The Observatory on International Relations and Human Rights Holds a Meeting

The Observatory on International Relations and Human Rights is a project within CADAL’s International Democratic Solidarity Program. The Observatory is dedicated to monitoring the internal situation in both countries where civil and political rights are severely repressed and in Latin American countries where the quality of their institutional democracies is very low or severely threatened.

The Observatory divides its monitoring into the following regions: South America; Central America, the Caribbean, and Mexico; Western and Central Africa; Eastern and Southern Africa; the Middle East, Northern Africa, and post-Soviet Eurasia. To begin, the Observatory will be concentrating on the following countries: North Korea, China, Tibet, Laos, Vietnam, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Russia, Equatorial Guinea, the Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Syria, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, Eritrea, South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Burundi, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia.

The volunteers began the project by writing a report on their assigned country, utilizing sources such as the latest reports by Freedom House (Freedom in the World), Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Bertelsmann Stiftung (Bertelsmann Transformation Index), and the Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ), among others.

The volunteers alert CADAL of any human rights violations occurring in their assigned country and CADAL then forwards a statement to the foreign affairs ministries in the Southern Cone and their corresponding embassies in the place of interest. In some cases, CADAL also reaches out to the Argentinian National Congress to develop relevant draft statements.

Similarly, before every monitored country’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR), the volunteers present a summary of the country’s most severe human rights violations. This summary is then used to present the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s Office for Human Rights with observations and recommendations to be presented by Argentina during the UPR’s interactive dialogue process.

After the UPR, a report is written on both the country’s most severe issues – in regard to civil and political liberties – as reported by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the observations and recommendations discussed during the interactive dialogue.

Josefina Mateos, Diana Arévalo, Facundo González Sembla, Ludmila González Cerulli, Ezequiel Podjarny, Melina Morales, Eric Cuevas, Sofía Frers, Ariadna Hraste, Beniamino Brunati, Angel Freire, Giulia Greppi and Valentina d’Andria. The majority of the volunteers attended the “Foreign Policy and Human Rights” seminar that CADAL organized with support from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.