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	Global economic crisis has increased human rights violations, says UN Rights Chief by High Commissioner for Human Rights United Nations   United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay says that the economic and financial crises have exposed existing violations and increased the number of victims of abuse and hardship.   “The financial and economic downturns – together with food shortages, climate-related catastrophes and continuing violence – have shattered complacent or over-optimistic notions of expanding security, prosperity, safety and the enjoyment of freedoms by all,” Navi Pillay said in her opening statement to the 13th session of the Human Rights Council, which runs until 26 March   She recalled that she addressed the Council for the first time last year against the background of worsening financial and economic crises.   “These sudden and cascading upheavals exposed and exacerbated existing violations of human rights. They also widened the areas and increased the number of victims of abuse and hardship,” she noted.   The UN General Assembly created the Council in 2006 with the main purpose of addressing situations of human rights violations and make recommendations on them.   “To counter deeply rooted and chronic human rights conditions in many countries, such as repression, discrimination, and strife, as well as rapidly unfolding man-made and natural challenges to human welfare, such as those we have recently experienced, five years ago the United Nations initiated a process of reform that proposed several innovations, including the creation of the Human Rights Council,” said Ms. Pillay.   “This new institution was conceived as a forum where responses to inequality, repression, and impunity could be crafted and advocated to help build a world in larger freedom,” she told the 70 dignitaries in Geneva for the 1 to 3 March high-level segment.   “The review of the Council, now forthcoming, would help the international community to assess whether the fundamental principles of this body’s mandate had been solidly and consistently upheld,” she added.   Ms. Pillay praised the Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) which involves a review of the human rights records of all 192 UN Member States once every four years.   The High Commissioner noted there were areas for improvement for the Council, including the Council’s ability to influence policy change in human rights situations.   “No matter how well intentioned, determined, and incisive the Council’s action is, this body cannot by itself, change realities on the ground. Producing this change is, primarily, the responsibility of States which need to act in partnership with civil society and national protection systems,” she said. Visit the related web page
	US Supreme court ruling opens floodgates for special interests by Ronald Dworkin New York University USA   Against the opposition of their four colleagues, five right-wing Supreme Court justices have now guaranteed that big corporations can spend unlimited funds on political advertising in any political election.   In an opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas, the Court overruled established precedents and declared dozens of national and state statutes unconstitutional, including the McCain-Feingold Act, which forbade corporate or union television advertising that endorses or opposes a particular candidate.   This appalling decision, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, was quickly denounced by President Obama as "devastating"; he said that it "strikes at our democracy itself."   In his State of the Union speech of January 27, he said, "Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections." He is right: the decision will further weaken the quality and fairness of our politics.   The Court has given lobbyists, already much too powerful, a nuclear weapon. Some lawyers have predicted that corporations will not take full advantage of it: they will want to keep their money for their business. But that would still permit carefully targeted threats. What legislator tempted to vote for the recent health care reform or Obama"s banking reorganization would be indifferent to the prospect that his reelection campaign could be swamped in a tsunami of expensive negative advertising? How many corporations fearful of environmental or product liability litigation would pass up the chance to tip the balance in a state judicial election?   On the most generous understanding the decision displays the five justices instinctive favoritism of corporate interests. But some commentators, including The New York Times, have suggested a darker interpretation. The five justices may have assumed that allowing corporations to spend freely against candidates would favor Republicans; perhaps they overruled long-established laws and precedents out of partisan zeal. If so, their decision would stand beside the Court"s 2000 decision in Bush v. Gore as an unprincipled political act with terrible consequences for the nation.   We should notice not just the bad consequences of the decision, however, but the poor quality of the arguments Justice Kennedy offered to defend it. The conservative justices savaged canons of judicial restraint they themselves have long praised.   Chief Justice Roberts takes every opportunity to repeat what he said, under oath, in his Senate nomination hearings: that the Supreme Court should avoid declaring any statute unconstitutional unless it cannot decide the case before it in any other way. Now consider how shamelessly he and the other justices who voted with the majority ignored that constraint in their haste to declare the McCain-Feingold Act unconstitutional in time for the coming midterm elections.   The main theoretical flaw in Kennedy"s opinion is different, however. The opinion announces and perpetuates a shallow, simplistic understanding of the First Amendment, one that actually undermines one of the most basic purposes of free speech, which is to protect democracy. The nerve of his argument—that corporations must be treated like real people under the First Amendment—is in my view preposterous. Corporations are legal fictions. They have no opinions of their own to contribute and no rights to participate with equal voice or vote in politics.   Kennedy"s opinion left Americans very little room to protect themselves against this further degradation of their democracy. But it did leave some.   He acknowledged that the ruling does not prevent Congress from requiring reasonable disclosures and disclaimers in corporate advertising. I believe Congress should require a prominent statement in every such ad disclosing any corporate sponsors and declaring that their support represents the opinion of the corporation"s officers, who have a duty to promote the corporation"s own interests, and not necessarily the opinion of any of their shareholders who are actually paying for the ad.   * Ronald Dworkin is a Professor of Law and Philosophy at NYU and at University College London. Visit the related web page
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