The UN Secretary-General Mr. Antonio Guterres is going to visit Iraq on Wednesday 1st March 2023. On this occasion, Geneva International Centre for Justice (GICJ) urges the Secretary-General to use his visit to put pressure on the Iraqi authorities to respect the full spectrum of their international obligations and to protect the Iraqi people from the continuous grave human rights violations carried out by its security forces and militias.
GICJ receives daily updates of attacks by militias, particularly concerning recent trends of violence across Diyala governorate where intimidation, threats, and force are used in order to pressure more people to leave their own lands and accelerate demographic changes that favour Shia over Sunni populations.
The Secretary General must use the opportunity of his visit to urge the Iraqi government to respect its specific obligations under the Convention on Enforced Disappearances and abide by the recommendations it has received from the Committee on Enforced Disappearances to urgently take all measures at its disposal to locate disappeared persons, to investigate fairly and prosecute those responsible for the enforced disappearances of over 500,000 people in Iraq since 2003.
The Secretary General must remind Iraq to demonstrate its serious commitment to improving human rights by ensuring accountability for extensive reports of the inhuman and degrading treatment including torture in detention facilities throughout the country carried out by those acting as agents of the State.
Tackling the endemic corruption that permeates so many of the State’s actions is a further urgent necessity as this drains all the wealth that should be channelled to benefit the population of Iraq and help alleviate poor conditions in the country.
Iraq needs to sever the link with the recent violent past, ensure justice for the people of Iraq, and deliver, in good faith, on its international obligations.
Geneva International Centre for Justice believes that the UN needs also to dispatch an international independent commission of inquiry to investigate all human rights violations in Iraq since to 2003 and help bring justice to the Iraqi people.
Iraq UNSG UN Geneva Justice HumanRights Geneva4Justice Geneva_International_Centre_for_Justice Militias GICJ
