Category: Human Rights

With 360 million people worldwide in need of humanitarian assistance, up 30 percent since early 2022, global humanitarian needs have yet again reached record levels. In a video message to the Humanitarian Affairs Segment, a platform created by the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to find solutions to pressing humanitarian aid issues, Antonio Guterres cited […]

Imagine being locked alone in a tiny cell for over 20 hours a day and for more than 500 days over a 744-day period. That is how Michael (not his real name), an Aboriginal teenager with an intellectual disability, spent most of his time in pretrial detention in the Townsville youth prison in Queensland, Australia. […]

UN Special Representative Roza Otunbayeva was briefing the Security Council on the dire situation facing the country and the international aid effort, with UN women workers among those now prevented by Taliban edicts from working. “We will not put our national staff in danger and therefore we are asking them not to report to the office” […]

(Bangkok) – Cambodia commune election results in 2022 showed numerous and significant irregularities that raise concerns for the July 23, 2023 national elections, Human Rights Watch said today. A systematic analysis of ballot forms in Phnom Penh suggests that election fraud and vote tampering may have occurred, and that ballots across the capital were not […]

The Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Tlaleng Mofokeng, warned that technology enabled easy sharing of sensitive health data of adolescents, migrants and people whose sexual orientation or health status was subject to discrimination. “Accessibility of information through digital tools should not impair the right to have personal health data treated with confidentiality,” Ms. Mofokeng […]

More than 50 asylum seekers, most of whom have disabilities, are being warehoused in a former care home in Essex, England, without access to adequate support and services. The UK government opened the site, which can accommodate up to 77 people, in November 2022. Most people housed there, ranging from ages 20 to 74, have […]

Altyn Kapalova is a lesbian feminist, artist, and writer from Kyrgyzstan who has been fighting with Kyrgyz authorities for more than two years for the right to keep the matronymic she gave her three children. Kapalova chose to give her children an appendage to their first name that comes from her first name, or a […]

“The tendency of family courts to dismiss the history of domestic violence and abuse in custody cases, especially where mothers and/or children have brought forward credible allegations of domestic abuse, including coercive control, physical or sexual abuse is unacceptable,” said Reem Alsalem, UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, in a report to the Human Rights Council […]

(New York) – Hong Kong authorities have issued baseless arrest warrants and HK$1 million (US$128,000) bounties on eight exiled democracy activists and former legislators that expand China’s political intimidation campaign beyond its borders, Human Rights Watch said today. On July 3, 2023, the Hong Kong national security police alleged that the eight people – former […]

“These latest killings and the violence, along with the inflammatory rhetoric, serve only to drive Israelis and Palestinians deeper into an abyss,” said the High Commissioner for Human Rights, as his Office warned of the “terrible impact on both Palestinians and Israelis” of the escalation, before calling for an immediate end to the bloodshed.  Mr. Türk’s comments […]