Urgent work needed to improve human rights

The Angolan government should listen to civil society, be more open to humanitarian workers and quickly rebuild its judicial system if it wants to improve its human rights record, the UN special representative for human rights defenders said on Sunday. Approaching the end of a 10-day visit to the country, including a two-day trip to Cabinda, Hina Jilani said she had seen some progress in the human rights situation and complimented the Angolan government on its initiatives so far. But the independent expert said it was vital to see more concrete action. "For me it's very important to see things happening on the ground. Unless measures are in reality in existence, human rights work is difficult and human rights defenders remain vulnerable," she told IRIN in an interview. After almost three decades of civil war, the Angolan government faces an enormous challenge to rebuild the country's shattered health and education systems and infrastructure. Persistent poverty, landmines and the return of millions of refugees and internally displaced people mean its task is far from easy. "I know that there are difficulties, there is no doubt about it," Jilani said. "This is a post-conflict society, but at the same time I do feel that the humanitarian phase has to graduate into a human rights phase ... certainly human rights measures are absolutely essential to give a sound basis to government policy, so that democracy and sustainable peace are achieved." Of particular concern was the presence of troops in Angola's northern enclave province of Cabinda, wedged between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Congo Brazzaville, and separated from the rest of Angola by a narrow coastal strip, which Jilani said was fuelling a sense of insecurity among the region's 300,000 people. "It is very apparent to anybody who is in Cabinda that the presence of the military does present several problems. Human rights violations continue to occur because of the close proximity of the military to civilian populations, and these are of concern," she commented. Although Angola's civil war ended in April 2002, a low-intensity conflict continues in the province, where Cabindans have called for self-determination for decades. Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has promised greater autonomy to the province on several occasions. But, as the source of around half of Angola's one million barrels per day in crude oil production, he has stopped short of accepting an independent Cabinda and sent in thousands of solders to squash the separatist guerrillas of the Cabinda Enclave Liberation Front (FLEC). An ad-hoc commission for human rights in Cabinda published a report in November last year detailing accounts of violence, abuse, torture, summary killings, rape and illegal detentions against the civilian population. "There are indications that the scale of violations has reduced; nevertheless, problems do continue and did continue until the very recent past," Jilani said. "Some of the violations that people have experienced and observed are certainly sufficient to make people a little insecure. The government needs to address that insecurity and perhaps take measures in order to instil and inspire confidence, so that the human rights community in Cabinda can check out human rights issues with a feeling of more safety and less risk than they have been able to do before," she added. The Cabindan situation is just one of the issues Jilani said she intended to raise during her meeting with dos Santos, scheduled for Tuesday. Another key area was civil society - expanding its role and developing its relationship with the state. "I think that civil society has to be recognised as an equal partner in Angola's progress towards democracy and towards peace," Jilani commented. "Consultation and continuous engagement with civil society and the state is absolutely necessary. It is very important for the Angolan government to hear what civil society is saying and to respond to the concerns that civil society expresses." With millions of refugees returning to their places of origin after the war, Angola has a huge task in trying to ensure adequate social services when they arrive home. Jilani said the human rights of refugees would be better protected if those working with them were given better access. "The first thing, obviously, is the openness of the government to give access to these places and to the people who are vulnerable to human rights abuse," she said. Part of making their jobs easier also involved allowing sufficient access to quality information and the proper analysis of data. Only then could policies be suitably designed to overcome Angola's problems. On top of that, the prompt creation of a competent judicial system was "one of the major issues that the country needs to address," Jilani observed. "In the context of Angola we are not just looking at inadequate structures, we are looking at total absence of structures in some cases. It is a serious hindrance to the work of human rights defenders when there are no appropriate forms of redress," she said. While the government was aware of the problem and was working on several reform initiatives, Jilani urged it to quickly address this shortfall - a task made all the more urgent by impending elections, the first to be held in more than a decade. Opposition parties have called for a ballot as early as next year, but the ruling MPLA has favoured 2006, arguing that it first needed to revamp the constitution, establish basic administrative functions in remote areas, and resettle and register the returning displaced population. "Elections are a moment of vulnerability for human rights defenders," Jilani noted, referring not only to monitoring of the electoral process but also to the need for greater tolerance when people expressed their views. She said it was important to make sure the population was both registered to vote and informed about the issues at stake. "People must understand the internal issues related to their country and be able to decide in an objective and free way with regard to the right to vote," she explained. "I'm not saying that there is potential for human rights violations necessarily, but elections anywhere are moments of heightened political activity ... there must be steps taken in order to diminish the possibilities and tensions resulting in actual violations." Jilani said she would like to see more involvement by the United Nations both in Cabinda, where she was eager to see the capabilities of civil society expanded, and across the entire country. She leaves Angola on Tuesday.