Washington/14.03.18/Turan:Top U.S. human rights advocates, and congressional staff on Tuesday discussed the tools they need to effectively petition the Trump administration to review and potentially designate individuals and organizations for sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act.
Passed by Congress in 2016, the Global Magnitsky Act offers the United States a powerful and targeted tool to raise the cost of human rights abuses and corruption.
In fact, says Kyle Parker of Helsinki Commission, a bipartisan congressional agency that monitors human rights in the OSCE region, the Global Magnitsky Act (GloMag) "places the U.S. on the side of the individual victims."
Six other countries now also have a version of GloMag: Estonia, UK, Canada, Lithuania, Latvia, Gibraltar.
Yet, says Robert Berschinski of Human Rights First, a campaign group, it"s an extremely powerful tool that is hard to implement; it requires absolute clarity about what the person is being accused of.
The panel described how the U.S. government identifies, vets, and ultimately sanctions individuals. Speaking on preparing GloMag evidence for submission, Bill Browder, founder and director of Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign, emphasizes the importance of the following:
• Name of the human rights abuser
• Date of birth
• Position in the government
• Category of violation under the law
• Role in a human rights abuse
• Specific details of a human rights abuse
• Documentary Evidence
For Berschinski, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor in the Obama administration, advocates also need to be sure to employ the other tools that bring public pressure to bear and grow political will: letter-writing, bringing on champions on the Capitol Hill, etc.
Publicizing the role of a person in human rights abuses can also have helpful effect - even if not sanctioned, according to sanctions experts.
In the meantime, Browder added, the advocates must be ready for "blowback" by those targeted that U.S. is "meddling" in their affairs: "When you"re fighting evil, evil fights back - especially well-funded evil."
In his speech Adam Smith of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, argued that the Global Magnitsky Act does not to simply "impose sanctions," but rather it's a tool to "deter and preempt bad behavior" of individuals that violate international human rights norms.
Politics
-
Adalyat Verdiyev, the head of the civil defense staff at the public legal entity Center for Public Health and Reform under the Ministry of Health, and a military expert, has been arrested. On November 22, during a media tour to the liberated territories, Verdiyev filmed and published information and images on his social media accounts revealing Azerbaijani Armed Forces' combat positions in the heights, deployment sites, coordinates, and operational conditions of the border troops. This disclosure caused significant damage to the interests of state security and defense capability. This was stated in a report from the General Prosecutor’s Office.
-
On Monday, the Baku Appeals Court considered the appeal of Talysh researcher Iqbal Abilov against the extension of his detention for another four months. The defense argued that the decision to extend Abilov's detention was unjustified, lawyer Fariz Namazly told reporters.
-
"Black Monday in Georgia: Police and special forces guard the doors behind which the 'slaves of Georgian Dream' are destroying our Constitution and mocking our Parliament." This is how Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili commented on the convening of the new parliament on Monday, which is not recognized by the opposition.
-
Well-known Georgian activist Samira Bayramova was prevented from leaving the plane in Yerevan. She was on a WAW airline flight bound for Tbilisi, but due to bad weather, the plane made an emergency landing in Yerevan. In a post on her Twitter account, Bayramova (an ethnic Azerbaijani) wrote that border guards told her, "Your nationality is a problem."
Leave a review