GENEVA – United Nations Special Rapporteur Maina Kiai will be in Geneva March 6-10 to participate in several events surrounding the 34th Session of the UN Human Rights Council. It will be his final appearance on the margins of a Council session as Special Rapporteur. On Monday, March 6, the Special Rapporteur will moderate a side event on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association in the workplace, a follow-up to his Oct. 2016 report to the UN General Assembly. Other featured speakers include Kate Gilmore (United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights), Deborah Greenfield (ILO’s Deputy Director General for Policy), Raquel Gonzalez (Director of ITUC’s Geneva Office) and Shawna Bader-Blau (Executive Director of the Solidarity Center). The event will take place from 12 to 2 pm (Geneva time) in Room XXI of the Palais des Nations, and will be live-streamed on CIVICUS's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CIVICUS/ The Special Rapporteur will also speak at a side-event on Tuesday, March 7, focusing on civil society and human rights defenders in Azerbaijan. The event, which is being organized by Human Rights House Foundation and a number of other organizations, will be held from 12:30 to 2 pm in Room XII of the Palais des Nations. Other panelists include Michel... Continue reading →
NEW YORK – People’s ability to exercise their assembly and association rights in the workplace is deteriorating drastically worldwide, leading to worsened labour conditions, weaker social protections and increased inequalities, United Nations expert Maina Kiai told the UN General Assembly. Speaking during the presentation of his final report to the main UN body, the Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association highlighted unyielding pursuit of profits, increasing corporate power and the changing nature of employment relationships as leading causes of this decline. “Assembly and association rights in the workplace continue to be undermined for a large proportion of workers, mainly because of an economic world order that relentlessly pursues ever-increasing growth and profit at all costs,” Mr. Kiai stated. “Meanwhile,” he added, “the growing power and geographic reach of large corporations has meant that States are increasingly unwilling or unable to regulate these business entities and their attempts to place profits ahead of the rights and dignity of workers.” The independent expert warned that, without the checks and balances provided by robust protection for workers’ rights, workers are inevitably seeing a decline in working conditions,... Continue reading →
Issue No. 23 of the Assembly and Association Briefing, the newsletter of Maina Kiai, UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association. In this issue: • Kiai to present final report to UN General Assembly, examining assembly and association rights in the workplace • The 10 principles checklist: rate your country’s management of assemblies • South Korea: Kiai calls for investigation into lethal use of water cannon • Jordan: UN rights expert Kaye condemns killing of journalist Nahed Hattar • Sudan: Charges against rights activists could bring death penalty • DR Congo: UN experts deeply condemn new violent repression of protests • Ecuador: UN rights experts condemn ‘legal death’ of prominent teachers association UNE • USA: “Indigenous peoples must be consulted prior to pipeline construction” • Assembly & association rights: By the numbers • Special Rapporteur news in brief: September-October 2016 • World briefing: Assembly & association rights in the news For a link to the newsletter, click on the image at right or click here (5MB file). To subscribe to our newsletter, please drop us a line at info@freeassembly.net with the subject line “subscribe to newsletter.” For other recent... Continue reading →
The Special Rapporteur’s factsheet summarizing the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association in the workplace, presented in an easy-to use “yes/no” format, with hyperlinks to source materials. This factsheet is based on the Special Rapporteur’s 2016 report to the UN General Assembly and features guidance on: • The importance of assembly and association rights in the workplace • International laws and standards which protect the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association in the workplace • States’ responsibility to actively respect, protect, promote, and facilitate the enjoyment of fundamental rights – including labour rights • The impact of growing corporate power on workers' rights • Categories of workers most at risk of rights violations, including migrant workers, domestic workers, women and more • Examples of violations of workers' assembly and association rights drawn from the report • And more The factsheet also summarizes selected recommendations from the report and highlights key statistics in a “by the numbers” feature. For the Special Rapporteur’s full factsheet series, please see:... Continue reading →
In recent decades, globalization has led to a rise in economic productivity and wealth, but it has also contributed to a dramatic increase in the power of large multinational corporations and concentrated wealth in fewer hands. At the same time, States’ power to regulate these business entities has eroded -- and in some cases been voluntarily ceded in order to attract these businesses. This new global economic order has had a profound impact on workers' ability to exercise their rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association. Labour’s traditional tools for asserting rights – trade unions, strikes, collective bargaining and so on – have been significantly weakened across the globe. The majority of the world’s workers find themselves excluded from national legal protective frameworks, while some are not even defined as "workers." This situation has left vast swathes of the world's labour force unable to exercise their fundamental rights to associate or assemble, and without access to remedies when their rights are violated. In this report, the Special Rapporteur examines how and why this has happened, focusing on the most marginalized portions of the world’s labour force, including global supply chain workers, informal workers, migrant workers, domestic workers and others. He finds... Continue reading →
