IRTF News

Michelle Bachelet, High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR), presented her oral update (https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=26806&...) as well as her reports on Colombia, Guatemala, and Honduras. Few countries in the world were as open to international human rights scrutiny as Colombia, which has the largest UNHCHR in Latin America and serious deadly violence against social leaders. Turning to Guatemala, Ms. Bachelet welcomed measures strengthening access to culturally appropriate health care and providing information in accessible formats and in indigenous languages. Her Office continued to observe the erosion of civic space, with increasing attacks and intimidation against human rights defenders, including journalists in the country. Honduras’ human rights challenges included high levels of violence, impunity, discrimination and lack of access to economic, social and cultural rights. The COVID-19 pandemic, and the impact of hurricanes Eta and Iota, had exacerbated the obstacles faced by the most vulnerable people.

Teacher unions are staging protests in Bogota today over unfulfilled government agreements and to call for safe conditions in order to return to classes following school closures due to the pandemic. Teachers will stage a rally outside the Ministry of Education, where they will present a series of conditions over the reopening of schools.

On July 1, 2020, more than 200 workers were fired from the Industrias Florenzi textile factory without receiving salaries, bonuses, or full severance payments (as required by law). A few days after the dismissals, factory personnel took over the facilities where the hunger strikers continue to demand justice. Many unions and other organizations in El Salvador are supporting this feminist struggle and are offering the former workers workshops on labor rights, gender, education and sexual health. Some say it has helped them empower themselves personally and in their work cause.

Despite the language coming from the administration, these children are facing a terrible and possibly illegal situation. In 1997, a class-action lawsuit settlement established standards for the detention and release of unaccompanied minors taken into custody by the authorities. According to the Flores Settlement Agreement, the federal government must transfer these unaccompanied children to a non-secure and licensed facility within days of being in custody. In an emergency, the government can keep the children for up to 20 days while seeking to reunite them with family members or place them with a sponsor. Meanwhile, the Carrizo Springs site is a secure site (the kids can’t leave), is unlicensed by the state of Texas (it’s operated by a government contractor for the Office of Refugee Resettlement), and is expected to hold children for 30 days, as reported by the Washington Post, which is obviously longer than the 20 days dictated by the Flores Agreement. The detention is also very expensive, coming in at a cost of $775 a day per child compared with $290 a day for permanent centers.

Corporal Pierre Jean responds to the call of a disturbance in Farmworker Village, gets out of his patrol car seemingly bent on imposing his will on a man who is clearly not well — though, equally clearly, not a real threat — and, within seconds of arriving, rushes him, boxes him in, and shoots him dead. A bad thing — a horrible, preventable, violent death at the hands of the police — has happened. That much doesn’t change.