For immediate release - 8 December 2008
On Monday December 8th, two days before the 60th anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Green Party will launch an ambitious plan to expose governments that abuse human rights - a Global Human Rights Index.
The proposed index has the backing of Green Party leader, Caroline Lucas MEP, and Green Party human rights spokesperson, Peter Tatchell.
"Our report makes the case for the UN to publish each year a Global Human Rights Index (GloHRI), detailing the human rights performance of each and every government on the planet, displayed in a league table form," says lead author, Dr Richard Lawson, who is the founder of the campaign for the Global Human Rights Index.
"This will enable the relative standing and trends of each country to be seen at a glance. It would add to pressure on the worst ranked countries to improve their human rights record and providing evidence for action against the most serious offenders by the International Criminal Court and other human rights bodies," he said.
You can read the proposed Global Human Rights Index in full here:
Fellow contributor to the report, Peter Tatchell, added:
"Using a points system, the GloHRI index would measure every country, based on its compliance with a check-list of agreed human rights norms, such as whether or not it has the death penalty, torture, detention without trial, freedom of the media, the right to protest, equal rights for women and minorities and so on.
"This simple, accessible index would enable objective comparisons between the human rights records of different countries, and permit the identification of whether each individual country's human rights record was, year-on-year, improving or deteriorating.
"Published annually by the UN, the index would document where each state upholds or violates human rights; providing an incentive for all nations to improve their human rights record and ranking," he said.
Dr Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party, commented:
"I hope that I will live to see the United Nations adopt the Global Human Rights Index, which is an important step towards the long term goal of a global civilisation where human rights are universally respected, and state sponsored torture and killing are consigned to the dustbin of history where they belong".
Dr Lawson concludes:
"Tragically, in 2008 many countries are still torturing and killing our fellow human beings as a policy of ‘state security'. One day this barbaric practice will pass into history. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was an important step in that direction. We hope that the Global Human Rights Index will prove to be another such step."
The Green Party's proposal sets out the human rights issues that would be covered by the index and how the index would work. It also examines other attempts to establish various related indexes, which demonstrate the practicality of the proposal.
The concept of a Global Human Rights Index is supported many organisations (See links).
For further information contact:
Dr Richard Lawson - 01934 853 606 or 0774 786 8836
Peter Tatchell - 020 7403 1790