MPs Continue Paying Price for Defending Human Rights

Prayer next to the body of Somali MP Feisal Warsame Mohamed, killed in Mogadishu on 6 December when a bomb blew up his vehicle. ©Reuters/Feisal Omar

Assassinations of MPs in Somalia and Yemen in recent days are just the latest cases of MPs paying the ultimate price for defending fundamental human rights and exercising their right to freedom of expression, says the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) as it marks Human Rights Day 2013.

Somali MP Feisal Warsame Mohamed was killed on 6 December when a car bomb blew up his vehicle in Mogadishu. On 22 November, Yemeni MP Abdulkareem Jadban was gunned down in Sana’a in what seemed to be politically motivated attacks to silence two outspoken MPs.

These two killings highlight a worrying ongoing trend around the world of MPs being persecuted, intimidated, attacked or even killed.

“Such crimes are an attack on democracy itself. Authorities should ensure perpetrators are brought to justice quickly. Unfortunately, what we see too often is impunity, which only leads to further crimes against MPs,” says the IPU head of human rights programmes, Rogier Huizenga.

So far this year, IPU’s Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians has examined allegations of human rights violations against 270 legislators (241 men and 29 women) in 40 countries. Africa accounts for 42 per cent of cases, followed by Asia (38 per cent), the Americas (14 per cent) and Europe (6 per cent). Seventy-six per cent of those targeted belong to opposition parties.

Most violations either relate to attacks on MPs’ physical integrity, such as murder, enforced disappearance or torture, or to the ability to carry out their democratic mandate. This can be by suppressing freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, or through undue invalidation, suspension or revocation of the parliamentary mandate.

Created in 1976, the IPU Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians provides concrete and effective support to individual MPs who suffer abuse