Ethiopia hosted the main celebration of 26th World Press Freedom Day (WPFD) in Addis Ababa. The celebration was special in that the host country is undergoing political change which included promotion of freedom of the press. Ethiopia, according to Reporters without Borders, ranked 110th in the 2019 World Press Freedom Index; however, it has improved… … Read more →
Ethiopia is at a time when it has to pay the costs of past repression. Even though it is trying to reform politically, it is also facing the consequence of antagonising political relationship. A lot of positive political changes have happened since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was sworn in in 2018. Ethiopia has made peace… … Read more →
The main celebration of World Press Freedom Day 2019 will take place in Ethiopia the 3rd of May. This is one of the biggest surprises for one who knows Ethiopia’s record in freedom of the press. What has motivated UNESCO to host the celebration in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia? Dead Ends of the Old Era According… … Read more →
In December 2018, the Clooney Foundation for Justice, founded by George and Amal Clooney, announced a new project called TrialWatch, a global effort to monitor court trials and which aims to create a global justice index, rating countries on the fairness of their trial systems. Working with the Columbia University Law School and the American… … Read more →
A widespread notion persists: that women, when compared with their male counterparts, are more naturally inclined towards peace. A woman is a full circle and within her is the power to create, nurture and transform. Over the years, there has been an increasing need for recognition of women’s efforts in conflict resolution by the international… … Read more →
After the 1979 revolution in Iran, women have been forced to wear the hijab in public. Back then, more than 100,000 women and men took to the streets to protest against the law and opposition to it has never gone away. In 2018, 112 women were arrested in Iran for defending women’s rights, many for… … Read more →
Image Credit: Kiki Machado As a human rights defender and spokesperson for the favela, Marielle Franco was a thorn in the side of the powerful. As a poor, black, lesbian, single mother, she was an affront to Brazil’s evangelical right wing. In life, she was a powerful voice for the oppressed that many reactionaries were… … Read more →
The resignation of Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on 26 February has seen a number of events highlighting Iran’s ongoing poor human rights record leading up to and after the resignation. In an interview with BBC’s Lyse Ducet, Zarif apologised for any “shortcomings” during his time in government and said: “Iran saw human rights… … Read more →
“The internet is changing the way that sex is sold, leading to fresh models of exploitation.” Gavin Shuker MP Chair, All-Party Parliamentary Group on Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade. The internet and digital technology are fuelling a worldwide growth in human sex trafficking. According to the ILO, 4.8 million individuals worldwide are victims of… … Read more →
Speaking to BBC’s Hardtalk on 17 December 2018, Prof. Gulnur Aybet, a senior advisor to the President of Turkey, Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, refuted Stephen Sackur’s question about Turkey being the worst jailer of journalists in the world, on the grounds that she has checked the numbers given by various organisations, including Amnesty International, and… … Read more →
A plot to kill a critical Turkish journalist living in Denmark by a clandestine group tied to the Turkish government exposes the sheer hypocrisy of the autocratic regime of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has been driving a political campaign to exploit the outrageous murder of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul. Hasan Cücük,… … Read more →
First edition written 4 August 2017, London On a bright midsummer morning when you take your little girl’s hand and walk her to school, listening to the birds singing as you make your way along the narrow footpath, you feel thankful to life that today will be one of your best days, full of enjoyment,… … Read more →
Brexit is becoming a hatchet job by sawing and sewing different parts back together and then seeing what type of creature will emerge. Frankenstein’s monster might come to mind, however, in this instance it might not be fair to use Mary Shelley’s poor and misunderstood monster as an analogy to this process. Because as fearful… … Read more →
A packed Frontline Club, the mecca for journalists and activists alike, in central London on Tuesday night saw the International Observatory of Human Rights (IOHR) marking its one-year anniversary as well as its new partnership with netgem.tv. This joint venture will produce the very first human rights TV channel and launch human rights web-TV content on an interactive… … Read more →
More than 11,000 children living in camps in northern Syria have been affected by torrential rains that have caused floods and washed away tents. Unusually severe winter weather and storms have brought chaos to camps in Syria’s Idlib province as well as to sites in Lebanon as they are left devastated. Aid workers warn there… … Read more →
Earlier this week, Cyntoia Brown was granted full clemency by the Governor of Tennessee and released after serving 15 years in prison for having shot and killed a man who bought her for sex in 2006. Cyntoia, now 30, was a child victim of sex trafficking which unfortunately is just one facet of a globalised… … Read more →
Afghanistan has not been at peace since the 1970s. After decades of internal intra-state conflicts and droughts, most of the Afghan population is now struggling below the poverty line and experiencing a wide range of security issues. Apart from the Taliban and the Islamic State, the Afghan army has been battling about 20 smaller terrorist… … Read more →
Workers’ rights are a fundamental human right for a fair and democratic society. However, workers in the UK now face an uncertain future with the outcome of Brexit. Mainly because some fundamental rights, that are inscribed in EU law, currently govern the rights of workers in this country known as the EU Charter of Fundamental… … Read more →
At least 35% of the global population of women have been subjected to violence by an intimate partner. In 2012, it was estimated that half of all women who died as a result of a homicide were killed by an intimate partner. Domestic violence is not unique to any time, culture, or nation and as… … Read more →
People are fleeing Honduras every day. Staying put is impossible with gang violence and human rights violations mounting in Honduras, but the journey to the United States is turned into a nightmare by the Guatemalan and Mexican authorities. No wonder UNHCR is calling these people “the world’s most vulnerable refugees”- they have no physical or… … Read more →
A significant part of the Brexit Leave campaign focused on refugees and asylum seekers via ramped up nationalistic and paranoid rhetoric that seems to have disregarded any concerns about human rights completely. According to Yougov, The British Election Study Team and the Ipsos Mori polls taken around the time of the Brexit referendum, which took… … Read more →
With the crackdown on the innocent in Turkey showing no signs of letting up, the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has continued to imprison babies and their mothers, the tally of which was confirmed by the country’s top prison official as standing at 743 as of November 2018. Perhaps Erdoğan, already singled out as… … Read more →
Since September 2001, the scholarly field of terrorism and violent extremism has grown exoponentially. We may understand more today about the causes and effects of extremism, but it is only recently that we have begun to realise our ignorance of gender in this field. For too long we have been stuck with a gendered binary:… … Read more →
In 2018, across a range of issues, many human rights activists believe that the United States has been moving backwards. The current administration’s anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant policies grab global attention. However, deep and divisive issues burn at home among blacks and whites in a struggle to co-exist that began 400 years ago, as European traders… … Read more →
After several weeks of volunteering for Zhian Health Organisation, a local NGO in Iraqi Kurdistan, I was presented with the opportunity in August of 2018 to visit a women’s correctional facility, which I was told had become a dumping ground for ISIS brides after the recapture of Mosul. So far, I had accompanied a small… … Read more →
The arbitrary practice of seizing and revoking passports, or denying the issue of new ones for critics, opponents and dissidents, as well as for their spouses, children and relatives in Turkey by the government of president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has turned at least half a million people into captives condemned to live in an open… … Read more →
A panel from the comic “Abike”, artwork by Gabi Froden. Can journalism work in cooperation with the principles of art to produce stories of survival? That is the question a team of researchers and illustrators grapples with everyday at PositiveNegatives. Based in London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, PositiveNegatives is a small organisation that… … Read more →
When telling stories of violence for mass audiences, we cannot always rely on text or audio to make an impression. If our goal is to build empathy and understanding between the viewer and the victims, visuals can help us achieve that. But when the subject we want to draw attention to is so potentially disturbing,… … Read more →
Since 2014 Yemen has been the tragic theatre of a proxy war that has expanded across the backdrop of decades of modern history. The Houthis The Houthis are a tribal movement from Yemen based on the Zaydi sect of Shi’a Islam. This sect branched off during the Umayyad period in 740AD, at a time when… … Read more →
Events within two weeks of the election of the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan suggest that the dire state of human rights violations in Turkey will continue to go from bad to worse, and that the worst is yet to come. After winning an easy victory in elections that were deemed neither free nor… … Read more →