Challenges of international talks

The Howard League for Penal Reform was one of the very first non-governmental organisations to secure consultative status with the United Nations, way back in 1947, partly because we had been an active player with its precursor, the League of Nations. So it is interesting to watch the challenges being faced by nation states and NGOs at the Copenhagen talks on climate change.

I have been non-judgemental in the way I have talked about challenges, because having had experience of working with governments at the UN on contentious issues around crime and penal policy, I appreciate how incredibly difficult it is to get consensus.

Traditionally it has been the United States that has caused all the problems. The US and Somalia are the only two countries to refuse to sign the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. For a decade the US pushed for the crime prevention section of the UN to focus on transnational crime, drugs and people trafficking at the expense of human rights and the implementation of standards in criminal justice. By refusing to pay its UN levy, the US starved the United Nations of funding.

We have sent representatives to crime commission meetings for many years, and are one of the very few voluntary organisations to be active in the field. The Vienna based office deals with international crime fighting policies, prison and penal standards, drug policy and other crime related topics. There are hundreds of NGOs now affiliated in one way or another with the UN, but the majority are concerned with issues like environment, children, faith, women, disability and development. Very few concern themselves with crime or penal affairs, there really is just the Howard League and the Quakers who are active.

We have battled away to get monitoring of capital punishment and the implementation of standards in the treatment of people in the criminal justice and penal systems by the UN.

I started my human rights career at Amnesty International in the 1980s when it was pushing the UN to introduce a procedure to carry out unannounced inspections to places of detention. The Council of Europe put this in place with the establishment of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture and this body carries out visits to prisons, police stations, closed hospitals and immigration detention centres in all the 47 countries in the Council of Europe. The UN has finally taken the same steps through the 2006 Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. 50 states have ratified this (including the UK) and 23 have signed but not ratified, and guess what, the United States is not amongst them

I remain optimistic. Having sat through what appears to be interminable posturing speeches at international events, and seen, eventually, a glorious consensus, I know it can happen. The development of conventions with real powers of inspection and reporting mechanisms that hold nation states to account in the court of international public opinion is an amazing human achievement. The rule of law at an international level has been hard won and needs protecting, whether it be on human rights or tackling climate change.