Category: Human Rights

Around 110,000 people have been displaced inside Lebanon since October, 35 percent of them children, the agency has reported. It is estimated that almost 150,000 people remain within the 10-kilometre Blue Line. Since the Hamas-led terror attacks of 7 October there have been 16 recorded attacks on healthcare, with 21 paramedics killed during hostilities, according […]

Summer is here and it’s the season of wedding parties throughout Türkiye. But for some Kurdish men, women, and children, joyful dancing and singing of Kurdish political folk songs at wedding parties or elsewhere has ended in arrest and charges of “spreading terrorist propaganda.” This crime is punishable with up to five years in prison. […]

Special Rapporteur Ashwini K.P., said at the end of a 12-day fact finding mission, that members of marginalised racial and ethnic groups in Brazil – including those of African descent and from indigenous groups – are experiencing “pervasive manifestations of systemic racism, as legacies of colonialism and enslavement.” This form of racism, she said, has […]

(Beirut) – Iraq’s parliament is moving forward an amendment to the country’s Personal Status Law that would allow Iraqi religious authorities, rather than state law, to govern marriage and inheritance matters at the expense of fundamental rights, Human Rights Watch said today. The Iraqi parliament, which completed its first reading of the bill on August 4, 2023, […]

On August 13, Eswatini’s Supreme Court overturned a 2016 High Court decision that declared several repressive provisions of the 1938 Suppression of Terrorism Act (STA) and 2008 Sedition and Subversive Activities Act (SSA) invalid. The 2016 High Court decision had declared that several sections of SSA and STA violated the rights to freedom of association, expression, and […]

On August 3, Houthi forces raided the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and “seiz[ed] documents and property by force,” according to High Commissioner Volker Türk. The office has remained under Houthi occupation, despite calls by OHCHR and others for the Houthis to vacate the premises and return all […]

Woman human rights defender Namatai Kwekweza; teacher and labour rights defender Robson Chere, the Secretary-General of Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (ARTUZ), along with a local council member from the capital Harare, Samuel Gwenzi, were forcibly removed from a departing flight at Harare Airport on 31 July, according to a news release from the […]

(Nyon) – The disqualification of the Olympic breaking athlete Manizha Talash for promoting gender equality should be overturned and remedied, the Sport & Rights Alliance said today. Talash, an Afghan refugee breaker known as “b-girl Talash,” was disqualified from the Paris 2024 Olympics’ breaking competition on August 9 after she competed wearing a cape that said “Free Afghan Women.” The […]

Volker Türk also stressed the need for accountability for rights violations and violence connected to anti-government protests that rocked the country in recent weeks, prompting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign and flee to India. An interim administration headed by Nobel Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus was sworn in on 8 August during a ceremony at […]

Thousands of Indians have taken to the streets to protest the rape and murder of a doctor in a government hospital in Kolkata city last week. They are demanding justice and better security and facilities at medical campuses and hospitals. The attack has cast a spotlight on how millions of Indian women remain exposed to abuse in the […]