Twenty civil society organizations, including the Baha’i International Community, have jointly produced a major paper outlining a series of concrete steps to make the UN Human Rights Council stronger and more effective.

Released yesterday, the paper is titled “Strengthening the Human Rights Council at 10.” It was created in observance of the tenth anniversary of the Council’s establishment.

“The Human Rights Council is the central international organ for the protection and promotion of human rights around the world,” said Diane Ala’i, a representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations in Geneva.

“Our goal, in laying out these proposed measures, is to improve its functioning now that we have had ten years of experience, so that the Council can increase its capacity to uphold human rights worldwide and protect innocent victims from violations,” said Ms. Ala’i.

Among other things, the paper says that:

• Membership in the Council must be tied to concrete contributions to protecting rights at home and internationally.
• Human Rights Council decisions must move from paper to implementation.
• Chronic and urgent situations of human rights violations must be addressed swiftly and robustly.
• Human rights defenders and civil society must be protected and supported in addressing the UN.

The full paper can be read here.

As the world searches for new ways to respond to the increasing number and severity of natural disasters and other international emergencies, the Baha’i International Community is urging an examination of how community building can improve resilience in advance.

The approach is suggested in a statement to the World Humanitarian Summit, which is convened by the United Nations and scheduled to be held here 23-24 May 2016.

Titled “Rising Together: Building the Capacity to Recover from Within,” the statement offers the experience of the worldwide Baha’i community as an example for consideration.

“Over the past two decades Bahá'ís and likeminded collaborators have worked to establish a worldwide process of spiritual and moral education, open to all,” says the statement.

“Structured in stages to meet the developmental needs of differing ages, this system tends to the moral education of children, facilitates the spiritual empowerment of young adolescents, and allows increasing numbers of youth and adults to explore the application of spiritual teachings to daily life and to the challenges facing society...

“Though such efforts are not focused on response or recovery per se, the abilities they strengthen and patterns of behavior they foster have a profound impact in times of natural disaster. The capacity to organize large numbers into coordinated action provides one clear example.

“As community building efforts grow to the point where hundreds of inhabitants are supporting the participation of thousands of their fellow residents, increasingly sophisticated systems of support and communication emerge to manage the growing complexity. Such structures greatly enhance a community’s ability to undertake large-scale response and reconstruction efforts,” says the statement.

The Summit, an initiative of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, will bring together heads of state and government, along with an anticipated 5,000 global leaders from government, business, aid organizations, civil society and others, to discuss how to effectively respond to major humanitarian challenges – and how to be better prepared to meet challenges of the future.

 

In observance of the eighth anniversary of the arrest and incarceration of seven Iranian Baha’i leaders, the Baha’i International Community is launching a global campaign calling for their immediate release.

Taking the theme “Enough! Release the Baha’i Seven,” the campaign will emphasize the fact that, under Iran’s own national penal code, the seven are now overdue for conditional release.

A special campaign page has been established with information about their current legal situation and other resources, which can be found here. The campaign will also be reflected on a Facebook page, which can be found here. The hashtag for the campaign is: #ReleaseBahai7Now

“The theme – Enough! – states simply and clearly our urgent call for the release of these seven innocent prisoners,” said Bani Dugal, the principal representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations. “They should never have been arrested in the first place and their long incarceration – based exclusively on their religious beliefs – is unjustifiable legally, logically, and morally.

“The campaign,” said Ms. Dugal, “is to encourage individuals, governments and organizations from all sectors of society around the world to call on the government of Iran to follow the rules of its own national laws and to immediately release the seven imprisoned Baha’i leaders.

“We hope that their story can serve as yet another reminder of the need to protect the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by documents, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which, among other things, uphold the right to freedom of religion or belief.

“The government of Iran is one of the most egregious violators of this fundamental freedom in the world today. We hope that by calling attention to the long and unjust imprisonment of these seven innocent men and women, we highlight the oppression that many others are also going through in that country,” said Ms. Dugal.

The seven Baha’is – whose names are Fariba Kamalabadi, Jamaloddin Khanjani, Afif Naeimi, Saeid Rezaie, Mahvash Sabet, Behrouz Tavakkoli, and Vahid Tizfahm – were arrested in 2008.

Mrs Sabet was arrested in Mashhad on 5 March 2008, while the other six were taken from their homes in Tehran in early morning raids on 14 May 2008.

They were held for more than a year, put on trial, and ultimately convicted on wrongful charges of espionage and “propaganda against the regime,” among other things.

They were initially sentenced to 20 years in prison. But in November, that term of imprisonment was reduced to 10 years, due to the very delayed application of a new national penal code adopted in 2013, which essentially states that sentences should be served concurrently instead of consecutively.

Under the terms of the new penal code, the seven are now eligible for conditional release. Indeed, as with the reduction in their sentence, this should have happened promptly after passage of the new code.