Objective 3

The IPU Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians is a unique mechanism that defends the rights of MPs worldwide by mobilizing the international parliamentary community to support threatened MPs, lobbying national authorities, visiting MPs in danger and sending trial observers.

In 2019, the Committee was asked to investigate the cases of 533 parliamentarians from 40 countries, almost double the number registered five years ago and probably only a small fraction of the total number of parliamentarians in trouble. Most of the cases are from countries in political crisis where the government is putting undue pressure on MPs from the opposition.

The most common violations of MPs’ human rights were undue suspension of parliamentary mandates, lack of a fair trial and violations of freedom of speech. For the first time, threats, acts of intimidation, torture and ill-treatment were in the top four of the most common violations, and number one in the Americas region.

The Americas were also the region with the highest number of violations – 134 cases in total – most of which concerned the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Access to the country for a fact-finding mission has been denied to the IPU despite several requests since the beginning of the crisis.

We were able to conduct field missions to Mongolia and Turkey to assess the situation of opposition MPs, including to observe the trial of Mr. Selahattin Demirtas, a jailed leader of the Turkish opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). We also mandated three trial observations in the Philippines to monitor legal proceedings against opposition Senator Leila de Lima.

The Committee closed 66 cases of alleged violations against MPs in nine countries in 2019. This included the situation of seven MPs in Maldives following an end to their arbitrary detention and legal proceedings to which they had been subject when they were in opposition.

2019 marked a record number of new cases (111 parliamentarians), compared with 78 new cases in 2018. Most of the new cases submitted were from Venezuela and Yemen. Also new was the case of Ms. Seham Sergiwa, an independent member of the House of Representatives in Tobruk in Libya, who has been neither seen nor heard from since she was abducted from her home in Benghazi in July 2019.

The cases in these three countries, as well as in other situations before the Committee, such as in Cambodia, Palestine, Israel, Eritrea and Turkey, underscore that the difficulties faced by individual MPs are compounded by a generally harmful political and security situation. Helping these MPs therefore needs to go hand in hand with promoting genuine political dialogue and reform in these countries.

For the first time, the IPU also examined the case of an MP whose rights had been violated because of sexual orientation. Mr. Jean Wyllys had been a member of the Chamber of Deputies of Brazil since 2010. He was the first openly gay Brazilian member of Congress and a well-known and active supporter of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex community. In January 2019, Mr. Wyllys gave up his parliamentary seat and went into exile because of repeated threats and the alleged failure of the Brazilian authorities to offer him adequate protection.

In 2019, the IPU also worked increasingly with regional and national institutions to give visibility to the Committee’s work. Together with the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission and the House Democracy Partnership, the IPU organized on 19 September a briefing at the US Congress on parliamentarians at risk around the world. That same month, we made progress in discussions with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights with a view to enhancing synergies around the protection of parliamentarians in the Americas.

“I express my gratitude to the IPU for filling its commitment in sending a monitor in my cases. This initiative sends a strong message that indeed the world is watching and taking cognizance of the various issues emerging in the Philippines under the current administration.”

Ms. Leila de Lima Senator from the Philippines

Senator de Lima, an outspoken critic of Philippine President Duterte, has been in detention since February 2017 despite the absence of any corroborated evidence to justify the charges against her. The IPU has been critical of the apparent motives and grounds for prosecuting her and decided to send a trial observer to monitor the legality and fairness of the criminal proceedings.

Our commitment to help parliaments deliver on human rights remained steadfast throughout the year. We continued to support close parliamentary involvement in the work of the UN Human Rights Council and its Universal Periodic Review (UPR). As part of that undertaking, we joined forces with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the International Organisation of la Francophonie to offer several training sessions for French-speaking parliamentarians, familiarizing them with the UPR recommendations for their countries and mobilizing them to help implement those recommendations.

Parliaments and members of parliament are becoming increasingly involved in the UPR process, including through the inclusion of parliamentarians in the official delegations that present their countries’ report to the Human Rights Council. This includes Bahrain, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Chad, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Georgia, Guinea, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Kazakhstan, Monaco, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia.

In 2019, we focused on the valuable work done by parliamentary human rights committees in the belief that they are at the forefront of promoting a human rights agenda in and outside parliament. Together with OHCHR, we brought together members of these committees in Geneva in June at a time when the UN Human Rights Council was in session. This facilitated direct exchanges between parliamentarians working on human rights and the global human rights community in Geneva. The meeting for parliamentary human rights committees helped identify numerous examples of good parliamentary practices in support of human rights and ways to adapt them to different local and national realities.

We also offered assistance at the national level to enable parliaments to boost their efforts to promote and protect human rights, such as through a parliamentary seminar organized in Burkina Faso in December 2019. In part thanks to IPU influence, the dedicated Burkinabe parliamentary committee on human rights was able to visit the high-security prison in Ouagadougou to assess the living conditions of the inmates. Committee members recommended that measures be taken to ensure better respect for the prisoners’ human rights and that they should continue carrying out such visits to monitor progress.
 

With 70 million people forcibly displaced around the world; including close to 30 million refugees and asylum seekers and some 10 million stateless persons, sustained political will and engagement by parliaments is required to trigger change and action.

At the IPU Assembly in October in Serbia, we adopted two sets of pledges to support the implementation of the Global Compact on Refugees and to end statelessness. Developed at the initiative of the IPU Committee to Promote Respect for International Humanitarian Law, the pledges involve collecting examples of good parliamentary practices to boost further action by parliaments to implement change at the national level, especially by engaging women and young MPs.

In complement, the IPU organized, with the support of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), a regional conference for African parliamentarians, hosted in South Africa by the Pan-African Parliament. The event brought together more than 60 parliamentarians to discuss concrete strategies aimed at implementing the Global Compact and addressing statelessness situations.

2019 also marked the 70th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions which regulate armed conflict and seek to limit its effects to reduce human suffering. At the initiative of the IPU Committee to Promote Respect for International Humanitarian Law, and with the support of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), we organized a panel discussion during the Belgrade Assembly to draw attention to the core principles of the Geneva Conventions.

We also focused specifically on the situation of women with an exhibition entitled Women in War highlighting their various and often complex roles – women as fighters, humanitarians, mothers, daughters, labourers, community leaders and survivors.