Human Rights
Monday, August 1, 2016 - 15:06
MPs have called for an investigation into the war in Yemen after the Government backtracked on its insistence that the Saudi-led coalition has not breached international humanitarian law in the conflict. The chairman of the International Development Committee has written to the new Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson urging him to push for an international probe into allegations human rights have been breached.
Monday, August 1, 2016 - 15:06
Human rights defenders argue that rape and sexual abuse, especially against Indigenous women, were a part of government's military strategy during Peru's Civil War. In a landmark legal effort to prosecute systemic wartime sexual violence, fourteen former military officers are being tried in a Peruvian court for the rape of indigenous women.
Monday, August 1, 2016 - 15:06
If the Jamaican poor feel like they are being hunted by the police, they are not exaggerating. The human rights group Amnesty International states that Jamaica has one of the world’s highest rates of fatal shootings by the police. According to the document Human Rights Watch World Report 1989, between 1979 and 1989 the police killed a yearly average of 208.3 Jamaicans, which was quite startling when compared with the annual figure of 700 people murdered by the cops in the United States. During that period, America’s population was 100 times larger than Jamaica’s.
Monday, August 1, 2016 - 15:06
By a 4 to 1 vote, the Supreme Court of El Salvador repealed an Amnesty Law that they stated was “unconstitutional.” This July 13 decision argued that repealing the law would put closure to the civil war that lasted from 1980 to 1992 and claimed 75,000 lives, including 8,000 “disappeared,” from the country’s 5 million people.
Monday, August 1, 2016 - 15:06
The United States is playing a quiet but lethal role in the killing and wounding of thousands of civilians in Yemen’s civil war. In recent years, Saudi Arabia has purchased U.S. fighter jets and other American-made weapons in deals worth billions of dollars, and the Pentagon has provided the coalition with training, aerial refueling support and intelligence as it attacks targets in Yemen.
Monday, August 1, 2016 - 15:06
The Turkish government’s crackdown after a military coup attempt widened into a sweeping purge on Monday, cutting a swath through the security services and reaching deeply into the government bureaucracy and the political and business classes.
Monday, August 1, 2016 - 15:06
Members of Burundi ruling party’s youth league, the Imbonerakure, have repeatedly gang-raped women since a wave of political protests began in 2015, Human Rights Watch said today. Many of the rapes appear to have been aimed at family members of perceived government opponents. Policemen or men wearing police uniforms have also committed rape.
Monday, August 1, 2016 - 15:06
The UN, EU and other international organisations have condemned the murder on Wednesday of a prominent environmental activist in Honduras. Lesbia Yaneth Urquia was killed four months after the shooting of award-winning environmentalist Berta Caceres.
Monday, August 1, 2016 - 15:06
Major sporting events like the Olympics often lead to major human rights violations, and the situation unfolding ahead of the Summer Games next month in Rio de Janeiro is shaping up as a depressing replay, human rights activists warn.
Monday, August 1, 2016 - 15:06
Turkey ordered another 47 journalists detained on Wednesday, part of a large-scale crackdown on suspected supporters of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is accused by Ankara of masterminding a failed military coup.