Category: Human Rights

This week, South Sudan finalized ratification of the African Union’s Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (the Maputo Protocol), ending years of delay. While this ratification signals a commitment to gender equality, South Sudanese authorities need to adopt effective policies and strategies to ensure […]

On Wednesday, a Philippine court denied bail for former Senator Leila de Lima, who has unjustly been in police detention for more than six years. De Lima has already been acquitted in two of the three separate drug cases brought against her. The European Union and other governments should press President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to […]

 Defendants listen to the verdict in their trial on charges related to the July 2022 protests in Nukus, the main city in Karakalpakstan, at a court in Bukhara, Uzbekistan on January 31, 2023. © 2023 AFP via Getty Images “Onward, Karakalpaks!,” shouted blogger and lawyer Daulet Tazhimuratov from his glass cage in the Tashkent courtroom on […]

Ambassadors were briefed by Christian Ritscher, Special Adviser and Head of the UN Investigative Team to promote accountability for these crimes, UNITAD, established five years ago.  The Islamist group declared a self-styled caliphate across parts of Iraq and northern Syria in 2014, before being militarily defeated and driven from Iraq in December 2017.  Commitment stronger […]

Olivier de Schutter, Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, and Attiya Waris, Independent Expert on foreign debt and human rights, have welcomed the proposed New York Taxpayer and International Debt Crises Prevention Act, which is currently under discussion.  They urged lawmakers to adopt the draft bill, which compels private creditors to participate in […]

Tom Andrews, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, insisted that current conditions there were “anything but conducive” for the return of Rohingya refugees. Death trap He stressed that the very generals who had launched “genocidal” attacks against the Rohingya, causing hundreds of thousands to flee the country, were now […]

On June 6, faith groups across North America came together to launch the Apartheid Free Communities Initiative. Convened by the American Friends Service Committee, this coalition brings together over 100 congregations, faith groups, and organizations as an interdenominational campaign working to end the crime of apartheid committed against Palestinians. In recent years, recognition of Israel’s […]

A United Nations tribunal in the Hague this week suspended the trial of Félicien Kabuga for crimes committed during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Victims and their families have long waited to see Kabuga held to account for his alleged role in planning, ordering, and carrying out the genocide. According to media reports, judges said Kabuga, now […]

On June 8, Moscow’s Golovinsky district court will hold the first hearing in the criminal trial against Oleg Orlov, a top Russian rights defender and my dear friend, who is facing up to three years’ imprisonment under Russia’s draconian war censorship legislation for repeatedly speaking out against the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. I met Oleg […]

Canada’s wildfires have led to unpleasantly hazy skies and unhealthy air across large swathes of North America. The air quality in Canada is horrendous and – in certain areas – some of the worst in the world. Wildfire smoke is harmful to human health and other life, and is a worsening problem because of the […]