NGOs want UN/OAU recommendations implemented

Six human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have urged the UN Commission on Human Rights to implement fully the recommendations of a UN/OAU panel that recently investigated allegations of executions and rights violations in Togo in 1998.

In particular, they urged the appointment of a special rapporteur to monitor human rights and prevent new abuses in polls due later this year, and of three additional rapporteurs on women’s rights, torture and arbitrary executions.

The UN and the Organisation of African Unity established the three-member Commission of Inquiry on Togo on 7 June 2000 to verify the allegations by Amnesty that the security forces killed hundreds of people during the 1998 presidential campaign. On 22 February 2001, the panel confirmed that there had been human rights violations.

“The UN Commission on Human Rights would lose credibility if its member states failed to implement the recommendations of a commission that the UN itself decided to establish,” the NGOs said on Wednesday. Non-implementation would be a sign of weakness by the international community, they added.