‘Orphanage city’ helps children in Gaza as the war grinds on

The latest death toll has surpassed more than 41,000 people, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health – the majority of them women and children – while most of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have been forcibly displaced and trapped in only 10 per cent of the territory, but in this grim situation, new initiatives […]

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EU Commission Proposes Delay for Anti-Deforestation Law

Yesterday the European Commission proposed a substantial delay in the implementation of its landmark anti-deforestation law. This is bad news for the climate-critical forests around the world as well as the human rights of Indigenous peoples and other forest-dependent communities.  The European Union’s Deforestation-Free Products Regulation (EUDR) is a piece of legislation that required considerable […]

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Philippines: Hearings Expose Duterte-Era Killings

(Manila) – Philippine authorities should fully investigate and appropriately prosecute new revelations of extrajudicial killings involving former and current officials during the previous administration of Rodrigo Duterte, Human Rights Watch said today. Since August 2024, the Philippine House of Representatives have held joint hearings that have examined extrajudicial killings in the “war on drugs” and whether […]

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World News in Brief: Deadly strikes in Ukraine, justice must be served over custody deaths, FIFA urged to challenge law-breaking by Israeli clubs

Attacks in the northeast city killed or injured more than 190 people in September alone, said the UN’s top aid coordinator in Ukraine, Matthias Schmale. “One thought that’s going through my mind is the mental trauma that people suffer from these repeated strikes,” he continued. “In September alone, there were 53 strikes in Kharkiv. That’s […]

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Chad: Discussion on Justice for Past Crimes Blocked

(Nairobi) – Police in Chad forced the cancelation of a conference in the capital, N’Djamena, on October 2, 2024, that was planned to discuss justice for the victims of abuse by Hissène Habré, Human Rights Watch said today. The police also detained a former Human Rights Watch counsel who was to be a keynote speaker at the […]

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EU and Canada strengthen cooperation on crisis response and new rescEU firefighting fleet production launched

Today, Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič met with Canada’s Minister of Trade Mary Ng to discuss the strengthening of EU and Canada cooperation on crisis response efforts. This is part of the EU and Canada’s efforts announced at the Strategic Partnership Summit on disaster response and emergency management last year.  At the Commission’s Emergency Response Coordination […]

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Sudan war: ‘Horror’ grows as reports of summary executions emerge

The warning on Thursday comes as the SAF launched a major offensive last month to regain control of key areas currently held by the RSF. The two armies led by rival generals have been locked in a brutal power struggle since April 2023. The fighting has driven more than 11 million people from their homes […]

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Chagos Islands: UK’s last African colony returned to Mauritius

The agreement follows 13 rounds of talks that began in 2022 after Mauritian calls for sovereignty were recognised by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the UN General Assembly in 2019 and 2021. The world court, as the ICJ is known, is the principle judicial organ of the UN which adjudicates disputes between nations. […]

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Indian Authorities Unlawfully Detain Himalaya Climate Activist

This week, Indian authorities detained Sonam Wangchuk, a prominent climate activist and educator from the Himalayan territory of Ladakh, and others participating in a nearly 1,000-kilometer march from Leh, the provincial capital, to the national capital, Delhi. Wangchuk and approximately 120 activists were demanding a greater say in local governance and stronger environmental safeguards. The police […]

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Egypt Should Release Prominent Activist Alaa Abdel Fattah

Alaa Abdel Fattah, the British-Egyptian writer and activist, should have been released on September 29 after serving an unjust five-year prison sentence. Instead, Egyptian authorities have kept him imprisoned, refusing to count over two years he spent in pretrial detention toward his time served. After spending most of the last decade behind bars, authorities told his […]

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