We are pleased to welcome readers to the second issue of the Last Rights newsletter in which we bring you up to date with developments.
Fund Raising Event, London, Wednesday, 28th February 2018
If you are in London on 28 February, please join us.
It will be an Evening with Gillian Slovo and Kamila Shamsie in aid of The Last Rights Project .
It will be held at Laura Devine Law, 100 Cannon Street, London EC4N 6EU on Wednesday, 28 February 2018, from 6.30 to 9.30pm.
South African born Gillian Slovo is the author of 13 novels and a family memoir. She also writes verbatim plays the latest of which 'Another World: Losing our Children to Islamic State' played in the National Theatre in 2016. She will be reading from her latest novel, 'Ten Days', which was published by Canongate in 2016 the inspiration for which came from her play on the English riots of 2011.
Kamila Shamsie is the author of seven novels. She grew up in Karachi and now lives in London. She will be reading from her 2017 novel 'Home Fire', long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. A contemporary retelling of Sophocles' "Antigone," Peter Carey said: "...left me awestruck, shaken, on the edge of my chair, filled with admiration for her courage and ambition."
Gillian and Kamila will read from their work and afterwards a raffle in aid of Last Rights will be held.
It has been a busy winter for the Last Rights Project as we continue to prepare for a two-day international expert working group meeting on the island of Lesbos, Greece in May 2018. Invitations have been sent out and the programme and draft materials for consultation will be sent out this month.
Tragically, the number of needless and avoidable deaths of migrants continues to rise globally, whether that is on dangerous Mediterranean crossings and treacherous land routes from sub-Saharan Africa towards Europe; on Central American desert routes towards the USA and extreme freezing cold journeys to cross the Canadian border, or road deaths under lorries and trains, or in containers seeking to enter the UK at Calais in France. Increasingly restrictive and security-driven border measures and immigration policies lead only to more perilous journeys and inevitable suffering and death, including of those detained and ill-treated in Libya. Meanwhile, women and babies are dying in camps in India housing Rohingya refugees. Some babies are stillborn to malnourished mothers who have survived only to succumb in a so-called place of safety.
The Last Rights Project continues to engage with the concerns of families of those who have died or have gone missing on migratory journeys and those who work tirelessly and in the face of much hostility and many barriers to assist them, to obtain justice and closure.
Unlawful Deaths of Refugees and Migrants
In October 2017 the UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial, summary or arbitrary Executions, Dr. Agnes Callamard, delivered a highly critical report on the deaths of migrants at the United Nations’ 72nd General Assembly meeting in New York (see the links and docs page).
Her report made recommendations including to develop principles and guidelines such as those being drafted for discussion by the Last Rights Project. We were also invited to speak alongside Dr. Callamard in a panel discussion session on the report as part of the General Assembly’s special events. The inclusion of our work in this report is a huge catalyst for the eventual publication of the Protocol we are aiming to sign off and publish after the Lesbos meeting.
No Safe Passage, even for Children
As part of our work, we were invited, whilst in New York, to visit the Immigration Courts with Professor Lenni Benson of New York University who set up ‘Safe Passage’ a sadly much needed pro bono legal representation scheme for unaccompanied children facing deportation from the USA. Her training programme for advocates has engaged hundreds of lawyers to assist unrepresented children at court in the absence of any legal aid. It was shocking to see so many children in court, some as young as five years old, only one or two steps away from summary expulsion, some were asylum seekers from countries like Guatemala or trying to join family from Mexico, Honduras and elsewhere. It was a dreadful indictment of USA immigration and child welfare policies and its continued failure to ratify the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Although at a tangent to our work on migrant deaths, it was a sobering introduction to the legal system facing migrants and the hardship of forced separation of families remains, undoubtedly, one of the underlying reasons why many people continue to take such dangerous risks to be reunited.
Mexico City via the Sonoran Desert
As a follow on from the UN General Assembly meeting we were asked to take part in a meeting with Central American and US forensics experts and lawyers in Mexico City in January 2018, organised by the enormously experienced Equipo Argentino de Antropologia Forense (EAAF) who have worked for many years on tracing the politically ‘disappeared’, to discuss issues relating to safe data-sharing for families of the missing and the dead, to prevent misuse of their personal information and evidence by immigration enforcement, police and criminal prosecution systems, including against migrants who have crossed the Mexico-United States border.
En route we took a detour to Arizona to see first- hand the forensic investigation and family support work carried out by the remarkable Colibri Center, a humanitarian organisation in Tucson and its dedicated staff. Among other things, they collect DNA and assist migrant families through the traumas of seeking to identify their loved ones.
We also travelled with one of the several activist groups on the US/Mexico border, through a beautiful but arid and deadly desert region spanning hundreds of miles either side of the border, now interrupted by a 6- metre-high, 600- mile- long steel wall, border patrols, cameras, checkpoints, drones and other surveillance devices, all within USA territory. The desert trails are elusive and treacherous. Poignant traces of belongings are left behind, worn shoes, empty bottles, contraception packets purchased by women fearful of rape at the hands of smugglers, children’s nappies, hydration salts, blankets for the freezing nights. Rudimentary roadside crosses mark the sites where bodies have been found.
Temperatures in summer reach 50 degrees centigrade in the Sonora desert and even in winter into the 30’s. Dehydration can and does kill within a few hours in such conditions. Since 2000, at least 7,000 sets of human remains have been recovered in the region but the number of unknown and unidentified migrant deaths is undoubtedly much higher. The tracing of those whose remains have been found is painstaking and painful for all involved. On top of these patent dangers, the US border patrols have recently increased their actions to target volunteers who leave life-saving water containers on these trails. Video-evidence in a report recently released by the No More Deaths activist group has shown border patrols engaged in destroying water containers, an action which is highly likely to lead to the deaths of migrants. They have also escalated prosecutions against volunteers for aiding migrants. The volunteers face long prison sentences if convicted. This, combined with the discriminatory, anti-immigration policies of President Trump’s Republican Administration only heightens the fear of migrants and the desperation of families deliberately separated by detention, deportation and border walls.
"Streamline"
In Tucson, 100 miles from the border, a court sits every week to sanction accelerated deportations under a controversial judicial programme called ‘Streamline’: a mass deportation, a group trial of migrants, usually handcuffed, designed to avoid normal criminal jurisdiction safeguards and denying those rounded up in this inhumane process any natural justice. Many will try to re-enter, using these deathly corridors to get back to their families. Many will fail.
Last Rights contributes to UN Global Compact discussion
In February, Last Rights was asked for our views on data protection and safety of information provided by the families of missing and dead migrants as part of ongoing high level discussions to develop a new United Nations Global Compact on Migration. Our position, that families must be completely secure in the knowledge that their personal information cannot be misused by the state agencies which are entrusted with it, is set out on pages 10 and 11 of the published document: "First Pespectives on the Zero Draft (5 February 2018) for the the UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration". We hope that this will be adopted as part of the eventual Compact and these essential safeguards will also form part of the draft protocols we are consulting on.
The Last Rights Protocol
The Last Rights Project is producing a Protocol setting out the minimum standards required to provide dignity and justice for all missing and bereaved migrants and refugees, irrespective of their status, circumstances or geographic location. We will be calling upon civil society and states to adopt these standards after our meeting on Lesbos on 10th and 11th May 2018. The new framework will be published with a commentary on our website and in a future edition of our newsletter. In the meantime the Last Rights Project has formulated 12 core principles based firmly on international law norms which are re-produced here:-
To search for all missing persons
To collect the bodies of the dead
To respect the bodies of the dead
To preserve any personal effects of the dead and to restore them to the next of kin
To take all reasonable steps to identify the deceased and to determine the cause of death
To issue a death certificate
To make every effort to locate and notify the relatives of the dead and the missing
To facilitate the return of the remains of the dead to their relatives if possible. Where the remains are not returned to the next of kin they should be disposed of in a dignified and respectful manner, appropriate to the religious and cultural traditions of the person and bearing in mind the wishes of the next of kin
To record the location of burial and to respect and maintain gravesites To treat citizens and non-citizens equally in all these actions
To provide special protection for children
Contact Us
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Thank you: Catriona Jarvis & Syd Bolton, Last Rights Co-Conveners
