Madeleine Rees | |
|---|---|
 Rees at the London launch of Human Rights and Democracy: The 2012 Foreign & Commonwealth Office Report, 15 April 2013 | |
| Occupation | Human rights advocate |
| Employer | Women's International League for Peace and Freedom |
Madeleine Selina Rees, OBE is a British lawyer and current Secretary General of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She has spoken out against human rights abuses in Bosnia by peacekeepers and others working for the United Nations.
Rees became a lawyer in 1990. She worked for a major British law firm, becoming a partner in 1994. There, she specialized in discrimination law, being particularly involved in the area of employment, and also specialized in public and administrative law. Rees worked on behalf of the Commission for Racial Equality and the Equal Opportunities Commission where she helped to establish rights for individuals under domestic law. [1] Discrimination cases brought by Rees have been heard at both the European Court of Human Rights and European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
In 1998, Rees started working as Head of Office in Bosnia and Herzegovina and as gender expert for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. [1] She helped to expose human rights abuses related to the sex trade in Bosnia by testifying in support of Kathryn Bolkovac, a United Nations International Police Force monitor who was hired to help end sexual abuse and forced prostitution in Bosnia. [2] Bolkovac revealed use of prostitutes and participation in sex trafficking by members of the United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina. [2] [3]
In 2009, Rees was demoted from her position, and then in March 2010 she was fired. A United Nations' administrative disputes tribunal ruled it as a wrongful dismissal. The office of the High Commissioner denied the charges, stating that Rees had at first been reassigned to a new position due to complaints by senior managers about her job performance, and that she then did not accept the new position she had been offered. However, dispute tribunal justice Judge Coral Shaw ruled that reassigning Rees to a new post was unlawful. [4]
She was portrayed by Vanessa Redgrave in the 2010 feature film The Whistleblower . [5]
Rees was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to human rights, particularly women's rights, and international peace and security. [6]
The United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH) was a peacekeeping mission formed under the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1035 on 21 December 1995. It completed its mandate on 31 December 2002, when it was succeeded by the European Union Police Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Peacekeeping comprises activities, especially military ones, intended to create conditions that favor lasting peace. Research generally finds that peacekeeping reduces civilian and battlefield deaths, as well as reduces the risk of renewed warfare.
The Yugoslav Wars were a series of separate but related ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and insurgencies that took place in the SFR Yugoslavia from 1991 to 2001. The conflicts both led up to and resulted from the breakup of Yugoslavia, which began in mid-1991, into six independent countries matching the six entities known as republics that had previously constituted Yugoslavia: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Macedonia. SFR Yugoslavia's constituent republics declared independence due to unresolved tensions between ethnic minorities in the new countries, which fuelled the wars. While most of the conflicts ended through peace accords that involved full international recognition of new states, they resulted in a massive number of deaths as well as severe economic damage to the region.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Bosnia and Herzegovina may face legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBT residents. Both male and female forms of same-sex sexual activity are legal in Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, households headed by same-sex couples are not eligible for the same legal protections available to opposite-sex couples.
The Republika Srpska was a self-proclaimed statelet in Southeastern Europe under the control of the Army of Republika Srpska during the Bosnian War. It claimed to be a sovereign state, though this claim was only partially recognized by the Bosnian government in the Geneva agreement, the United Nations, and FR Yugoslavia. For the first six months of its existence, it was known as the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Peace Implementation Council (PIC) is an international body charged with implementing the Dayton Peace Agreement for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Council was established at an implementation conference held in London, United Kingdom, on December 8 and 9, 1995, subsequent to the completion of the negotiations of the accord the preceding month. The Council is, in effect, the realisation, through the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, which it appoint, of the international community's governance of Bosnia and Herzegovina after signature of the Dayton Agreement. The international control over Bosnia and Herzegovina is to last until the country is deemed politically and democratically stable and self-sustainable.
Wartime sexual violence is rape or other forms of sexual violence committed by combatants during an armed conflict, war, or military occupation often as spoils of war, but sometimes, particularly in ethnic conflict, the phenomenon has broader sociological motives. Wartime sexual violence may also include gang rape and rape with objects. It is distinguished from sexual harassment, sexual assaults and rape committed amongst troops in military service.
Some of the personnel of the United Nations peacekeeping are accused of committing sexual abuse in general and of child sexual abuse in particular. An Associated Press (AP) investigation revealed in 2017 that more than 100 United Nations (UN) peacekeepers ran a child sex ring in Haiti over a 10-year period and none were ever jailed. The report further found that over the previous 12 years, there had been almost 2,000 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers and other UN personnel around the world. AP found the abuse to be much greater than originally thought. After the AP report, U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, urged all countries to hold UN peacekeepers accountable for any sexual abuse and exploitation. As early as 2004, Amnesty International reported that underage girls were being kidnapped, tortured and forced into prostitution in Kosovo with UN and NATO personnel being the customers driving the demand for the sex slaves. The UN's department of peacekeeping in New York acknowledged at that time that "peacekeepers have come to be seen as part of the problem in trafficking rather than the solution".
The Whistleblower is a 2010 Canadian biographical drama film directed by Larysa Kondracki and starring Rachel Weisz. Kondracki and Eilis Kirwan wrote the screenplay, which was inspired by the story of Kathryn Bolkovac, a Nebraska police officer who was recruited as a United Nations peacekeeper for DynCorp International in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1999. While there, she discovered a Bosnian sex trafficking ring serving and facilitated by DynCorp employees, with international peacekeepers looking the other way. Bolkovac was fired and forced out of the country after attempting to shut down the ring. She took the story to BBC News in the UK and won a wrongful dismissal lawsuit against DynCorp.
United Nations Security Council resolution 1031, adopted unanimously on 15 December 1995, after recalling all previous resolutions on the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, the council, acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, discussed the transfer of authority from the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) to the multinational Implementation Force (IFOR).
United Nations Security Council resolution 1423, adopted unanimously on 12 July 2002, after recalling resolutions 1031 (1995), 1035 (1995), 1088 (1996), 1103 (1997), 1107 (1997), 1144 (1997), 1168 (1998), 1174 (1998), 1184 (1998), 1247 (1999), 1305 (2000), 1357 (2001) and 1396 (2002), the Council extended the mandate of the United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH) for a period until on 31 December 2002 and authorised states participating in the NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) to continue to do so for a further twelve months.
Kathryn Bolkovac is a human rights advocate, consultant, former police investigator with the Lincoln Police Department, and former monitor with United Nations International Police Task Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She came to prominence when she sued her employers for unfair dismissal after she lost her job following her attempts to expose sex trafficking in Bosnia. Her story was shown in the film The Whistleblower and told in the nonfiction book, The Whistleblower.
Ethnic cleansing occurred during the Bosnian War (1992–95) as large numbers of Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) and Bosnian Croats were forced to flee their homes or were expelled by the Army of Republika Srpska and Serb paramilitaries. Bosniaks and Bosnian Serbs had also been forced to flee or were expelled by Bosnian Croat forces, though on a restricted scale and in lesser numbers. The UN Security Council Final Report (1994) states while Bosniaks also engaged in "grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and other violations of international humanitarian law", they "have not engaged in "systematic ethnic cleansing"". According to the report, "there is no factual basis for arguing that there is a 'moral equivalence' between the warring factions".
Human rights in Liberia became a focus of international attention when the country's president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, was named one of the three female co-winners of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, all of whom were cited "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work".
The Battle of Vrbanja Bridge was an armed confrontation which took place on 27 May 1995, between United Nations (UN) peacekeepers from the French Army and elements of the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska (VRS). The fighting occurred at the Vrbanja Bridge crossing of the Miljacka river in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the Bosnian War. The VRS seized the French-manned United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) observation posts on both ends of the bridge, taking hostage 12 French peacekeepers. Ten were taken away, and two were kept at the bridge as human shields.
Nusreta Sivac is a Bosnian activist for victims of rape and other war crimes and a former judge. During the Bosnian War she was an inmate at the Bosnian Serb-run Omarska camp in Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina where she and other women at the camp were raped, beaten, and tortured. After the camp's closure in August 1992 due to press coverage, she became an activist for victims of rape and is credited with helping in the recognition of wartime rape as a war crime under international law. She is a member of the Women's Association of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Flavia Pansieri was the United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights at the level of Assistant Secretary-General. She was appointed to this position by the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 15 March 2013, and resigned on 22 July 2015, departing on 31 December 2015 after the selection of her successor was announced.
Per Anders Gunnar Kompass is a Swedish diplomat and former UN official. He worked as the field operations director at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) between 2009 and 2016.
International law is a series of verbal agreements and written contracts between nations that govern how those nations interact with one another. "Public" international law includes human rights both in conflict situations and post-conflict reconstruction. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979 and has the goal of promoting women's rights. Women have contributed to work on post-conflict reconstruction, aid and ceasefire negotiations. They have also contributed to the Geneva II peace talks regarding Syria, and were involved in the Rohingya conflict in Myanmar as 'front-line responders'.
The human rights record of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been criticised over a number of years by intergovernmental organisations including the United Nations Human Rights Council, the European Court of Human Rights and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, as well as international and domestic non-governmental organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The government of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been criticised for ethnic and religious discrimination in its treatment of ethnic and religious minorities such as the Romani people and the Jewish people. The government has also been criticised for its treatment of Internally Displaced Persons following the Bosnian War and its failure to provide asylum seekers with resources such as food, shelter and medical assistance. According to BH Novinari, the Bosnian Journalists’ Association, freedom of the media is an issue in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with journalists facing attacks, threats and pressure from government. Human rights non-government organisations have also reported interference in their work from the government. The Bosnian government has been criticised by the European Union for its slow response to domestically prosecute war crimes from the Bosnian War following the closure of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in December 2017.
