NEWS ON HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES WORLDWIDE

According to current estimates, nearly 300,000 people have been displaced from southern Idlib since 12 December, with children and women being the most affected. Speaking to reporters in New York, UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq said “over half of the displaced, at least 175,000, are children”. The United Nations Security Council were briefed on the … Read more →

The World Economic Forum’s annual Global Gender Gap Report for 2020, which was released on Monday 16 December, says that at the current rate of change, men and women will have pay equality in 257 years. That is 55 more years than the estimate in the previous edition. Worldwide, the average woman’s annual income is … Read more →

Negotiations at Madrid’s UN COP25 Climate Change summit ended on 15 December amidst a sentiment of disappointment. The talks commenced on 2 December and ended with a compromise deal, that saw an agreement reached on increasing the global response to cutting carbon. All participating countries have been requested to prepare a new pledge for next … Read more →

An Amnesty report published on 16 December revealed the extent of crackdowns in Iran in the wake of protests that took place from 15-18 November. The organisation carried out interviews with dozens of people inside Iran who gave details of detainees being held incommunicado, subjected to enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment, before, during and … Read more →

Two protesters have been shot dead by police in the northeastern Indian state of Assam during unrest over a new law denounced as anti-Muslim. Thousands of troops have been deployed to the northern region to deal with widespread rioting over the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), which offers citizenship to people of all faiths — other … Read more →

Today, on International Genocide Day, 30 human rights, academic and professional organisations from ten countries jointly launched an international “Boycott Myanmar Campaign” in order to bring to bear economic, cultural, diplomatic and political pressure on Myanmar’s coalition government of Aung San Suu Kyi and the military. The launch of the campaign coincides with the arrival … Read more →

In a new report released today, UNICEF reveals that the number of Caribbean children displaced by storms has risen approximately six-fold in the past five years. Catastrophic tropical cyclones and hurricanes uprooted an estimated 761,000 children in the region between 2014 and 2018, which also was the hottest five-year period on record. The preceding five-year … Read more →

UN delegates gathered in Madrid on 2 December for the opening of ‘COP25’ Climate Change Conference. The conference will be held from 2 -13 December in Madrid and comes as a next step in the process of advancing UN initiatives on climate change. The summit is expected to be attended by delegates from 197 countries … Read more →

On Sunday 1 December, Malta’s prime minister Joseph Muscat announced that he will resign next month following protests over a 2017 car bombing that killed Daphne Caruana Galizia, a prominent anti-corruption journalist. Mr Muscat was under pressure to quit over his former top aide’s alleged links to the killing of the journalist. The resignation is … Read more →

More than two years after they were first detained, Turkey’s State Prosecutor has made a request for the conviction of Amnesty Turkey’s honorary chair, Taner Kılıç, former director İdil Eser and four other human rights defenders on terrorism-related charges. If convicted, they risk up to 15 years imprisonment. The next, and presumably final trial hearing, … Read more →