HCHR- In a report of the situation of human rights in Iceland, a country that is the founder of the annual resolution extending the mission of the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran is noted: “While Icelandic law prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities and requires that such persons “receive preference for government jobs,” advocates for the disabled complain that these laws are not fully enforced and that disabled people represent a majority of Iceland’s poor. Icelandic law ensures “easy access to public places” for disabled persons; yet while violations are supposed to be punished by up to two years in prison, advocates for the disabled complain that such punishments “rarely, if ever,” take place.
At the end of a two-day visit to Iceland, Thomas Hammarberg, theCouncil of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights said: “Iceland shouldadopt comprehensive equal treatment legislation and set up an effectiveand independent national equality body to promote its implementation.The current non-discrimination provisions in Icelandic law do notprotect all vulnerable groups of people to the same extent.”
The Commissioner also called on Iceland to ratify theUN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which it hasalready signed.
Inaccessibility of Persons with Disabilities to Human Rights
A group of disabled women in Iceland have lambasted politicians for using them as a “pretext” for failing to help refugees. The group released a statement saying: “We are not happy at being used as a pretext by cowardly politicians, who maintain that we cannot take in refugees because Iceland has its own people suffering from human rights violations and that this must be addressed before other groups can be attended to. While the women do indeed recognize that their rights are violated on a daily basis and that they do not enjoy the same opportunities as able-bodied people, they freely admit that their situation “is not such as can be compared with that of the refugees.
A 2022 study examined violence among Icelandic women with disabilities as members of marginalized groups in various social settings. The results show how the instability and risk exposure for women with disabilities increases many times that of normal people. This study has revealed that the number of social workers working in disability housing has gradually decreased over the past ten years. The research report also says that the diversity of settings in which social educators provide their professional services has interfered with the profession's claims of competence and effectiveness.
A new report published by a human rights organization in 2022 also shows that Iceland makes heavy use of solitary confinement in pre-trial detention: “Iceland routinely uses solitary confinement for long periods, even for people with disabilities.” 825 people have been held in pre-trial solitary confinement in Icelandic prisons over the past decade.
Violence against women
Iceland tried to earn the country the label of “the best place in theworld to be a woman.” However, the world’s “best place to be a woman”is far more dangerous than its reputation suggests. There are severalchallenges which overshadow the country’s achievements in protection ofwomen’s rights, including persistently high rates of domestic violence andsexual abuse, as well as a justice system that remains suspicious towardthe victims of these abuses. Scholars have termed this phenomenon the“Nordic paradox.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic—reflecting trends globally—reportsof domestic violence in Iceland have risen; two women were allegedlymurdered by family members in the first weeks of the country’s partiallockdown, a significant spike for a country of just 350,000 people. Whileglobally 38 percent of murders of women are committed by a malepartner, according to the Commissioner of National Police this figure is50 percent for Iceland.
Sexual violence against women
A research study shows that one in four women in Iceland have been raped or subjected to attempted rapes at some point in their lives. These are the first results of the ongoing research project, the Icelandic Stress-And-Gene-Analysis (SAGA) Cohort. 23,000 women have thus far participated in the research. A considerable number of them have reported being subjected to sexual violence.
In a country of only 350,000 people that has long prided itself on its reputation for promoting women’s rights, a group of more than 600 female politicians – through setting up a Facebook page named the “I Skugga Valdsins” revealed that they have been subjected to sexual harassment. Morgunbladid newspaper reported that the group has made 136 of these accounts public.
In order to demonstrate how much the country’s economy is contingentupon women’s labor, more than 90 percent of Icelandic women refused toshow up for work on 24 October 1975. It made no difference whether theirwork took place in a school, factory, office, or home; they were determinedto show that they mattered. They stopped what they were doing at work and at home to express their resentment against the gender wage gap and to demonstrate the vital role women play in the functioning of Icelandic society. During that period of time, the gender pay gap stood at more than 40%; women were paid less than 60% of what men were paid.
Refugees’ inaccessibility to human rights
Those seeking refuge in Iceland come from several countries including but not limited to Afghanistan, Russia, Mauritius, Sudan and Algeria. Their lives are marked by an insecure future, poverty and fear of being shipped back to their countries of origin. This is while Icelandic society is seemingly indifferent to the fate of the refugees, who often spend years anxiously waiting for the bureaucracy to handle their requests for asylum.
Deportation of refugees and asylum-seekers
More than a hundred people marched from Hallgrímskirkja church towards the parliament building at Austurvöllur to express their resentment against deportations of refugees and asylum seekers. Despite the fact that more than half of Icelanders are welcome to refugees, out of 790 asylum applicants in 2018, only 160 received approvals. In 2022, a group of refugees from Iraq and Palestine were arrested en masse in Iceland, then bused with heavy police presence to an international airport and deported to Greece.
Police brutality against protesting refugees
Refugees in Iceland reported that the police have resorted to violence and used teargas when asylum seekers protested in order to draw attention to their inhumane conditions.
Iceland's police centers have sometimes arrested some asylum seekers after being called to determine their asylum status or complete the residency process, and even beat them to make them agree to be transferred to the deportation center for deportation to Greece. In some cases, the Icelandic Immigration Department has canceled housing and food allowances for some asylum seekers even long before they were deported from Iceland. The Council of Europe, the Red Cross and many human rights organizations consider the living conditions in Greece unsuitable for refugees who often do not have access to basic services such as health care, housing and education, and therefore the deportation of these people by Iceland is considered a violation of the rights of asylum seekers.
Violation of the rights of homeless persons
Iceland has a population of 364,134. Between 2009 and 2017, the Icelandic capital experienced a 168 percent increase in the number of homeless citizens. Women experience more homelessness in Iceland than in previous years. One particular shelter in the capital saw an increase of 35 to 41 women in one month, and 27 of those women had never used shelter services before. Women also tend to stay in shelters longer than men due to drug and alcohol addiction.
According to the latest data from the Icelandic Welfare Council in 2021, about 87 women and 214 men are homeless in the capital alone. 71% of people were men, 29% were women and most people were between 21 and 49 years old.
Excessive costs of living in Iceland
Iceland is outrageously expensive; it has passed Switzerland for most expensive country in the world. Food, clothing, fuel, personal care items, furniture are all costly and can easily be two to three times as expensive as U.S. Prices. Iceland has to import and tax everything because it is an island in the middle of the northern Atlantic. Online sales are subject to tax in a way that sometimes the tax on the item is almost as much as the item itself.
Violation of the right to life
Iceland was amongst the countries which signed the universal declaration of human rights in 1948. However, Iceland is now considered as the only country with 100 percent eradication rate of down syndrome births. Putting aside whether eradication of down syndrome births is tantamount to genocide, article 1 of the abovenamed international document, to which Iceland is a signatory, states that: “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
On the strength of ratified protocols, health policies and regulation, Iceland has resorted to genocide by elimination of those suffering from down syndrome. Since 2015, there has been no case of down syndrome births in the Nordic island country – except two children whose mothers’ screening tests mistakenly suggested that the fetuses were not diagnosed with trisomy 21.
Violation of Convention Against Torture
The UN Committee against Torture (CAT) on 13 May 2022 published findings on Iceland. The findings contain Committee's main concerns and recommendations about implementation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The Committee was concerned that the current Icelandic law allows four weeks of solitary confinement in pre-trial detention, and an even longer period of segregation for detainees accused of an offence that carries at least ten years imprisonment. The Committee asked the State party “to bring its legislation on solitary confinement in line with international standards. In light of Iceland’s consistently high level of domestic and sexual violence, including rape, and apparently limited prosecutions, the Committee recommended that Iceland strengthen efforts to investigate all sexual and gender-based violence, prosecute alleged perpetrators and adequately redress victims”.
Violation of the right to self-determination
In 2015, the United States government proposed to provide grounds for increasing the military presence of the country's military in Iceland, claiming that Russian fighter jets were approaching the airspace of Iceland, which caused concern in the United States, Iceland and Norway. Therefore, the two countries signed an agreement in 2016, according to which US forces were stationed on the Arctic Island. Also, Iceland allowed the US and NATO to access to the former US naval base in Keflavik. This military base was of fundamental importance for the U.S during World War II and for NATO during the Cold War. Iceland is a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty organization (NATO) but has no independent military of its own. It is also the least populated member of NATO.
75 Million dollars to station U.S. Army in Iceland
According to a declassified 2020 fiscal budget report from the U.S. Department of defense, the U.S. Military planned to spend some $75 million dollars on the keflavík naval base. This will include some $18 million dollars towards upgrading the airfield’s “dangerous cargo pad”, a paved area for the loading and unloading of explosives and other hazardous cargo; $7 million dollars for bed down site prep, referring to launching areas for military aircraft; and the remaining $32 million dollars to expand the parking apron, the area where military aircraft are parked.
All of these give a fairly reasonable assumption that the U.S. Military was aiming to ramp up combat readiness at the base. This, along with parliament’s current budget proposals, have raised criticisms from within Iceland’s legislature.
Iceland: the fourth most depressed country in Europe
The United Nations and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development study the happy planet index (hpi) and rate general satisfaction of people. Should we take a closer look in such polls and studies of such nature, we would be able to see that a deluge number of youths and women residing in European countries have hidden behind the so-called happiest countries awards false mask. As a matter of fact, most residents of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland or even Finland suffer from loneliness, depression, mental pressure and stress. Almost one in ten Icelanders experience symptoms of depression; this is the fourth highest rate across Europe. Young women are most likely to feel depressed. Almost 18% of all girls and women aged 15-24 report to experience symptoms of depression, the highest rate in Europe.
To read the detailed report click here
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-42119415
https://jacobinmag.com/2019/10/iceland-redstockings-womens-strike-feminism
https://icelandmag.is/article/1975-womens-strike-when-90-icelandic-women-went-strike-protest-gender-inequality
https://icelandwithaview.com/worst-things-living-iceland/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/down-syndrome-iceland/
https://grapevine.is/news/2019/06/25/american-military-putting-57-million-towards-icelandic-base/