ECRE has joined more than 250 civil society organisations in calling on UN member states to uphold, preserve and strengthen international refugee, human rights and humanitarian treaties, and to reject efforts to undo or undermine legal norms.
The organisations have signed an open letter in which they call on UN member states to:
- Sign and/or deposit instruments of ratification or accession to human rights, refugee, and humanitarian treaties, and encourage other states to do so – including by welcoming those that do so during the UN General Assembly Treaty Event and by marking the upcoming 75th Anniversary of the Refugee Convention through acceding to the Refugee Convention and Protocol and encouraging other states to do so;
- Celebrate and affirm support for such treaties, and explain the ways they benefit people and states;
- Share steps taken to fulfill and honour commitments under treaties – such as enactment of implementing legislation, celebrating treaty commitments, measures taken in response to treaty body recommendations or universal periodic review, or creating a national human rights institution;
- (With respect to the Refugee Convention and its Protocol) Share steps taken to strengthen asylum systems, support rights protection capacities, or increase co-operation through expanded resettlement and/or aid that helps enable other countries to host large numbers of refugees;
- (In case of denunciations, withdrawals, or attempts to reject, “reform,” and/or replace such treaties with frameworks that deny people protection from persecution and human rights abuses) Express strong disagreement, reiterate support for such treaties, explain their benefits to human lives, peace, and stability, emphasise the negative impacts of actions that undermine such treaties, and urge reversal of such efforts.
The letter was organised by Human Rights First and the International Council for Voluntary Agencies in view of a high-level meeting that is being organised by the US government on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly. According to Human Rights Watch, a US State Department “concept note” for the event “outlines an approach that seems determined to run roughshod over the rights of refugees”. It comes after an executive order issued in February that requires a review of all organisations that the USA has joined and all conventions and treaties to which it is a party and reports that the US government is planning to “call for sharply narrowing the right to asylum”.
The open letter, including the full list of signatories, is available here.