Category: Human Rights

 This week, Pakistan’s Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling that the judicial proceedings leading to the death sentence and execution of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979 violated principles of due process and the right to a fair trial. Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq had overthrown Bhutto’s elected government in a military coup in July […]

Citing alarming examples in Aleppo, Grozny, Mariupol, Myanmar, Sudan and Gaza, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, said an “increasingly systematic, massive and arbitrary destruction of civilian housing and infrastructure” during too many conflicts around the world is in blatant violation of international human rights and humanitarian laws. “We have seen or are […]

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, has delivered a grim assessment of Sri Lanka’s multifaceted human rights crisis. On Friday, he reminded the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that in 2022, “tens of thousands of Sri Lankans took to the streets demanding deep democratic reforms and accountability for economic mismanagement […]

“The sexual abuse and the exploitation of children within the entertainment industry resulting from unethical systems, structures, practices or abuse of power and authority is widespread,” said Mama Fatima Singhateh, the UN Special Rapporteur on sale and sexual exploitation of children. Child performers in the entertainment industry are exposed to sexualized, violent and aggressive environments that […]

(Beirut) – In early February 2024, the Egyptian authorities issued new legislation that will entrench and widen the already broad powers of the military over civilian life in a manner that undermines rights, Human Rights Watch said today. The new laws grant sweeping new authority for the military to fully or partially replace certain functions […]

Yesterday at a special congress in Versailles, France’s parliament voted by an overwhelming majority to add the freedom to have an abortion to the country’s constitution. Though abortion has been legal in France since 1975, the historic move aims to establish a safeguard in the face of global attacks on abortion access and sexual and […]

The authorities across Yemen are increasingly restricting women’s freedom of movement. The restrictions have harmed women’s ability to access work, education, and health care, and are a form of discrimination. All governing authorities should immediately end policies that restrict women’s movement and ensure that checkpoint officers are trained to protect all Yemeni residents’ fundamental rights. […]

(Istanbul) – Social media companies should resist intensifying efforts by Turkish authorities to control their platforms through demands that they block content critical of the government ahead of important municipal elections on March 31, 2024, Human Rights Watch, ARTICLE 19, and 20 other human rights and journalists’ groups said in a statement released today. Social […]

European Union governments meeting today in Brussels to discuss a proposed ban on products linked to forced labor, should allow forced labor victims in companies’ supply chains to receive remediation. Companies and business associations have called for remediation to be included in the draft regulation. For victims of forced labor, remediation—finding a remedy for harms […]

Nearly 100 years ago in June 1924, the US Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act, granting citizenship to the Indigenous peoples who had long lived on the land that became the United States. Nonetheless, some US states regularly denied Native citizens the right to vote through the 1960s, with Maine, Utah, and New Mexico being […]