Month: April 2018

Morocco’s human rights record should threaten eligibility to host FIFA World Cup

fahrul-azmi-578025-unsplash.jpgPhoto by Fahrul Azmi at Unsplash

On April 16, 2018, five individuals landed unexpectedly at the airport in Casablanca, Morocco, looked around the terminal for an hour or so, and then left. The group was sent by FIFA to inspect Morocco’s airports, hotels, and soccer stadiums as part of the country’s bid to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the global soccer tournament held once every four years. Only Canada, Mexico, and USA had submitted a joint bid to rival Morocco’s, and initially the question was whether the small North African nation had the resources and basic infrastructure necessary to host such an enormous event. But, in the days since the task force’s arrival in Casablanca, FIFA’s attention has turned, appropriately, to Morocco’s record on human rights.

Today, The Advocates for Human Rights sent a letter to FIFA President Gianni Infantino alerting FIFA that Moroccan criminal law discriminates against women and does not guarantee a safe environment for all World Cup attendees regardless of gender. The Advocates’ letter calls upon FIFA to uphold its commitment to international human rights – particularly women’s rights to freedom from discrimination and violence – by declaring that, until Morocco’s discriminatory criminal laws are repealed and measures are taken to respond adequately to sexual violence, the country’s eligibility to host the 2026 World Cup is called into question.

Moroccan criminal laws discriminate against women

Current Moroccan laws criminalize all sexual relations outside of marriage. Police are known to harass unmarried lovers, breaking into private homes in the middle of the night and arresting individuals on charges of adultery.

Further, Moroccan laws create significant barriers to justice for women who have been raped. For example, in cases of sexual assault and rape, Moroccan law continues to require that victims prove non-consent by showing actual physical injuries resulting from the act of violence, and ignores the act of violence itself. Moreover, rape victims are deterred from seeking help out of fear of prosecution for illicit sexual relations outside of marriage under articles 490 and 491 of the Moroccan Penal Code. And violence against women is a widespread problem in Morocco: 62.8 percent of women report some form of violence within a given one-year period; an estimated 23 percent of women experience sexual violence at some point in their lifetime.

The Advocates’ letter presses FIFA to further examine Morocco’s bid to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup and to engage in dialogue with national representatives toward solutions. Such discriminatory laws create disincentives to all fans – foreign and Moroccan – to attend World Cup matches and festivities. Moreover, the laws create disincentives to female fans in particular to attend because of the threat of gender-based violence. The resulting low attendance may have a direct, negative impact on the World Cup itself, both in ticket sales and in attendance at games and related World Cup events.

Other advocacy groups have noted that Moroccan criminal laws also discriminate on basis of sexual orientation. Morocco failed to disclose its anti-LGBT laws in its bidding materials, in violation of FIFA rules. In response, this week FIFA sent a second technical committee to Morocco to look into human rights concerns, in addition to infrastructure issues.

FIFA’s own human rights record

Stated simply, Morocco’s criminal laws are incompatible with international human rights standards and with FIFA’s Human Rights Policy. That a second, unplanned FIFA technical committee returned to Morocco this week, specifically to look into human rights concerns, suggests that FIFA is taking seriously its commitment to international human rights.

In 2017, FIFA adopted a new, landmark Human Rights Policy, while also creating a Human Rights Advisory Board to guide its implementation. Among other things, FIFA’s Human Rights Policy effectuates article 4 of FIFA Statutes, which prohibits discrimination of any kind, by requiring that future bids to host the FIFA World Cup are vetted against international human rights standards.

FIFA’s return to Morocco also suggests a sea change in FIFA policy and practice. In June, the 2018 FIFA World Cup will be held in Russia, a country known for anti-LGBT laws of its own, among other human rights concerns. Similarly, the 2022 FIFA World Cup will be held in Qatar, where there are serious concerns about labor trafficking in the country’s efforts to build the stadiums and other infrastructure necessary to host the event. Because of the overwhelming criticism from international human rights groups and others for its overt disregard for human rights abuses in connection to FIFA-sanctioned events, in 2015, FIFA engaged in a process to review and possibly overhaul its policies and business practices.

Whether that review has transformed the organization remains to be seen. But FIFA’s Human Rights Policy was adopted in the wake of that review, and such policy forms the basis for the added scrutiny over Morocco’s 2026 World Cup bid – clear evidence that the advocacy efforts of international human rights groups, like The Advocates for Human Rights, can leverage the private sector to shift national laws and public policy.

Conclusion

FIFA, like many private industries, believes that its product – soccer – has the power to change the world. At a March conference, FIFA President Infantino stated that the global sport has immense “strength” that can be used as “a force for good.” As The Advocates noted in today’s letter to President Infantino, although such statements carry great promise, to have meaning FIFA must act on them. The question is whether FIFA holds firm to its commitment to international human rights – particularly women’s rights to freedom from discrimination and violence – by engaging with Morocco’s national representatives to improve its World Cup bid. In turn, Morocco will have ample incentive to repeal its discriminatory laws and enact new protections for women.

Whether Morocco is awarded the 2026 FIFA World Cup will be decided by the FIFA Council on June 13, 2018.

By Jon Mosher, Spring 2018 PHRGE Fellow, Northeastern University School of Law 2018. Jon is currently a fellow with The Advocates’ International Justice Program. 

“I think I will go mad here”: Putting a Face on Immigration Detention

The first week of March was eerily calm for me.  

As the person at The Advocates for Human Rights in charge of our client intake, one of my primary responsibilities is monitoring our client line, a phone line open from 9AM – 5PM Monday through Friday where we get calls from people seeking help.  

Normally we get somewhere between 20 and 30 calls on a given work day, which might be a 5-minute referral or a 40+ minute intake interview – certainly enough to keep me and our crew of undergraduate interns busy. And yet, the first week of March, the calls seemed inexplicably less frequent and less pressing. 

The twist? We received a letter from an inmate informing us that the phone system at Sherburne County Jail had not been working properly for several days, and dozens of people detained by immigration had been unable to reach us. Once we contacted the jail and got the problem resolved, our call volume immediately jumped back up again – and kept rising. 

You see, over the past year, The Advocates’ client line has been getting an increasing number of calls of all types, but especially from detainees. In July 2017, we received 41 calls from detainees. In March 2018, received 274. The months in between show a near-linear upward progression. 

 client line graph

 Our increase in calls is really no surprise when you look at current trends in ICE detention. The Trump administration has made concerted efforts to expand its arrest and detention capacity. The bottom line? More people are getting detained, and those who are detained are staying in detention longer. It’s to the point where facilities are rapidly running out of beds. As NPR reported last fall, “ICE reports the average daily population in its detention facilities was a little more than 38,000 for the 2017 fiscal year. The president’s 2018 budget plan requests an increase of $1.2 billion in funding for detention beds, to support an average population of over 48,000 adults.”  

The demographic of detainees is also changing. According to ICE data recently obtained by the National Immigrant Justice Center, more than half of the daily population in the first month of FY 2018 were marked as “non-criminal,” seen as posing “no threat,” while a mere 15% were classified as high threats, with violent criminal histories. Further, a recent report from the American Immigration Lawyers Association finds that from FY 2016 to 2017, arrests of immigrants with criminal convictions has increased a notable 12%, while arrests of people with no criminal convictions has increased a whopping 146%.  

At The Advocates for Human Rights, these statistical trends are translated into conversations with individuals. People in ICE detention call for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they will ask for country conditions research needed to apply for asylum, or pro se (legalese for “DIY”) information for a particular application. Still others need contact information for miscellaneous institutions as they try to collect documentation from detention to support their case.  

Sometimes you can tell they just want to talk to someone about what they’re going through. One inmate asked for help to request a new copy of his documents: he’d lent a copy of a motion he filed to a fellow inmate to use as a model – then that friend was woken and deported at 3AM, taking the man’s papers with him. Some report medical issues, threats from fellow inmates, or being sent to solitary after raising a complaint.  

There’s a feeling of desolation such that even people with viable claims for legal relief consider giving up. One detainee, who had been denied ibuprofen for recurring headaches, commented, “I won’t even resist deportation if I’m ordered – I just want to be able to live a decent life, you know?”  

In another conversation, a man commented, “I feel like I’m losing my mind […] I think I will go mad here.”  

Of course, the most frequent request from detainees on the client line is legal representation. Detention’s most devastating consequence is that it limits vulnerable immigrants’ already limited access to legal counsel. This makes the work of The Advocates, especially through The Minnesota Detention Project, more valuable day by day.  

Not an attorney? Not a problem. Here are three concrete ways you too can make an impact: 

1) Help us monitor Immigration Proceedings through The Court Observer Project. 

2) Sign up as an interpreter to facilitate attorney meetings with detained immigrants.

3) Donate to The Advocates for Human Rights, so that when calls pour in on Client Line, we cannot not only answer, but respond.  
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For my fellow research enthusiasts, here are links to more numbers and analysis of trends in immigration detention: 

 By: Rosie La Puma, Program Assistant in the Refugee & Immigrant program at The Advocates for Human Rights

 

Jenna goes to the United Nations

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Thanks to The Advocates for Human Rights, I just had the opportunity to take my interest in human rights work— and particularly my longstanding advocacy work on gender violence issues— to the United Nations in Geneva. Along with 11 others, including representatives from NGOs in Cameroon and Azerbaijan, I participated in The Advocates’ annual UN Study Advocacy trip, where we spent five days in Geneva at the 37th Session of the Human Rights Council lobbying Human Rights Council members on gender violence, LGBTQ and death penalty issues. Even though I am just 17, during the week The Advocates ensured that I was not just a passive observer to their work – rather, they allowed me the opportunity to play an active role providing me with an opportunity to be an advocate at the international level.

On my first full day in Geneva, I got the opportunity to participate in a side event panel on Violence Against Women. I was honored to speak alongside experts in the field in women’s rights and gender violence, who addressed the issue of gender violence in Azerbaijan, Columbia and Russia. My presentation focused on gender violence at the high school level, an often overlooked issue. I spoke about, among other things, the need to change the dynamic and educate children at a young age about the meaning of consent. My hope is that by early education we might be able to dissipate the prevalence of gender violence in the community at large.

As if that wasn’t enough excitement, the next day I actually got to make an oral statement to the Human Rights Council — on the floor of the United Nations — on the implementation of the Vienna Declaration. The Vienna Declaration emphasizes the importance of eliminating “gender bias in the administration of justice.” In my statement, I spoke about the importance of criminal laws in combating violence against women and the need for UN member states to adopt laws in line with international standards to protect victim safety and promote offender accountability. I am glad I can speak quickly – as, during this particular session, each NGO had 90 seconds to speak. They actually cut you off if you go over your time. I think the man sitting next to me was a bit surprised to see someone so young sitting in the NGO speaker seat.

On days following, I got the opportunity to participate in small meetings with staff members of the Special Rapporteur on human trafficking in persons, especially in women and children and the Special Rapporteur on violence against women. We got to learn about their priorities for the coming year and some of the amazing work they have been doing. The representatives of the Special Rapporteurs truly seemed interested in the work of The Advocates and solicited examples of best practices as well as assistance in their ongoing work.

I also got to lobby. One of the primary reasons The Advocates attends the Human Rights Council sessions is to encourage delegates to comment during the Universal Periodic Review process – which involves a periodic review of the human rights records of all 193 UN Member States. It is done in cycles so every country is not up for review at once. During the UPR process there is an opportunity for any government to raise questions and make recommendations about any other government’s human rights compliance. Before the trip, The Advocates did extensive research regarding the human rights record of several countries up for their UPR — Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Colombia, Cuba, and Russia – and prepared recommendations on ways those countries could make improvement on issues including women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and the death penalty. With those recommendations in hand, along with other members of our team, I got to approach delegates encouraging them to meet with us to discuss The Advocates’ recommendations – and, if they didn’t want to meet, giving them prepared fact sheets on the various issues. While at first I was afraid to approach some of the delegates (you literally go into the Human Rights Council chamber and tap people on the shoulder and ask them to speak with you), I was excited to see how receptive people were to speak with us. I understand that in the past, many delegates have not only adopted The Advocates suggested recommendations but also that the recommendations were ultimately accepted by the countries under review.

I also had the opportunity to watch the Human Rights Council debates. I got to hear a representative from Hungary declare that migration was not a fundamental human right and hear a delegate from Cuba call out US hypocrisy on issues of civil and human rights. More importantly, I got to watch in action a body of international players trying to hold countries accountable for human rights violations – asking questions and making proposals. It was amazing to see individual countries human rights records being held up to public scrutiny. I loved the fact that UNTV televises the debates, so that the discussions are readily accessible throughout the world.

Finally, I got to watch The Advocates staff in action – creating a team out of a group with disparate skill sets and expertise. Robin, Jennifer, Rose and Amy willingly shared their expertise, helping us all to become better advocates. I have a new found understanding of the importance of their work – and the influence they have at the international level. I will be forever grateful for this experience from which I learned so much not only from watching the UN in action but also from the members of the team who were incredibly kind and supportive. And, in case any of the team members are interested, I did get my AP American History paper on the Chinese Exclusion Act done in time (although the last night of our trip was a very long night).

By The Advocates for Human Rights’ youth blogger Jenna Schulman.  Jenna is a high school  student in Washington, D.C.