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Int'l Commission casts doubt upon Arab human rights court

GENEVA, Sept 14 (KUNA) -- The International Commission of Jurists on Sunday dismissed the Arab League's adoption of the Arab Court of Human Rights as an empty gesture that will do nothing for the victims of human rights violations in the Middle East and North African (MENA).
The League's Ministerial Council adopted the Statute on 7 September 2014, but the decision was published today. The International Commission has called on the League's member States to repudiate the flawed text and not to ratify it, the Commission said in a press release at its headquarters in Geneva.
The Statute essentially restricts access to the Arab Court to states, rather than to the actual victims of the violations, relying on states to bring actions against other tates, the Commission added.
Such state-to-state complaints are not likely to happen, as shown from the experience of other international human rights bodies. Political considerations provide a disincentive for states to act on behalf of victims from other states, it explained.
Under the Statute, it may also be possible for some (NGOs) to bring a claim, but only where states have agreed to this in advance and the organization is state-approved.
According to the release, a provision that allows the Arab Human Rights Committee to refer cases to the Arab Court was deleted from the draft submitted for approval by the Ministerial Council.
"The International Commission of Jurists does not consider this Statute to have established a genuine human rights court. It is a gross departure from the human rights courts established in other regions of the world: Africa, the Americas, and Europe," it said Seventeen leading national and international human rights organizations sent a letter last week to the Arab League Foreign Ministers, urging them to defer action on the adoption of the Statute, but it was discarded. (end) ta.msa