2023-05-17 18:18:56
The human rights lawyer Amal Clooney complained about backward steps in the enforcement of human rights in Vienna on Wednesday. “The international system is failing,” said Clooney at the 4Gamechangers Festival in Vienna’s Marx Halle and also saw national governments in Europe as responsible. War crimes like those in Ukraine should be prosecuted by national courts – including in Austria, she demanded.
Clooney paints a sobering picture of the international human rights situation. “Not only are we not making new deals, we are also failing to deliver on the promises we made 30 years ago,” she said. The human rights lawyer found the reason for the lack of enforcement of human rights in the veto power of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – including Russia. In addition, many states have still not joined the International Criminal Court (ICC). She has little hope that the system will be reformed soon.
For this reason too, national courts should hold the perpetrators of war crimes accountable. “If you want lasting peace, you need justice,” said Clooney, who also advises the Ukrainian government on prosecuting Russian war crimes. Individual governments could also do a lot in the fight for human rights, for example by issuing emergency visas for persecuted journalists and vulnerable groups to bring them to safety, the human rights lawyer demanded.
Ukrainian human rights lawyer Oleksandra Matviychuk, whose organization CCL won the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, called for a special tribunal to prosecute Russian war crimes. “We have to break this cycle of impunity,” Matviychuk said. She appealed to governments and Austria to exert political pressure so that the Russian perpetrators are held accountable. Russian troops have been committing war crimes in Chechnya, Georgia or Syria for decades, “and governments like Austria ignore it and shake hands with (Russia’s President Vladimir) Putin,” she criticized.
Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg (ÖVP), who was confronted with the demands of the human rights activists during his subsequent appearance, asserted that Austria was already working hard to ensure that those responsible for the war crimes were held accountable. “We support the International Criminal Court very strongly, both financially and in terms of personnel,” said Schallenberg. In addition, Austria is part of a group of states that is working to set up a special tribunal on Ukraine to charge Russia with the act of aggression.
The Ukrainian First Lady Olena Selenska, who joined via video, called for a lot of international support to “give peace back to the world this year”. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s wife described the difficult situation in Ukraine, from which children would suffer the most. More than half of the schools would lack shelters for air raids. “The biggest problem for Ukraine is the destroyed medical facilities: hundreds of hospitals and outpatient clinics have been totally destroyed.”
Well-known Nobel Peace Prize winners also had their say at the festival in Vienna organized by the ProSiebenSat.1Puls4 Group and ORF on Wednesday. Yazidi Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad, survivor of the radical Islamic IS genocide against the Yazidi minority in Iraq, complained that European states would not take back former IS supporters from their countries. “Leaving these people and their children in the camps or releasing them is the same and equally dangerous.” She visited the camps, “You can’t live there,” reported Murad. Germany has shown how crimes committed by IS can be prosecuted in national courts, said Murad, and called on other countries to follow suit.
Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi expressed confidence that the Iranian protest movement will be successful. “I know that sooner or later this movement will prevail – without violence,” said Ebadi. The majority of Iranians are convinced that the current system cannot be reformed, said Ebadi. According to the Iranian human rights lawyer, if the Iranian regime falls, many other problems in the region will also be solved, such as the conflicts in Yemen, Syria and Lebanon, where Iran is interfering.
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