The protection challenge in Liberia

ADDRESSING HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN LIBERIA: THE PROTECTION CHALLENGE
(A concept paper)

March 2005

Introduction:

There are discernable types of abuses, predominant geographical locations where violations are committed and most vulnerable gender and age groups of victims on the one hand and of perpetrators on the other. As for the frequency of abuses, although the occurrence rate of some of the biggest crimes such as killings has significantly dropped since the end of the war, many more cases of violations such as the raping of very young children and assaults are now reported. The reversal of the situation is partly due to the fact that it is now possible for more victims to report the incidences. More than 50% of Liberia’s 3,225,000 inhabitants are concentrated within and around Monrovia, i.e. in Sector 1. Consequently, protection work must focus particular attention on this urban area. This should not be taken to mean that the seriousness of human rights violations taking place in the rural areas without being dealt with is not recognized. This imbalance is because most of the state officials and the feebly functional institutions for the redress of human rights abuses are still mainly only found in Monrovia.

Need for an inventory – a local area profile:

Before going into what HRPS’s protection work may have to focus on, a few indicators of the major human rights concerns on the ground will be needed. The following representative figures should serve as relevant indicators of the local area human rights context :

Judicial facilities : No courthouse (until 13 Feb.2005).
Penitentiary facilities : No prison, two police detention cells – total capacity 6.
Food security : 52% eat only 1 meal per day.
Schooling : 65% of the children of school-going age are not in school.
Settlement : 68% of the population have been to IDP camps twice.

Many people are not returning to their original homes because of insecurity, damaged homes and lack of resources to live on.

The above glimpse of the factors behind the disconcerting human rights situation in the county of Bomi makes a determined and targeted monitoring work strategy imperative if protection for people’s rights is to be realized. This paper therefore attempts to define a road-map to that goal and proposes a step by step approach starting with UNMIL’s HRPS staff. The actions initiated by the human rights officers at headquarters and in the field should dovetail in time and space and ultimately involve and affect all sectors of Liberian society - horizontally and vertically. For this to be achieved, actors, especially those from Liberian human rights protection institutions and NGOs must be empowered through being made to feel a sense of ownership of the process HRPS is leading. The identification of those credible partners is vital to HRPS.

Where to start protection work:

A thorough survey of existing infrastructures and services including qualified personnel for responding to people’s human rights needs must be carried out in each sector, county and district.

Human rights officers in their respective localities should undertake a survey and bring out the gaps in the protection mechanism. One way to do this is to use the other actors – (international or national) in the area who, for their own purposes, may have already gathered the same information .

To obtain the best information – i.e. both accurate and relevant, a well thought out questionnaire will have to be prepared by each team. The sample questions below should serve only as a guide for the teams to build theirs from:

When information has been obtained according to the above matrix about all the 15 counties and where possible even at the lower level of districts, the next task, i.e. of working out totals for Sectors can be started. The results should then provide a basis for replying to the following questions and more:

1. What are the chances of a law breaker being apprehended for violating other’s human rights?

2. What are the chances of an arrestee appropriately questioning the legality of the arrest?

3. What facilities are there to ensure that the person arrested sees a judge within the legal 48 hours?

4. If it is a rape case, what facilities are there for the victim not to feel intimidated?

5 How many of NPL officers (if present in the locality) are women?

6. The danger of the rape victim contracting AIDS is reduced by the PEP. Is this possible?

7 Is the legal and physical environment conducive to checking impunity?

8. What percentage of the population in this locality belongs to vulnerable categories?

9. If a choice between two kinds of activity to be undertaken in the locality must be made, which kind should be prioritized – written or audio-visual? Explain why.

The preparatory survey work, if undertaken appropriately will equip field teams with powerful tools with which to tackle subsequent human rights protection tasks. The survey exercise could be termed mapping out of the terrain. Combined with the actual visits which should follow the collection of information will be the knowledge of not only where exactly prisons, police stations, hospitals or courthouses, IDP camps etc… are located but also of their qualitative state. The survey is therefore part of HRPS’s expected monitoring function. Not of monitoring ‘abuses’ as such yet, but as a step in establishing vital information on the elements in the environment which lead to or prevent human right violations.

The above work is a prerequisite to the Section’s designing of a national protection strategy . This is vital to HRPS’s effectiveness in our Protection responsibility. The information is urgent and field staff should include it among their priority assignments right away. We should aim at submitting all findings by the end of the third week of March.

While collecting the data, HROs should always bear in mind the following points in their current work on the ground.

1. Preparing, conducting and reporting on visits:

Except where HROs are suddenly asked to rush to the scene of a violation (emergencies), all visits to State institutions/officials should be part of a planned work strategy. Simply put, allocate times/days in the week when visits to specific places will be effected. Depending on the time and distances the task will take, allow space between for what needs to be done in the office ahead and after. If it is a follow-up visit to a prison for instance, study the file and prepare follow up questions to issues raised previously. This way, the update on the information sent to HQs on specific pending cases is made possible. Systematic work requires that old issues be cleared before new ones are e embarked on.

Steps: 1. Determine time of visit if not routine and read though relevant files,

2. Prepare questions on outstanding issues if any.
3. Interview interlocutors Police officers, prisons staff, prisoners, detainees, judges,lawyers, etc…
4. Report in the recommended format. Start with follow-up and then do new cases.

2. Team monitoring policy or programme:

Every team works in a specific environment. In some localities there may be a high crime rate and therefore cases of human rights violations may be frequently reported. If this is your case, feel free to send information even on a daily basis (please respect the format given to you by Josephine). However, because of the details required in “case” reporting, those details might not be included/contained in the daily sitreps. HROs are therefore urged to familiarize themselves with the matrix below which was circulated for this purpose. – Team leaders in particularly should make a special effort to use the chart for cases reported.

The reasons for this will become clear when the forms have been used for more than two weeks. Briefly we shall be able:

(a) to know - at a glance the number and kind of incidents victims, place of occurrence,and the steps taken to address them.

(b) to tell the stages at which the legal process is on every case, and especially where a month has passed, whether State agents are effective (in implementing guidance given to them or not.

(c) to identify recurrent problems/explanations for State agents’ inaction or otherwise.

(d)to establish predominant trends in our protection work’s effectiveness or weakness.

(e) produce graphic visual aids – e.g. pie, bar and or linear graphs/charts showing the overall situation with the statistical trends calling for our attention.

(f) to compare and contrast violations as they are monitored by different

Teams across the country and start to pay particular attention to the specific challenges in the locations thus identified.

The Protection Coordinator will, using the information furnished by the field teams produce the equivalent of the Sectoral statistical summary for the entire country at the end of every week. Should it appear more appropriate to produce the information in this format every two weeks, allowing for teams in the field enough time to follow up on ongoing cases and to send in new developments, this will be so. The bi-weekly field staff meeting (if it continues) will be the best forum where to agree on the exact format and frequency of appearance.

In collecting the information to be entered into the chart above, HRO should use the forms suggested (and agreed upon in January by the section). Those forms require that all the elements asked for in the above matrix be recorded about the incident – concerning the persons involved etc…

As this concept paper is being developed, Beata has come up with an excellent idea. With her previous working experience in this area she proposed a form which HROs in the field may use in the actual collection of the data we are looking for in order to create a reliable and efficient human rights violations database for easy access at any time on given cases. Likewise, you will find an abridged version of the OHCHR’s suggested form for use for visits to detention facilities. The idea is to help field officers realize the need for a detailed record of what is obtained whenever an interview has been held. All officers are urged to use the formats suggested.

Up to this point the information collected by HROs in the field has mainly been submitted to headquarters in narrative format. In future, the teams are being encouraged to use the forms attached to these guidelines in regard to information belonging to cases of human rights abuses.

Our aim and strategy in the human rights protection work in the country is to prepare nationals to take our place in the roles we are currently playing. To this end, in our monitoring tasks we should involve members of credible interested national human rights defence NGOs. But this presupposes a good knowledge of existing CSBO and NGOs in the geographical locations field staff are operating. It follows from this strategy that when the initial checklist of items whose existence in a locality is being established, it should include names of potential partners. These could include traditional leaders, religious institutions, NGOs etc… In this sense HRO will need to strengthen working relations with other actors such as international humanitarian and even commercial enterprises (Firestone, for instance and others).

To facilitate the work which field human rights officers have to undertake in identifying and linking up with credible NGOs a full list of all known NGOs is attached to this concept paper . As the only available copy at the moment is a hard one, please do not hesitate to secure a copy for your team from Container C2. Call 2722 and agree on a time for this. A request has been sent to the NGOs to provide an electronic updated version.

Work coordination arrangements between HQs and field offices:

Every team will be doing the monitoring and documentation work as required by our protection mandate. While this may be a daily ongoing responsibility, it will be necessary to make a plan on how coordination can be done best. The following approach is suggested.

To follow developments on the human rights situation in your area, there should be at least one visit to the prison, police detention facility, IDP camp or any other additional location where persons whose human rights are likely to be abused are confined. If circumstances warrant it more visits may be made. Using the forms provided above information obtained should be recorded and sent to the Protection Advisor and ultimately to the officer who will be working in collaboration with him on the database. This should be standard practice whether or not there is a new development.

In addition to the above weekly routine protection sitrep (for format please see p4.), a brief mention of new findings and /or incidents will continue to be made in the usual sitreps which we already receive. Josephine has indicated the kind of details required for the latter.

The Protection Advisor using the information from all the field offices will prepare the weekly matrix showing the protection situation throughout the country. He will also plan trips to different field teams for first hand interactions with HRO and State officials responsible for the protection of human rights. It will be useful for field staff to advise HQs on the best times in the week and hour during the day when the Sector or County joint meetings are convened. Ideally, we should set aside two working days for each of these visits.

Day one: PA arrives. Briefing by field staff on the “county profile” – refer to pp 2 above. Call upon a number of main partners individually and visit police/

prison facilities and any other spots of particular interest. Courts and magistrates – any law state officials as well as civil society based organisations – and religious or/and traditional leaders.

Day two: Attend/participate the Sector/County weekly or monthly joint meeting. Team will have been regularly attending those meetings. For Sector 1 such meetings
take place every Monday from 8.00 to about 10.00am. It is just possible that up country the participants are different, but in Monrovia it is the Sector Commander and all the Commanding officers of the different Battalions from the different counties, representatives of MILOBS, JCMAC, CIVPOL, Airport security and management officials, NPL, AFL, Free Port Of Liberia Officers, Civil Affairs, Electoral Team representative and UNMIL Crime Investigation. It is possible that more representation of the local state Officials be the case in the field.

From the information and exchanges of the meeting the PA will have a good
idea of the general human rights situation in the locality. Pressing protection
concerns will have been expressed (even indirectly) and in his mission report
PA will share this information with HQ. Several such visits will enable staff
at HQs to gain a true picture of the protection situation in the entire country.

Being in tune with OHCHR on protection:

Protecting Human Rights is regarded by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Louise Arbour, to be the central function of all human rights sections within peacekeeping missions. It is therefore vital that we all clearly understand what is entailed by “protection” in our human rights work in the field. HRO must see themselves as agents for the realization of vulnerable persons’ human rights. This means some benchmarks must be set against which HRPS’s work in the field should be measured. Officers in their respective localities will need to divide up monitoring duties both thematically and geographically. Thematically, depending on the most pressing concerns in your part of the country, the 6 core international human rights instruments should guide us. Check to find out whether the local authorities are functioning in accordance with the Liberian laws and the international norms stipulated in the conventions to which the Government of Liberia is party. Officers may have different levels of familiarity with one convention or the other. These differences in the specialised knowledge which officers possess should be an asset amongst teams in monitoring the observance or otherwise of the human rights standards and norms.

At present, it can be said, most of the human rights violations taking place are of the civil and not the political nature. This is necessitates the attention of HROs to direct and concentrate towards questions that fall into that domain of human rights. The excerpt below is taken from a note for the file prepared after analyzing statistics obtained from the MCP on 28 February 2005:

“…out of an approximate number of 3,500 cases dealt with in the year, the judicial system only concluded 20 – i.e. less than 1% of the work . Presently, out of the 280 prisoners, only one is convicted. 13 have been incarcerated on Magistrate Courts’ ruling for at least 10 months. The magistrate court in Kakata issued two life sentences for murder cases on February 1st 2005 to David Cooper and Gibson Bowhile. Courts issuing orders for imprisonment pending case investigation and final judgment give no indication when the prisoner must reappear in court. The result is that persons remain in prison for indefinite durations without trial. Arthur Gortor and Robert Tokpah were sent to prison by the magistrate court in Monrovia on 25 January 2004 and are still there.

Further enquiries revealed that most of the violations of human rights pointed out in the cases above affect indigent persons. Two concrete cases were give where 16 and 7 persons were detained on the magistrate courts’ orders but only two from each group are still in prison as they cannot afford bail. In a third case a detainee on murder charges was released on the court’s orders because he had the services of a lawyer…”

The statistics further show the major categories of charges against prisoners to be: 42% of robbery and thefts; 26% murder and assault, and 8% rape. The rest of the cases are of loitering, contempt of court, terrorist threat, debt, kidnapping etc…It is therefore clear for the moment that protection work is mainly in terms of getting the authorities to enforce the law, to support institutions in the dispensation of justice and in insisting that persons legally deprived of their liberty be treated humanely and according to internationally recognized standards.

Human Rights monitors in the field should address protection issues by asking questions to which answers can demonstrably convey a better image than that given above. To do this, staff guided by key relevant provisions from the Liberian Constitution and other laws which are in conformity with international human rights conventions ratified by the Government of Liberia. The excerpts below from the Liberian laws should interest HRO in the field protection work:

“..Every person injured shall have remedy therefore, by due course of law; justice shall be done without sale, denial or delay..” (Article 1 Declaration of Rights, Section 6)

“..Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, no excessive punishment inflicted..” (Article 1 Declaration of Rights, Section 10)

“..The prosecuting attorney by leave of court file a dismissal of an indictment or complaint or of a count contained there in as to either of all or some of the defendants. The prosecution shall thereupon terminate to the extent indicated in the dismissal..”

Besides familiarizing themselves with the interviewing and/or reporting forms and the use of the matrix human rights officers must devote time to reading and gaining a thorough understanding especially of the following instruments :

a- CAT b- CEDAW, c- CRC d- CCPR. and e- CERD.

Our duty and role as HRPS must be to bring about and/or enhance a national protection system in Liberia that reflects international human rights norms. The 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna request(ed) Governments “ to incorporate standards as contained in international human rights instruments in domestic legislation and to strengthen national structures, institutions and organs of society which play a role in promoting and safeguarding human rights.

In our context there is virtually no functioning human rights protection system – i.e we do not have effective legal frameworks, institutions, procedures and actors designed to ensure that domestic laws and international human rights norms and standards are respected, protected and fulfilled. It is this void in the protection mechanism that explains the impunity enjoyed by those who abuse and violate human rights.

Linkage between monitoring in protection work and HRPS’s other areas of responsibility:

Work accomplished by field HROs in their monitoring and protection responsibilities constitutes the bedrock for the rest of HRPS’s functions. That work brings out the key problem, areas locations and the predominant kinds of human rights violations. From the information it will also be possible to identify the main categories of victims and perpetrators. It is on the basis of such reliable information that other Advisors e.g. on the Rule of Law, Capacity Building and Training as well as those responsible for institutional counseling will fashion their interventions in guiding policy. Indeed in the concept paper entitled National Systems of Human Rights Protection, discussed in Geneva by the Heads of Field Human Rights Offices on November 2004 the linkage between protection work and the other roles of the offices was stated as follows:

“While developing or enhancing a national human rights protection system (NHRPS) special attention should always be paid to marginalized groups and groups being discriminated against in a given society, whether at the level of the development of laws, the establishment of specific institutions, the setting up of adapted procedures and processes, the design of specific awareness-raising and education programmes and campaigns, as well as the promotion of the active and meaningful participation of such groups in the country’s civil society ”

Protection work will be done with the full understanding that we complement the rule of law and the national institutions support functions of HRPS. Similarly, protection underpins HRPS’s training and capacity building efforts. Finally, the success of the Transitional Justice Unit project will be facilitated if monitoring of abuses and effectively protecting right today is achieved within
communities and towns.

This paper has attempted to describe protection work, how it should be planned for and actually carried out in the field by HROs. A step by step methodology has been given on monitoring, recording information and preparing it in a given format for dispatch to Headquarters. The field staff have been informed why and how certain considerations must be made in the course of their protection work.
References have been given in order to encourage HROs to look beyond what is
in front of them in order to see the full picture towards which their local input goes. In this regard the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has been referred to in the context of the international human rights system. Finally, as importantly, officers are urged to see the inter-relatedness between the units of the Human Rights System and indeed with the rest of UNMIL’s other components as well as the entire UNCT in Liberia.

The next step:

All the daily, weekly and monthly work by monitors throughout the country would be lost if not methodically organized for storage in a database at HQs. The Protection Advisor is charged with the responsibility of encouraging appropriate data collection and storage. Arrangements are underway to create this database. Some of the data is already available but in dispersed form. For the moment emphasis is put on the use of the proper forms by field staff during their monitoring.

Consultations are in progress on what will be done, how and with who, without delay.