Category: Human Rights

Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled this week that Congress must eliminate federal criminal penalties for abortion, which means all federal health facilities should provide abortion care, a massive victory for human rights. This ruling, which comes after leading national reproductive justice organization GIRE (Information Group on Reproductive Choice) filed a legal challenge, requires Congress to remove […]

The European Court of Human Rights this week found that the government of Bulgaria was violating European human rights law by failing to legally recognize same-sex couples. The case involved Liliya Babulkova and Darina Koilova, Bulgarian women who were legally wed in the United Kingdom in 2016. Bulgarian authorities refused to recognize their marriage, and […]

UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Representative in the country, Grant Leaity, issued the alert on Tuesday, revealing that youngsters in eastern DRC face daily atrocities, including rape, abduction and recruitment by armed groups. “I visited a centre in Beni and North Kivu for children released from armed groups where I met a couple of one-year-old twins. […]

“We now know that healthy habits make the difference between having a strong and healthy community or continuing to take our babies to the hospital,” says Gladis Gómez, the President of a rural health committee funded by the EU and trained by the Guatemalan Red Cross. In Guatemala, where more than 50% the population live […]

This week, the Special Criminal Court (SCC) in the Central African Republic announced charges against Abdoulaye Hissène for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in 2017 as leader of the group Popular Front for the Rebirth of the Central African Republic (Front Populaire pour la renaissance de la République centrafricaine, FPRC). In a country […]

(Vilnius, September 8, 2023) – Belarus has issued a presidential decree denying the country’s citizens the ability to obtain or renew their passports or to process other essential documents at Belarusian consulates overseas, Human Rights Watch said today. This could leave thousands of exiled Belarusians without access to valid identification documents abroad, or at risk […]

(New York) – Taliban authorities in Afghanistan are committing the crime against humanity of gender persecution against women and girls, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Since taking over the country in August 2021, the Taliban have imposed laws and policies intended to deny women and girls throughout the country their fundamental rights because […]

Today the United States government imposed two different types of sanctions on two leaders of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), an independent military force in Sudan responsible for human rights abuses and war crimes. The US Department of the Treasury sanctioned Abelrahim Hamdan Dagalo, a senior leader in the RSF and brother of RSF’s leader, […]

Russia dealt a severe blow to rights protections in war-torn Mali on August 30 when it vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution that would have extended sanctions against eight people suspected of sabotaging a peace deal and the work of a panel of experts tracking abuses by armed groups and Malian security forces. In […]

On Monday, September 4, the United Nations Environment Programme published the zero draft of the new global plastics treaty. The text, based on previous negotiations, lays the foundation for a legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution and could help confront some of the harmful impacts of plastics on the environment and protection of human […]