View previous stories
	African migrants being sold in ‘slave markets’ in Libya by International Organization for Migration, agencies   April 2017   Hundreds of migrants along North African migrant routes are being bought and sold openly in modern day ‘slave markets’ in Libya, survivors have told the United Nations migration agency, which warned that these reports “can be added to a long list of outrages” in the country.   The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is sounding the alarm today after its staff in Niger and Libya documented over the past weekend shocking testimonies of trafficking victims from several African nations, including Nigeria, Ghana and the Gambia. They described ''slave markets'' tormenting hundreds of young African men bound for Libya.   Operations Officers with IOM’s office in Niger reported on the rescue of a Senegalese migrant who this week was returning to his home after being held captive for months. According to the young man’s testimony, while trying to travel north through the Sahara, he arrived in Agadez, Niger, where he was told he would have to pay about $320 to continue north, towards Libya. A trafficker provided him with accommodation until the day of his departure, which was to be by pick-up truck.   When his pick-up reached Sabha in southwestern Libya, the driver insisted that he hadn’t been paid by the trafficker, and that he was transporting the migrants to a parking area where the young man witnessed a slave market taking place. “Sub-Saharan migrants were being sold and bought by Libyans, with the support of Ghanaians and Nigerians who work for them,” IOM Niger staff reported.   “The latest reports of ‘slave markets’ for migrants can be added to a long list of outrages in Libya,” said Mohammed Abdiker, IOM’s head of operation and emergencies. “The situation is dire. The more IOM engages inside Libya, the more we learn that it is a vale of tears for all too many migrants.”   Mr. Abdiker added that in recent months IOM staff in Libya had gained access to several detention centres, where they are trying to improve conditions. “What we know is that migrants who fall into the hands of smugglers face systematic malnutrition, sexual abuse and even murder. Last year we learned 14 migrants died in a single month in one of those locations, just from disease and malnutrition. We are hearing about mass graves in the desert.”   He said so far this year, the Libyan Coast Guard and others have found 171 bodies washed up on Mediterranean shores, from migrant voyages that foundered off shore. The Coast Guard has also rescued thousands more, he added.   “Migrants who go to Libya while trying to get to Europe, have no idea of the torture archipelago that awaits them just over the border,” said Leonard Doyle, chief IOM spokesman in Geneva. “There they become commodities to be bought, sold and discarded when they have no more value.   Many describe being sold “in squares or garages” by locals in the south-western Libyan town of Sabha, or by the drivers who trafficked them across the Sahara desert.   Mr. Doyle added: “To get the message out across Africa about the dangers, we are recording the testimonies of migrants who have suffered and are spreading them across social media and on local FM radio. Tragically, the most credible messengers are migrants returning home with IOM help. Too often they are broken, brutalized and have been abused, often sexually. Their voices carry more weight than anyone else’s.”   http://bit.ly/2o4PQ1W http://bit.ly/2ryJ9pD http://tmsnrt.rs/2rgvu6K http://www.freedomunited.org/advocate/libya/ http://reliefweb.int/report/libya/libya-refugees-and-migrants-held-captive-smugglers-deplorable-conditions Visit the related web page
	Access to essential medicines is a fundamental element of the right to health by OHCHR, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF)   24 March 2017   Access to essential medicines is a fundamental element of the right to health.   Health is a fundamental human right and coupled with this is access to affordable medicines and care. Yet for millions globally, this remains out of reach through a combination of policy deficits and entrenched bad practices, said UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kate Gilmore.   “Perhaps the biggest obstacle to fulfilling the obligation to ensure access to medicines for all is political will,” she said. “But it’s more than the political, formal will of the State – it is also a question of health economics, the ethics of the pharmaceutical industry, a responsibility of health care providers and health professional and their schools.”   Gilmore made her comments during a panel discussion on good practices and key challenges relevant to access to medicines which took place during the 34th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva. Panellists looked at the various ways in which international bodies that deal with health, innovation and intellectual property rights could improve access to medicine.   In 2015, then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon established a High Level Panel on Access to Medicines to “review and assess proposals and recommend solutions for remedying the policy incoherence between the justifiable rights of inventors, international human rights law, trade rules and public health in the context of health technologies.”   Michael Kirby, former Justice of the High Court of Australia and Member of the Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines, said the voices of those left behind, whose access to essential medicines has been prevented, point to a bleak prospect.   During its public hearings, the Secretary-General’s High Level Panel heard from many of those left behind, forced to beg for charity for supplies of patented drugs that would save lives, but being denied those drugs.   “It is necessary to say bluntly that unless the world, the UN and this Council act now, there is no way that we will reach Sustainable Development Goal 3 (on good health and well-being) by 2030. Millions will be left behind. Millions will die,” he said.   The key outcome of the Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel’s work was its report, submitted to the Secretary-General in September 2016. The report made recommendations in several areas pertinent to access to medicines, including publicly funded research, new incentives for research and development and governance, accountability and transparency.   http://www.unsgaccessmeds.org/final-report/ http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/ESCR/Pages/Health.aspx   Sep. 2016   Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) / Doctors without Borders statement at Human Rights Council panel discussion on the UN Secretary-General''s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines.   MSF enthusiastically welcomes the report from the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines, which puts forth actionable recommendations to help overcome the challenges that our medical teams have faced for decades – being left essentially empty-handed when the medicines, vaccines and diagnostics we need for patients don’t exist, or are too expensive.   We especially welcome the report’s focused mandate and its global scope that recognises that today all countries and people, no matter where they live, face challenges in affordably accessing the medical tools they need to live healthy lives. High drug and vaccines prices are now a global crisis, for a broad variety of diseases and medical technologies, including in developed countries where medical care is being rationed and health budgets are under threat.   The UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel’s report also recognises a global innovation crisis. During the Ebola outbreak there was no effective, ready to use vaccines, treatments or diagnostics, and today there are still no effective and ready to use treatments. Standard drug-resistant tuberculosis treatment remains painful, toxic, unaffordable and mostly ineffective to save lives, and antimicrobial resistance is growing with very few new antibiotics in the development pipeline. This can be changed.   Yet governments are making change difficult for us and for themselves. Some governments are negotiating expanded intellectual property protections on behalf of pharmaceutical corporations through trade agreements that will keep affordable medicines out of the hands of people and medical treatment providers like MSF for ever-longer periods of time.   For years, MSF has campaigned against the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). Two weeks ago, MSF raised the alarm about proposals included in the ongoing negotiations of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement, including Investor-state dispute settlement provisions that will allow pharmaceutical corporations to sue governments that try to promote public health and access to medicines, like Canada, Colombia and recently Ukraine.   The UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel’s report correctly recognised that countries have options to demonstrate a better path forward. The report recommendations urge Governments to reform the way R&D is performed so that rather than being guided by what earns the highest returns, companies and innovators are guided by incentives that encourage them to focus on developing drugs that address unmet and essential health needs, that do not trade off innovation and access, and in particular that de-link the cost of R&D from the expectation of high prices of the end product.   MSF would like to recognise the leadership of the countries that have requested that the recommendations of the Report be discussed in the 34th session of the Human Rights Council.   We believe the discussion at the Human Rights Council could focus on:   Create a process for OHCHR to perform human right public health assessments of trade agreements, so that bilateral and regional trade and investment treaties do not include provisions that interfere with government obligations to fulfil the right to health as recommended in the UN HLP Report (2.6.1.e).   These impact assessments should verify that increased trade and economic benefits are not endangering or impeding human rights and public health obligations of governments and its people before entering into such commitments. Assessments should inform negotiations, be conducted transparently, and be made publicly available.   Create a process for OHCHR to assist in the periodic review of the access to medicines challenges in countries, in light of human rights principles and States’ obligations to fulfil them as recommended in the UN HLP Report (4.3.1.a).   The results of these assessments should be made publicly available. Civil society should be financially supported to submit their own shadow reports on innovation and access to health technologies.   Create a process for OHCHR to help increase national policy coherence and facilitate the participation of Human Rights entities and civil society in relevant national processes and negotiations.   The UN HLP report (4.3.1 b) recommends that Governments should strengthen national level policy and institutional coherence between trade and intellectual property, the right to health, and public health objectives by establishing national inter-ministerial bodies to coordinate laws, policies and practices that may impact on health technology innovation and access.   Appropriate member/s of the national executive who can manage competing priorities, mandates and interests should convene such bodies. The deliberations and decisions of such groups should operate with maximum transparency. Civil society should be financially supported to participate and submit their shadow reports on innovation and access to health technologies.   Create a mandate for the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health to develop guidelines and best practices on how to increase transparency on R&D, production, pricing and distribution of health technologies as recommended in the UN SG HLP (recommendation 4.3.4). http://bit.ly/2noXOTi Visit the related web page
	View more stories