safety on the mines. I mentioned the two reports earlier, and those were just two examples of fiery rhetoric that rhythmically becomes extinguished by apathy. In reality, few people with decision-making power seem to be concerned at all. The most recent audit report (2008) could not be more blunt: “There is a pervasive culture of non-compliance to legislative requirements (on health and safety). Inquiry after inquiry makes findings to the effect that risk assessments are not conducted, training is not done, early-morning examinations are not done, equipment is not maintained and the list goes on and on.” The commission’s own words were “the list goes on and on.” What a sad state of affairs.

Given the existence of effective treatment for TB and mining companies’ huge resources, it should be easy to dramatically reduce the number of TB deaths among miners. Why do you think this has not happened?

Fifty years ago, our barriers to surmounting disease were biological—we didn’t know how to treat diseases, what proper methods were, etc. Today, our barriers are man made. They are caused by human rights violations such as this. This isn’t rocket science. There is no reason why we cannot have zero TB cases in the mines. There is some movement: the Chamber of Mines has set forth goals to reduce silica, TB, and other diseases over the course of several years, but this issue is something that can be stopped now. Current goals and deadlines are frivolous and allow for complacency. We need to stop the BS. We know what to do.

In the 1930s, which predates TB chemotherapy, the granite mines in Virginia had a terrible scourge of TB and silicosis, but they used the technology at the time, engaged the community, and actively sought to surmount the issue. And they did, with no TB medication and actually using South Africa’s silico-TB reports as the gold standard for what to do. The difference between Virginia in the 1930s and South Africa in 2012 is that South Africa has an endless pool of labor to draw from. If the Virginia mines lost a worker, they lost productivity. If South Africa loses a miner, they can easily replace him with one of the many desperate for a job. It is easier to release the sick man and hire a healthy worker. This effectively shifts the burden of disease back to the home of the man. This is a human rights violation of considerable dimension.

This is not entirely the fault of the industry itself. Yes, the mining industry does have a finger pointed at it, but there is legislation that allows this to go on. Miners, legally under statutes in South African legislation, are a population apart. Their rights are under separate jurisdiction than any other type of occupation (such as agriculture or construction). This legislation is outdated and inadequate. In terms of legislation for compensation, one mining physician wrote an op-ed titled, “Miner’s Compensation: Who Cares?” which lambasts the complicated legislation that makes receiving compensation virtually impossible (a Deloitte audit showed only 400 out of 28,000 men—1.4%—received compensation when they were sent home). But technically the legislation is there, right? So they can say, “well Mr. Mkoko is entitled to compensation.” But he will never get it. There are masks such as this that each decision-making body hides behind.

You've said this is not just a film and you see it as part of a larger campaign to bring an end to the problem. What else are you doing, besides trying to complete the documentary?

Primarily, the film is hopefully going to be used as a tool in three discreet ways. First, using it in a broader academic discussion of the issue will seek to spark future research on the issue to fill what gaps in the research remain. Secondly, showing it in this setting will also seek to promote dialogue and discussion on the issue among “outside” decision makers: those organizations that play a role in global health as a whole. These two goals will hopefully forward the discussion on solving the issue in a concrete manner and place accountability on the inner circle of decision makers that can actually make change (the industry, South African Government, and union).

Lastly, the film will hope to be aesthetically stimulating and approachable by a wide audience, educating and motivating civil society to place accountability on all powers involved. The goal is to have the film be a unifying thread between organizations in these categories. Then we will have one large push: a unifying push to solve this issue.

You’re still trying to complete the film. How can people support you in your project?

This project is taking a different approach to what most films do. The ultimate goal of most filmmakers is to, obviously, create a film. Thus the call-to-action is after the film is made: you watch the film, and they tell you how to follow up. But like I said, I am not a filmmaker, and my ultimate goal is solving this issue. I am simply using the film as a tool to do so. So I am taking a bit more of a proactive approach, using parts of the rough-cut I have as a means to augment a discussion of the issue. There is no reason I should wait until the film is completed to raise this issue in the academic and global health arena. So instead of pulling the issue, I am pushing it, hoping to seed awareness that leads to development down the line.

Support could come in many ways. Global health and human rights organizations could come on board to support the film’s goals, universities could host a pre-screening, and individuals could sign up on the website. Like I said, the film will hope to be a nexus of all of all interested organizations and individuals. At the moment, the major holdup is funding, which has primarily come from grassroots efforts where we have accepted donations on the website. All the filming is completed but we need funds to finish the film, promotion, and entering it into festivals.

Our approach is very proactive and we continue to update ways for individuals to take action. That’s why signing up is so important. It’s not signing up to get a newsletter or something, but it’s signing up to be on call, so when we say, “we’re pushing for X or Y,” it wont just be me screaming in the wind, but rather backed by numerous individuals.

The European Court of Human Rights recently delivered the latest in a series of “pilot judgments”, this one concerning the degrading conditions of pretrial detention in Russia. In use since 2004, and formalized in 2011, the pilot judgment procedure has introduced a form of “class action” litigation in Strasbourg, where the court is based, and has helped to decrease congestion in its caseload. The pilot judgment procedure is a means of dealing with large groups of identical cases that derive from the same systemic problem.

In Ananyev v Russia, the applicants had been detained pending trial in overcrowded cells in various Russian remand prisons. They claimed that they had been detained in inhuman and degrading conditions and that they could not effectively complain about these conditions or receive compensation.

The European Court unanimously held that there had been a violation of the prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights) and the right to an effective remedy (Article 13). It considered that inadequate conditions of detention were a recurrent and systemic problem in Russia. Since 2002, the Court had found violations of Articles 3 and 13 in over 80 judgments against Russia; 250 cases were pending before the Court in which Russian applicants complained about detention conditions.

Applying the pilot judgment procedure, the court set out in detail how the Russian government should comply with the judgment and resolve the systemic human rights violations at issue. The court held that Russia had to: improve the conditions of detention, by shielding the toilets in cells, removing thick netting from cell windows and increasing the frequency of showers; change the applicable legal framework as well as attitudes and practices; establish maximum capacity for each prison to prevent overcrowding; and ensure that victims can complain effectively about, and obtain compensation for, inadequate detention conditions.

Importantly, the court identified the primary cause of overcrowding as the excessive use and duration of pretrial detention without proper justification. It observed that remand in custody should be an exception rather than the rule at the pretrial stage. These findings accord with the Open Society Justice Initiative’s global campaign for pretrial justice, which seeks to expose the pervasive impact of pretrial detention on public health, poverty, torture and corruption.

To implement the judgment, the court required Russian authorities and the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe to produce a binding time-frame within six months for resolving the problem. Russia also has to ensure accelerated settlement of the 250 pending cases within 12 months. Unlike many pilot judgments, the court did not adjourn the pending cases, leaving them on foot as an uncomfortable reminder to Russia to enforce the pilot judgment.

The court’s use of the pilot judgment procedure to deal with repetitive applications involving systemic issues is to be commended. It continues to build on its successes, recently indicating that it will follow a similar process to deal with an influx of 8,000 applications relating to pension rights in Hungary. By providing a remedial steer, pilot judgments facilitate compliance with Court rulings and induce the state to resolve large numbers of issues arising from the same recurrent problem at the domestic level.

As debate over reform of the Court reaches fever pitch, it is essential to recognize initiatives like the pilot judgment procedure that the Court has taken to manage its caseload. Jean-Paul Costa, the former President of the Court observes: “We need to build on procedures that have already been introduced … so the Court can deal expediently and fairly with similar complaints from large numbers of applicants”. In the UK-chaired Council of Europe conference in November 2011, the pilot judgment procedure was endorsed as “effective in dealing with problematic situations and repetitive cases.”

In the face of emotional, politicized attacks on the court, accusing it of being unable to respond to the challenges it faces, the pilot judgment procedure is an important innovation, and an eloquent witness for the defense.

A person has an intersex condition, or difference of sexual development (DSD), if he or she is born with a body that is different from what most people expect for a male or female child. Such anomalies can include atypical genitals, chromosomes, or internal sex organs.  When a child is born with atypical genitals—whether that means a clitoris that is larger than usual, a penis with a urethra that doesn’t come right to the tip, or genitals that do not look obviously male or female—it is common for doctors to perform genital surgery in infancy to make the genitals look more “normal.” This is done because doctors and parents are distressed by the appearance of atypical genitals, and they believe “normalcy” will make the child's life easier.  Often, doctors and parents also believe that making the genitals look more typical will prevent “gender confusion” or homosexuality. By performing involuntary, non-lifesaving surgeries on intersex infants, these perhaps well-intentioned doctors are blatantly violating their patients’ rights and in some cases the law.

Additionally, genital reshaping surgeries often don’t work out as planned. They can cause lifelong physical and psychological pain, scarring, lost sexual sensation, and many other problems. Sometimes the procedures also involve involuntary sterilization. Sometimes the child rejects the gender assignment, and these surgeries are not reversible.  Intersex adults who have lived through these procedures argue that only the affected person can decide whether to take on these risks, and they believe—like the study’s results conclude—that genital reshaping surgery should not be done until the child is old enough to participate in the decision-making process.

Thanks to the work of an emerging cadre of advocates for people with intersex conditions or DSD, standards of care are starting to change. An international consensus statement by medical professionals recommends a more restrained approach to genital surgery.  It also recommends telling patients and parents the whole truth about their condition and treatment, which has not always been the practice. Doctors and parents are now questioning the wisdom of early genital surgery, and the practice is increasingly considered controversial (but it is still widely done).

Many parents report that they were not given full information when asked to make medical decisions for their intersex children, particularly about the controversies around genital surgery. Advocates for Informed Choice (AIC) is one leading legal advocacy group working to make sure that parents receive complete information and that the rights of children with intersex conditions are protected when medical decisions are being made. Part of this work is to make sure that doctors know that some involuntary procedures commonly performed on children with intersex conditions are in fact against the law. Another part is to help their clients recover from the abuse they suffered masquerading as medical care.

A few years ago, an intersex woman approached AIC with a request. She was born with atypical genitals as a result of a medical condition. In an effort to make her look like a “normal” girl, her doctors had removed her clitoris in infancy. They told her parents never to tell her what had happened. Throughout childhood she was exposed to humiliating displays at the teaching hospital where she was treated, being made to show her genitals to one resident physician after another. Such treatment was standard for children like her. As an adult, she decided to take action to be sure that nothing like this happened again. She didn’t ask to sue her doctors, though. She wanted an apology.

AIC asked the hospital workers to listen to the woman’s story. At first they were defensive. They argued that they had done their best for the patient and followed accepted protocols. After extensive negotiations, two leading hospitals and the prominent physician who had overseen her care recognized that she had suffered real harm as a result of her treatment, and they offered sincere expressions of regret. To our knowledge, these are the first such apologies. Unexpectedly, the physicians involved in this process are taking action on their own to improve care, to be more aware of privacy issues, and to reduce unnecessary interventions. Hearing her story and the act of apology helped them to see intersex patients in a new way.

The Campaign to Stop Torture in Health Care, a coalition led by the Open Society Foundations, recently applauded AIC founder and executive director Anne Tamar-Mattis for her work in exposing the degrading and abusive medical treatment of intersex children. We hope the medical community will take a step back to read the latest studies and listen to the voices of advocates and patients themselves.

The case, US v. Jones, was right out of the television show The Wire: The government suspected a nightclub owner of being part of a drug operation. Investigators installed a GPS tracking device on the undercarriage of an SUV used by the suspect and tracked him 24/7 for nearly a month, ultimately using the evidence they obtained to convict him of conspiracy to sell cocaine.

The Justice Department argued in the Supreme Court that no one has a right of privacy while exposing themselves to observation on the public roads, even if technology makes possible a degree of surveillance that is impossible for human beings. Not a single Justice agreed.

The three opinions issued by the Justices in explaining their holding are important for several reasons.

First, the Court made it clear that it will not casually allow technology to erode the Constitutional right to privacy. The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), as part of a project supported by the Open Society Foundations, had submitted a brief in the case [pdf] in which we explained how GPS tracking was fundamentally different from human observation. Our brief was signed by leading technologists, including one often credited with being the inventor of GPS. Five of the Justices expressed concerns in their opinions about the range of new technologies that make possible surveillance of unprecedented intrusiveness.

Second, the Court clarified its interpretation of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. The lead opinion, written by Justice Scalia, focused on the fact that the government had physically occupied private property (even though very minimally) for the purpose of obtaining information. That alone was enough for five Justices to find that the government’s action was a “search” under the Fourth Amendment, which generally requires the government to obtain a warrant issued by a judge  before conducting a search. However, Justice Scalia made it clear that property was not the only basis of Fourth Amendment violations. Justice Scalia reaffirmed that a Fourth Amendment violation also occurs when government officers violate a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy.

Four concurring Justices, in an opinion by Justice Alito, argued that the reasonable expectation of privacy test was more suited to the computer age (while recognizing that it had its own difficulties).  These Justices felt that relatively short-term monitoring of a person’s movements on public streets accords with reasonable expectations of privacy, but that prolonged monitoring does not.

Factually, the case was limited to installation and use of a GPS device owned by the government, but Justice Alito’s opinion clearly has implications for the government’s use of data from cell phones to triangulate a person’s position. If, as the concurring Justices said, there is a reasonable expectation not to be tracked for a prolonged period of time, that expectation would seem to apply whether the tracking occurs by the government’s GPS device or by the phones, laptops and other mobile devices we carry with us every day.

Perhaps the most interesting opinion was written by Justice Sotomayor, who agreed with Justice Scalia’s property-based theory but wrote separately to emphasize that the reasonable expectation test offered an alternative basis for the Court’s bottom line. Thus, at least a majority of five Justices seem ready to hold that a warrant is normally required for prolonged location monitoring even if it does not involve the physical intrusion of a government-planted GPS device. (Justice Sotomayor suggested that even short-term monitoring may violate the reasonable expectation test, given unique attributes of GPS surveillance.)

Justice Sotomayor then went on to question the core of the government’s argument – the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties (whether by walking down the street or by browsing the Internet and disclosing the website addressing information to your ISP).  Expanding on the rationale of Justice Alito, she said she doubted whether “people would accept without complaint the warrantless disclosure to the government of a list of every Web site they had visited in the last week, or month, or year.”

This question – whether we really do surrender our expectation of privacy in the vast stores of data we disclose daily in the course of using modern technology – represents the next phase of litigation in the digital age over the constraints on government surveillance imposed by the Fourth Amendment.

For now, even with respect to cell phone tracking, the decision leaves many questions unanswered. In his opinion, Justice Alito essentially urged Congress to get involved and draft legislation drawing detailed lines.

We at the Center for Democracy & Technology agree that Congress has a major role. We have helped organize a coalition of major Internet companies, think tanks, and advocacy groups from across the political spectrum that is calling on Congress to require a warrant for cell phone tracking in most cases.

Revitalization of the Fourth Amendment must occur in both the courts and the legislature. The Supreme Court’s decision this week is a major step forward.

Voices across Europe are calling for humane and long-lasting measures to fix Europe’s unfair asylum system, which has turned Greece into a human warehouse for asylum seekers. The governments of other European countries have refused to act to resolve the crisis in Greece, despite condemnation by Europe’s human rights watchdogs, and court rulings that international law is being broken.

In January 2011, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture condemned the Greek Government for detaining asylum-seekers and other migrants in inhuman and degrading conditions. The Committee—part of the Council of Europe system of protection of human rights—took the unusual step of accusing the Greek Government of doing so as an apparently ‘deliberate policy’ to deter migrants without identity papers from entering Greece. The committee reported cases in which people detained were punched and kicked. It found that unrelated adults and children are detained together in cells that are grossly overcrowded. Those held are denied access to soap and hot water and sometimes to their personal effects and clothes. In one center, the Committee found 83 boys crammed into a cell of 100 cubic meters, into which sewage was flooding. Thirty-three of these boys were aged 12-14. Most had been held there for two months.

Asylum-seekers who get released in Greece, sometimes after eighteen months in detention, are unlikely to get a fair or speedy decision on their asylum claim. They join thousands of other migrants who lack the papers they need to find work, yet the Greek government denies their rights to basic food and shelter. In June 2011, the European Court of Human Rights held in its MSS v Belgium and Greece judgment that Greece’s handling of asylum-seekers constitutes inhuman and degrading treatment. Supported by Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe human rights commissioner, the Court ruled that human rights law prohibits other European countries from sending asylum-seekers to Greece under European Union procedures, because of the poor conditions there. At the end of December 2011, the Court of Justice of the European Union followed the human rights court, deciding in its its NS and ME judgment that EU law does not allow EU countries to send asylum-seekers to Greece.

This shocking treatment does not arise from a lack of funds. The EU provides the Greek Government with millions of Euros to deal with irregular migrants arriving there. The European Asylum Support Office also supports Greece. Individual Greek citizens and Greek NGOs try to help the people affected.

Despite this EU money and support, which has been provided for years, the Greek Government has completely failed to ensure a humane reception for migrants. Some of the EU’s assistance to Greece has even worsened the position for some migrants. The EU‘s joint border agency ‘Frontex’ detains asylum-seekers crossing Greece’s border so forcing them into a lengthy, inhumane detention.

The situation in Greece arises from an EU-wide agreement that each member state has responsibility for asylum-seekers who entered the Union at its borders. As member states in the North of Europe made it increasingly difficult for asylum-seekers to reach their airports, so Greece’s land borders became the entrance to the EU for 90 percent of irregular migrants. With only 3 percent of the EU’s land area, Greece cannot be expected to accommodate all these migrants until a proper decision has been made on their asylum applications. Greece is not alone in this situation; the island of Malta is also faced with applications wholly disproportionate to its size.

The solution is for all EU states to go beyond offering Greece money. They must also start accepting into their own countries their fair share of the asylum-seekers and other migrants who have entered Greece. Those EU countries would decide the cases under the same laws as in Greece—the common EU standards. As the EU Court of Justice held in NS and ME, article 80 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union means “asylum policy is governed by the principle of solidarity and fair sharing of responsibility between the Member States”.

The response of the northern states has been shameful. Last year, only a few hundreds of migrants were re-located from Malta. Formal proposals from the European Commission to share responsibility have been blocked.

Meanwhile, the EU’s failure to act does not stop those migrants who can from leaving Greece for another EU country. They do so by again hiding in lorries or boats or paying more money to human smugglers for false papers. In this way, the EU’s failures only encourage more danger and illegality inside its own borders.

There are growing demands for the whole EU to act in solidarity. In June 2011, the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly called for Member States to relocate asylum-seekers from Greece to other European Union countries for their claims to be decided. Last week, Cecilia Malmström, the EU home affairs commissioner, strongly criticised the EU's failure to provide asylum protection. Hugo Brady, of the Centre for European Reform, has argued that the crisis has led to Greece facing possible expulsion from the Schengen Area, the group of EU members that allow mutual free passage across their borders without passport controls.

The abuse of migrants shames not just Greece, but the whole EU. Despite sustained international criticism by international courts and human rights actors, the situation in Greece is worsening. The threat to the lives of the migrants concerned and their desperate attempts to leave Greece harm them and the rule of law. Only by a Europe-wide approach based on taking responsibility for people, not just moving money around, can the members of the European Union comply with their duties under international law to refugees, and meet the standards of common humanity to which the Union aspires.

]]> http://blog.soros.org/2012/01/northern-europes-complicity-in-greeces-migrant-crisis/feed/ 1 http://blog.soros.org/2012/01/northern-europes-complicity-in-greeces-migrant-crisis/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OpenSocietyBlog/~3/qctXk7qpriI/ http://blog.soros.org/2012/01/black-male-mentoring-decoding-the-image/#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:49:02 +0000 Stephen Powell http://blog.soros.org/?p=11420

Click click: the sound of a woman locking her car door as I crossed an intersection in Newark, New Jersey. I guess to her I had on “carjacker” gear. It was a stark reminder that despite being a professional who champions black male mentoring throughout the United States, to her I was just a black man in a hoodie and resembled a stick-up kid. The 21-degree temperature called for a thick coat and a hoodie, but the simple dress down day took me back to my childhood and the stereotypes I have had to battle my whole life.

Truth be told, I wasn’t offended by the woman’s reaction. Young black men trying to navigate the streets are often misunderstood, and in many cases, caught in a routine of exercising a false sense of manhood via senseless crimes. When responsible men such as clergy, professionals, teachers, fathers, and coaches are absent as community leaders, pain and despair become as common as the sunrise.

“Ninety percent of my friends are in gangs.” This was a provocative insight I received at a male mentoring festival from two young, promising high school students on the rise in Newark. Despite challenging circumstances such as the over-incarceration of black and Latino men, increasing gang presence, under-served schools, and unshakable “thug life” stereotypes via the media, they’ve made a conscious decision to persevere against all odds. The reality is, without the help of caring adults and black men serving as their guides, beating the odds can seem quite insurmountable.

Watching the way these young black boys responded to responsible black men who were simply taking time to help guide and mentor them, was beyond inspiring. The mentees greeted the men with firm hand shakes, executed strong eye contact, stood tall with pride and shared their educational aspirations. It was yet another reminder that when the men assume responsibility, powerful things happen.

Advancing a collective, positive mentoring movement is a huge step in dispelling the negative ways black men are often viewed in communities from coast to coast. When black men stand up and reclaim their rightful place in communities across America, fathers can contribute to raising boys to be men. Black boys are empowered to soar like eagles in an open society when mentors are available to help them attain their goals.

Becoming a mentor is a rewarding experience that creates a bond between mentor and mentee and helps youth overcome stereotypes and environmental factors that can keep them from achieving their goals. It is a caring movement that develops ties between black men, boys, and their families that can never be broken.

To find out how you can become a mentor, please visit the Mentoring USA website. Happy National Mentoring Month!

While "justice" is a series of aspirations for a better world, and "human rights" consists of internationally agreed and/or legally binding restraints on state power, "the rule of law" falls somewhere in between.

Lawyers and non-lawyers spend a lot of time discussing what the rule of law is. The definition the UN employs is quite a mouthful:

The term rule of law refers to a principle of governance in which all persons, institutions and entities, public and private, including the state itself, are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated, and which are consistent with international human rights norms and standards. It requires, as well, measures to ensure adherence to the principles of supremacy of law, equality before the law, accountability to the law, fairness in the application of the law, separation of powers, participation in decision-making, legal certainty, avoidance of arbitrariness and procedural and legal transparency.

Perhaps it is easier to see what the rule of law is not.

In recent weeks, we've seen three striking examples that illustrate the politicization of law.

In Spain, on January 17, Judge Baltasar Garzon, who has advanced the frontiers of justice abroad by prosecuting war criminals—like former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and members of the former military junta in Argentina—went on trial for doing the same at home. Among other things, Garzon is accused of abusing his power in opening a case into the deaths of more than 100,000 people under the Franco regime. One need not be an expert in Spanish law to fear that a judge is being punished for displaying in Spain the very independence which won him praise elsewhere.

The same week, a court in Istanbul acquitted most of 19 defendants accused of involvement in the 2007 murder of Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor who had provoked outrage in Turkey by labeling as “genocide” the 1915 massacres of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks. Before his death, Dink had been repeatedly prosecuted for expressing his opinion on matters deemed controversial. In 2005, he was given a six-month suspended prison sentence for "denigrating Turkishness" in writing about the identity of Turkish citizens of Armenian origin.  In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights held that the Turkish authorities had failed to act on information that could have prevented Dink's murder and to investigate the role of state officials in his death. Although the latest verdicts may be reviewed on appeal, the failure to secure justice for Dink’s killers sends a disturbing message about Turkey’s commitment to equal protection of the law for government supporters and dissidents alike.

Finally, just this week, the United States Department of Justice charged John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer, with disclosing classified information to journalists about the apprehension, interrogation and torture in 2002 of a suspected member of Al-Qaeda. This is the sixth criminal prosecution—more than all previous presidents since World War II—brought under President Obama against current or former government officials accused of providing classified information to the media. Rights advocates have expressed concern that this systematic effort to punish whistleblowers may silence others who have information about abuses, including those committed during the Bush Administration’s war on terror. Some suggest that is precisely the point—to hinder the search for criminal accountability.

Each of these examples highlights the danger, even in democracies with well-developed institutions, that political motivations may infect the judicial process in a manner which erodes impartiality and even-handedness. While misappropriation of the criminal law may seem to offer short-term gains to political actors, in the long run it undermines the legitimacy of government.

Taken together, these cases make clear, by its glaring absence, that one core component of the rule of law is the separation of law and politics. To give meaning to that principle, states might commit at the UN’s rule of law summit in September to the following:

First, effectively and thoroughly investigate all crimes, including—and indeed in particular—where there is reason to suspect the involvement of state officials.

Second, refrain from using the criminal process to punish anyone for political expression, or to infringe upon the principle of judicial independence.  Relatedly, do not prosecute judges for carrying out well founded investigations of politically sensitive crimes.

Third, provide effective legal protection for government whistleblowers who release information of public interest to the media or the public.

The mere restating of such common sense principles, in a public forum attended by senior dignitaries from around the world, would underscore their importance. Better yet, states might even agree to a process whereby, over the next several years, they would  articulate specific “stretch” commitments for each, with progress transparently monitored. That might make the High Level Segment this September worth following.

This is the second in an occasional series by the author looking at the issues facing this year's United Nations meeting on the rule of law.

George Orwell said, “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” I have been reminded of that sentiment recently after watching politicians and pundits criticize the imposition of excessive mandatory minimum sentences and then blame everyone and everything except the actual sentencing law that required the excessive punishments.

The latest example of this is playing out in New York City. According to a news report, Ryan Jerome, a 28-year-old former Marine Corps gunner, went to the Big Apple last September with the hope of selling $15,000 worth of jewelry. Mr. Jerome carried a gun to protect his valuable stash. After reading some inaccurate information on the Internet, he mistakenly believed that he could carry the firearm in New York because he was licensed to carry one in his home state of Indiana.

The trip to New York was Mr. Jerome’s first and he decided to go sightseeing. He tried leaving his gun in the hotel safe but it was full, so he brought it with him. When he arrived at the Empire State Building, Mr. Jerome approached a security guard to ask where he should check his gun. The security officer called the police. Mr. Jerome was arrested and forced to spend the next two days in jail.

Because of New York’s mandatory minimum sentencing law for guns, Mr. Jerome faces a minimum prison sentence of 3 1/2 years. He could receive as much as 15 years. He also happens to be the latest of many tourists who have been arrested for unknowingly violating New York’s tough gun law. Football fans will recognize this law as the same one that sent New York Jets wide receiver Plaxico Burress to prison.

The case has generated some buzz in the blogosphere. Gun rights supporters want the Manhattan district attorney to decline prosecution. Other commentators note that Mr. Jerome is a former Marine and sought to comply with the law by researching it before his trip. As Mr. Jerome told the New York Post, “If I had known, I never would have brought that gun with me, no matter how much gold I had.”

Perhaps the prosecutor should exercise discretion in this case and not bring charges, but the reason the stakes are so high is because the law carries a mandatory minimum sentence that certainly does not fit people like Ryan Jerome. Without the mandatory minimum, a dutiful prosecutor’s insistence on charging every technical violation of the law could be tempered by a judge’s willingness to consider the unique facts and circumstances of each case and defendant, and to fashion an appropriate sentence. But a mandatory minimum sentence eliminates any judicial discretion.

In many ways, the Jerome case reminds me of the prosecution of U.S. border agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. They were sentenced in 2006 to more than a decade in prison after a jury found them guilty of shooting an unarmed illegal immigrant and covering it up. The agents’ long sentences were required by a federal mandatory minimum sentencing law. Nevertheless, members of Congress hauled the prosecutor who tried the case to Washington for a grilling. They couldn’t believe he had the audacity to use the law they had written. Seeing that the judge had no discretion, many members of Congress then asked President George W. Bush to intervene, which he ultimately did by commuting the agents’ sentences.

The problem with these cases (and thousands of others just like them) is that one-size-fits-all-sentencing laws do not deliver the kind of individualized justice that Americans have a right to expect. Not all crimes and offenders are alike. That doesn’t mean New York needs two laws for every offense - i.e., one gun law to prosecute armed robbers and another to prosecute inadvertent offenders such as Ryan Jerome. But it does mean politicians should refrain from inserting mandatory minimum penalties into their laws since they cannot foresee every situation to which they might be applied.

Ramos and Compean were relatively lucky. Perhaps Mr. Jerome will get lucky, too, and the Manhattan D.A. will find some way to resolve the case without Mr. Jerome going to jail. But it’s not reasonable to expect that presidents and governors are going to be able (or willing) to save every unforeseen defendant from being saddled with an ill-fitting mandatory sentence. The only way to make sure that the time fits the crime is to get rid of mandatory minimum sentences and let judges consider all the relevant factors in crafting individualized sentences.