Morris, Alan; Redman, Ronni --- "Editorial" [2006] HRightsDef 19; (2006) 15(3) Human Rights Defender 1

• Editorial

Editorial

Editorial

Alan Morris and Ronni Redman

In this issue, although we cover a range of issues, two substantial themes

can be identified – how best to make certain that justice is done when dealing with societies that have endured major conflict and human rights abuses and secondly, how to ensure that human rights in the areas of health and reproduction are maintained and strengthened.

Luc Huyse, in his thought-provoking article on justice in post-conflict societies,

poses a key question, ‘how to deal with those who committed grave human rights abuses’? His argument is that we need to be innovative and that often local traditions and customs can be productively utilised to ensure that there is some restoration of justice and that guilty parties are appropriately punished. John Pace argues that in the case of Iraq, the trial of Saddam has been a procedural sham and has not served to expose the multitude of human rights atrocities that took place during his reign. He argues that justice would have been far better served and much more could have been achieved if he had been tried in the International Criminal Court.

Daniel Tarantola, in his article assessing human rights and health globally argues that the health and human rights movement grew significantly in the 1990s but that more recently this movement has declined. The increasing dominance of the private sector is making it difficult to pursue a health and human rights trajectory.

The Australian government’s approach to the issue of Indigenous family violence is the focus of Kyllie Cripps’s article. She contends that the government’s law and order approach to resolving the problem is bound to fail and that what is required ‘is the involvement of all sectors of the community in the designing and implementing appropriate programs that respond to the issues that the community identifies as priorities’ .

New technologies have created new human rights challenges in the areas of health and reproduction. Isabel Karpin argues that in order to ensure that the benefits of stem cell research are evenly spread across the population it is essential that the private sector not be allowed to take full control and that a stem cell bank is established by government that is affordable and thus accessible to all.

Vedna Jirvan and Christine Forster explore the human rights implications of the Bill tabled in the NSW parliament in May 2006 ‘which criminalises the storage of sperm by any prisoner convicted of an indictable offence’. They conclude that the Bill is a serious violation of prisoners’ rights and in some cases will deny prisoners the right to have a child.

The legal and moral defence of abortion is the focus of Diyana Mansour’s article. Diyana pits the privacy and autonomy argument against the gender equality argument and concludes that the latter is a more powerful position because it is premised on government actively intervening to ensure that women have adequate health care and access to abortion services.

A fundamental requirement for a healthy population is an adequate food supply. Gillian Moon’s article examines WTO policy on agricultural tariffs and concludes that there is still a great deal of ambiguity as to what is the best way forward for ensuring that less developed countries have food security.

We sincerely hope that you enjoy this issue of the Defender and continue to support us in this period of increasing assaults on human rights globally.

Ronni Redman and Alan Morris Managing Editors