Category Archives: Human rights

Climate refugees can’t be returned home, says landmark UN human rights ruling

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Experts say judgment is ‘tipping point’ that opens the door to climate crisis claims for protection

It is unlawful for governments to return people to countries where their lives might be threatened by the climate crisis, a landmark ruling by the United Nations human rights committee has found.

The judgment – which is the first of its kind – represents a legal “tipping point” and a moment that “opens the doorway” to future protection claims for people whose lives and wellbeing have been threatened due to global heating, experts say.

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‘You can’t handcuff my spirit’: jailed writer wins freedom of expression prize

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Stella Nyanzi, imprisoned in Uganda after writing poem about president’s mother’s vagina, lambasts regime’s ‘fear of writers’

The Ugandan academic, writer and feminist activist Dr Stella Nyanzi, imprisoned for criticising the country’s president, has been awarded the Oxfam Novib/PEN International award for freedom of expression.

Nyanzi has been in Luzira women’s prison in Kampala, the capital, for nearly 15 months after writing a poem about President Yoweri Museveni’s mother’s vagina. The poem uses the metaphor of her vagina and Museveni’s birth to criticise his near 35-year rule.

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Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert begs Scott Morrison to help get her out of Iranian jail

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Letter comes as human rights groups urge foreign governments to take a stronger line with Tehran

The imprisoned British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert has begged the Australian prime minister to secure her release from an Iranian jail, as human rights groups urge foreign governments to take a stronger line with Tehran.

A Cambridge-educated academic specialising in Middle East politics, Moore-Gilbert has been imprisoned in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison since September 2018, after she was arrested at Tehran airport while trying to leave the country after attending an academic conference.

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‘Staggering number’ of human rights activists killed in Colombia, UN reports

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Despite a peace accord aimed at improving conditions in rural areas controlled by illegal armed groups, 107 defenders died in 2019

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has expressed alarm at the “staggering number” of social activists killed in Colombia despite a peace accord aimed at improving conditions in poor, rural areas.

According to the UN, 107 human rights defenders were killed in 2019, a worrying number that could grow to 120 as investigations are completed. At least 10 activists have been reported killed in the first two weeks of 2020.

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More than 300 human rights activists were killed in 2019, report reveals

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Colombia was the bloodiest nation with 103 murders and the Philippines was second, followed by Brazil, Honduras and Mexico

More than 300 human rights defenders working to protect the environment, free speech, LGBTQ rights and indigenous lands in 31 countries were killed in 2019, a new report reveals.

Two thirds of the total killings took place in Latin America where impunity from prosecution is the norm.

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Head of Human Rights Watch denied entry to Hong Kong

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Kenneth Roth was due to launch the organisation’s latest report in the Chinese-controlled city

The global head of Human Rights Watch says he has been denied entry to Hong Kong, where he was scheduled to launch the organisation’s latest world report this week.

Kenneth Roth, the group’s executive director, said that on Sunday he was blocked at Hong Kong airport from entering for the first time, having entered freely in the past.

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More than 60,000 people are missing amid Mexico’s drug war, officials say

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Mexican authorities admit the number is far higher than previously estimated as murders continue to rise

The devastating human toll of Mexico’s security crisis was laid bare on Monday as authorities admitted nearly 62,000 people had vanished since the start of its catastrophic war on drugs in 2006.

The figure – far higher than a previous estimate of about 40,000 – spoke to the scale of the challenge facing Mexico’s leftist leader, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who took power in December 2018 vowing to pacify his country.

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China jails underground pastor Wang Yi for nine years for inciting subversion

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Leader of Early Rain Covenant, which is not sanctioned by Communist party, swept up in crackdown on religion under Xi Jinping

A Chinese court has sentenced the pastor Wang Yi to nine years in prison on charges of inciting subversion of state power and illegally operating a business.

Wang was among dozens of churchgoers and leaders of the Early Rain Covenant church detained by police in December 2018. Most were subsequently released.

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Israeli military law stifles Palestinian rights, watchdog says

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Many of the restrictions were announced in early days of occupation of West Bank

Palestinians in the West Bank are still being prosecuted under military orders that were designed to keep the peace in the early days of an occupation and that have stifled civil rights in the territory for more than 50 years, a watchdog group says.

The restrictions, some of which are based on laws passed during the British colonial era, are regularly used to break up protests, close radio stations and arrest activists under charges such as “attempt[ing] to influence public opinion … in a manner that may harm public order,” according to a report by Human Rights Watch.

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‘I’m happy, but I am also broken for those left behind’: life after Manus and Nauru | Elaine Pearson

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Resettlement in the US has allowed some long-persecuted people to flourish, but that doesn’t let Australia off the hook

“To freedom.”

Imran, a 25-year-old Rohingya refugee from Myanmar, raises a glass with a big smile. We are in a bustling restaurant on Chicago’s north side. This midwestern city seems a million miles from Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, or the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru, yet it’s now home to several Rohingya men resettled under an agreement between Australia and the US.

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It’s time to act against the oil companies causing death and destruction | John Sentamu

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Repentance, reparation and remedy for the terrible damage done to the people of Bayelsa state in Nigeria is long overdue

• John Sentamu is the archbishop of York

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins: “All human beings … should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” It is now widely acknowledged that human rights cannot be enjoyed without a safe, clean and healthy environment. The right to a healthy environment is enshrined in more than 100 constitutions all over the world because human and environmental rights are intertwined.

However, despite the endorsement of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, oil companies exploiting irreplaceable resources in the Niger Delta are callously flouting fundamental human rights. That is the conclusion I have been forced to draw from my work as chair of the Bayelsa State Oil and Environmental Commission (BSOEC).

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Botswana urged to abolish death penalty after latest execution

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Rights groups condemn hanging of Mooketsi Kgosibodiba and call on president to bring country into line with the rest of Africa

The new president of Botswana is facing pressure to abolish the country’s death penalty after last week’s surprise execution of a 44-year-old man for murder.

Mooketsi Kgosibodiba, a bricklayer, had been on death row since 2017 after strangling his employer in a row over stolen cement. Last week the government made the unexpected announcement that he had been hanged in Gaborone central prison.

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Whistleblowers on school paedophile ring in Afghanistan arrested

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Human rights defenders alleged that teachers and social workers were involved in abuse of more than 500 boys

Two people have been detained by Afghanistan’s intelligence services after they exposed a paedophile ring operating in some of the country’s schools.

Human rights organisations and the former president Hamid Karzai have called for the immediate release of Mohammed Mussa and Ehsanullah Hamidi, both well-known human rights defenders from Logar province, who were picked up by the National Directorate of Security last week when they were on their way to meet with the EU ambassador in Kabul.

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UK development bank accused of failure to safeguard Congolese workers

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British-backed plantation firm vows to address claims that underpaid palm oil workers have been exposed to toxic chemicals

The UK development bank has been accused of failing to protect workers from exposure to dangerous pesticides and paying “extreme poverty” wages on palm oil plantations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Human Rights Watch said the CDC group, along with three other European development banks, had failed to properly oversee its investments in Feronia, one of Africa’s largest palm oil companies.

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Rights activist Almaas Elman shot dead in Mogadishu

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Peace campaigner’s car struck by stray bullet while passing airport, security officials say

Almaas Elman, a prominent rights activist, was shot dead in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu on Wednesday.

Almaas, who came from a leading family of peace campaigners, was travelling by car inside the heavily fortified airport compound when she was hit.

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Children as young as five make up most of Madagascar’s mica mining workforce

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Investigation finds thousands of children are scavenging in deadly conditions for mineral widely used by car and electronics firms

Children as young as five make up more than half the number of miners scavenging for mica in Madagascar, according to a leading child rights group.

A year-long investigation by Terre des Hommes Netherlands found that at least 11,000 children between the ages of five and 17 are employed in quarrying and processing the shimmery, heat-resistant mineral, which is used in everything from makeup to car paint and hugely prevalent in the automotive and electronics industry.

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Uganda bans thousands of charities in ‘chilling’ crackdown

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Government critics fear purge of sector as more than 12,000 organisations lose registered charity status

More than 12,000 charities have been told they can no longer operate in Uganda as critics raised fears that government regulatory measures effectively amounted to a purge.

The government said a review that took place in August and September would root out poorly performing organisations and create “a reliable data bank on all NGOs” in the country.

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UK criticised for its treatment of worker ‘tortured’ in China

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Simon Cheng, a former UK consular employee, has only been offered a two-year visa

Questions have been raised about Britain’s treatment of a former UK consular worker from Hong Kong, who said he was asked to resign after being detained and allegedly tortured on a work trip to mainland China.

Simon Cheng has been offered a two-year UK visa, but sources said it is a “working holiday” type, which only allows him to spend 12 months employed and leaves him without a path to permanent residency.

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‘The clock is ticking’: race to save 2 million from statelessness in Assam

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A team of volunteer paralegals are fighting to stop Indians without proof of citizenship being sent to detention camps

When she was one, Suro Devi was rescued by a sewer cleaner from a rubbish dump in Assam, northeast India. When the state of Assam started a massive exercise to register its citizens in 2015, Suro Devi did not have a birth certificate, information about her parents, a voter list with her name on it, or anything to prove that she had lived in Assam before 25 March 1971. She seemed destined to be left off the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and become stateless, and perhaps spend the rest of her days in a detention camp.

But Zamser Ali, a citizenship rights activist based in Assam’s capital, Guwahati, heard about Devi’s case. He knew that documents were not the only thing that could prove your origins. He managed to track down five eyewitnesses to her rescue from the dump. And in August, when the draft NRC was published, Devi’s name appeared on it.

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Behrouz Boochani calls Christchurch welcome a ‘reminder of kindness’

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Official reception highlights New Zealand’s differences with Australia over immigration

The city of Christchurch has welcomed Behrouz Boochani with a civic reception and a traditional Māori mihi whakatau – a formal welcome – as his presence, and liberty, in New Zealand once again underscores the country’s political differences with Australia over immigration.

Boochani was formally greeted from the plane by the mayor of Christchurch and the city’s Māori leaders, who told him he was welcomed by the mountains, the rivers, and the people of the city.

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