AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORT 2016/17

In January, an Independent Review into
the welfare in detention of vulnerable persons
made strong criticisms of the scale and
longevity of immigration detention. In August,
the Home Office responded with a new
“adults at risk” policy. However, NGOs
criticized the policy for further removing
safeguards against harmful detention,
including by adopting a narrow definition of
“torture” when considering the risk posed by
detention to a person’s welfare. In November,
the High Court permitted a challenge to the
policy, ordering that the previous wider
definition of torture be used for the time
being.
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS
In December, the House of Commons voted
to ratify the Council of Europe Convention on
preventing and combating violence against
women and domestic violence (Istanbul
Convention), which the government had
signed in 2012. In July, the UN Committee
on the Rights of the Child recommended
improved collection of information on
violence against children, including domestic
and gender-based violence.
Serious concerns remained about the
reduced funding of specialist services for
women who had experienced domestic
violence or abuse. Research by the domestic
women’s rights organization Women’s Aid
showed that refuges were being forced to
turn away two in three survivors due to lack
of space or inability to meet their needs, and
that the rate for ethnic minority women was
four in five.
TRADE UNION RIGHTS
In May, the Trade Union Act, which placed
more restrictions on unions organizing strike
action, came into force. During the year, the
UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to
freedom of peaceful assembly and of
association and the UN Committee on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights called
on the government to review and revise
the law.
1. United Kingdom: Cuts that hurt – the impact of legal aid cuts in
England on access to justice (EUR 45/4936/2016)
2. United Kingdom: Submission to the UN Committee on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights (EUR 45/3990/2016)
UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA
United States of America
Head of state and government: Barack Obama
Two years after a Senate committee
reported on abuses in the secret detention
programme operated by the CIA, there was
still no accountability for crimes under
international law committed under it. More
detainees were transferred out of the US
detention centre at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba,
but others remained in indefinite detention
there, while pre-trial military commission
proceedings continued in a handful of
cases. Concern about the treatment of
refugees and migrants, the use of isolation
in state and federal prisons and the use of
force in policing continued. There were 20
executions during the year. In November,
Donald Trump was elected as President; his
inauguration was scheduled for 20 January
2017.
INTERNATIONAL SCRUTINY
In August, the UN Human Rights Committee
expressed concern that the investigation into
torture in the counter-terrorism context,
which the USA was legally obliged to
conduct, had not taken place. The
Committee noted that the USA had provided
no further information on the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) report into
the secret detention programme operated by
the CIA after the attacks of 11 September
2001 (9/11). The full 6,963-page report
remained classified top secret and the SSCI
had not released it by the end of the year.
On 16 August, the Committee noted that
the USA had provided no further information
on reports that Guantánamo Bay detainees
Amnesty International Report 2016/17 385