Category Archives: United Nations

Three people killed in Iran protests over death of Mahsa Amini

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Kurdistan governor blames deaths on ‘plot by the enemy’ on fourth day of protests over 22-year-old’s death in custody

Iranian government officials have denounced a fourth day of protests after the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman in police custody, claiming the demonstrators have fallen victim to a conspiracy by its enemies.

Mahsa Amini died on Friday after she was arrested by the morality police for not wearing the hijab and her trousers correctly, a tragic episode that has unleashed fury in the streets against the unaccountable and sometimes brutal treatment handed out to women by this branch of the police.

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Ukraine war to take centre stage at UN as west and Russia vie for support

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The general assembly is expected to see fresh tussles over future of Ukraine, as well as the threats of famine and the climate crisis in the global south

The UN general assembly summit this week will be dominated by a struggle – between the US and its allies on one side and Russia on the other – for global support over the fate of Ukraine, as the global south fights to stop the conflict from overshadowing the existential threats of famine and the climate crisis.

With a return to fully in-person general debate, presidents and prime ministers will be converging on New York, many of them direct from London, where the diplomacy got underway on the sidelines of the Queen’s funeral.

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West weighs calling for China Uyghur abuses inquiry at UN

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Battle over influence at Human Rights Council, with Beijing warning of ‘politicisation of human rights’

Western powers are weighing the risk of a potential defeat if they table a resolution at the UN Human Rights Council calling for an independent commission to investigate alleged human rights abuses by China in Xinjiang.

The issue is a litmus case for Chinese influence at the UN, as well as the willingness of the UN to endorse a worldview that protects individual rights from authoritarian states.

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Vulnerable countries demand global tax to pay for climate-led loss and damage

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Poor nations exhort UN to consider ‘climate-related and justice-based’ tax on big fossil fuel users and air travel

The world’s most vulnerable countries are preparing to take on the richest economies with a demand for urgent finance – potentially including new taxes on fossil fuels or flying – for the irrecoverable losses they are suffering from the climate crisis, leaked documents show.

Extreme weather is already hitting many developing countries hard and forecast to wreak further catastrophe. Loss and damage – the issue of how to help poor nations suffering from the most extreme impacts of climate breakdown, which countries cannot be protected against – is one of the most contentious problems in climate negotiations.

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Call for UN torture watchdog to investigate Australia’s handcuffing of asylum seekers en route to medical care

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Detainees report feeling humiliated sitting in handcuffs in waiting rooms during medical appointments

The United Nations’ torture prevention watchdog has been urged to investigate Australia’s use of handcuffs on asylum seekers when seeking medical care – a practice advocates condemn as inhumane and unlawful.

In 2020, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (Piac) launched a landmark test case in the federal court alleging the practice of handcuffing immigration detainees for medical transfers was unlawful and traumatic, particularly for those with histories of torture and abuse.

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US civil rights groups file complaint against ‘death by incarceration’ to UN

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The filing urges UN special rapporteurs to declare life sentences, including without parole, a violation of incarcerated people’s rights

The moment Terrell Carter learned the death sentence he received decades ago would end, he was filled with extreme happiness and intense sorrow.

Carter had spent 30 years of his life in prison without parole for second-degree murder he committed in Pennsylvania, one of six states in the US where there is no possibility of parole when sentenced to life. In July, after Governor Tom Wolf commuted his sentence, Carter, now 53, regained his freedom after a nearly three-year process petitioning with the state board of pardons. Still, he said he felt “survivor’s guilt”.

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Leading environmentalists decry crackdown on Vietnam climate activists

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Letter from Goldman prize winners aims to block country’s bid to join UN’s human rights council over its jailing of campaigners

More than 50 winners of the world’s most prestigious environmental prize are calling on the UN to reject a bid by Vietnam to join the international organization’s human rights council (UNHRC) amid a crackdown on the country’s climate activists.

In a letter sent on Wednesday, 52 past winners of the Goldman prize for environmentalists have urged the UNHRC to vote against the application from Vietnam, where authorities have this year jailed four climate leaders on disputed tax charges.

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Vietnam urged to free green activist Nguy Thi Khanh as it bids to join UN rights body

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Goldman laureates raise concerns over Vietnam’s record on suppressing environmental protest

More than 50 Goldman environmental prize laureates from 41 countries have written to the UN human rights council as it considers admitting Vietnam as a new member.

In the letter, which comes as the council meets for its 51st session (12 September – 7 October), the prize winners raise concerns over Vietnam’s human rights record, in particular the sentencing in June of Nguy Thi Khanh, a fellow Goldman prize winner and Vietnam’s best-known environmental advocate, to two years’ imprisonment for alleged tax evasion.

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UN chief appeals for ‘massive’ help as flood-hit Pakistan puts losses at $30bn

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Countries most responsible for climate crisis must ‘end war with nature’, says António Guterres

The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, has said the world owes impoverished Pakistan “massive” help in recovering from the summer’s devastating floods because the country bears less blame than many others for the climate crisis.

Months of heavy monsoon rains and flooding have killed 1,391 people and affected 33 million while half a million people have become homeless. Planeloads of aid from the United States, the United Arab Emirates and other countries have begun arriving, but Guterres said there is more to be done to help a country which contributes less than 1% of global emissions.

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Tajikistan ‘rounding up and deporting Afghan refugees’

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UN refugee agency urges authorities to end forced deportations as families say they are too scared to leave their homes

The Tajikistan authorities are rounding up Afghan refugees and forcing them to cross the border back into Afghanistan, despite some having been granted asylum in other countries.

According to reports from Tajikistan’s 10,000-strong Afghan refugee community, people are being picked up off the street and houses raided in a spate of recent round-ups of Afghan families, who have been sheltering in the country since the Taliban seized power in August 2021.

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Drought likely to push parts of Somalia into famine by end of year, warns UN

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World is ‘in last minute of the 11th hour to save lives’, says aid chief, amid fears that crisis is worse than 2010 famine, when 250,000 died

Two areas of Somalia are likely to enter a state of famine later this year as the country battles an unrelenting drought and flare-ups of conflict, the UN humanitarian chief has warned.

Martin Griffiths said the latest UN food insecurity analysis had found “concrete indications” that famine would occur in the Baidoa and Burhakaba districts of south-central Somalia between October and December unless aid efforts were significantly stepped up.

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New Zealand’s shadow foreign affairs spokesperson faces criticism for response to UN report on Uyghurs

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Gerry Brownlee says report on human rights violations in Xinjiang recognises China is ‘dealing with a terrorist problem’

New Zealand’s shadow foreign affairs spokesperson said a UN report on the human rights abuses of Uyghurs includes recognition that China is “dealing with a terrorist problem essentially”, in remarks criticised by China analysts.

“It’s good that it acknowledges that there has been a terrorism problem in the particular part of China that the report is on,” Gerry Brownlee, a lawmaker for the centre-right National party, told Radio New Zealand (RNZ) on Thursday in an interview about the UN findings.

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Physical integrity of Zaporizhzhia plant ‘violated’, says UN nuclear chief

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IAEA head Rafael Grossi says his team will stay at Russian-held site in Ukraine to assess safety and damage

The “physical integrity” of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in south-eastern Ukraine has been “violated”, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said, as Ukraine’s authorities accused Russia of misleading the inspection mission.

After leading a team of inspectors to the Russian-occupied plant, the biggest nuclear power station in Europe, Rafael Grossi said that two IAEA experts would stay on permanently to provide constant monitoring and an uninterrupted flow of information to IAEA headquarters in Vienna.

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Lawyer criticises UN report’s failure to call Uyghur oppression ‘genocide’

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Sir Geoffrey Nice QC says outgoing human rights chief’s report on China makes it easier for international community to do nothing

The UN’s failure to mention the word genocide in its report alleging serious human rights violations by China against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province is an “astonishing” lapse, according to a leading British human rights lawyer.

The 45-page report from the outgoing UN human rights commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, landed minutes before her term ended on Wednesday, outlining allegations of torture, including forced medical procedures, as well as sexual violence against Uyghur Muslims.

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Five key points from the UN report on Xinjiang human rights abuses

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Damning report cites human rights violations against Uyghur Muslims in north-west Chinese province

China has committed “serious human rights violations” against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province which may amount to crimes against humanity, the outgoing UN human rights commissioner has said in a long-awaited and damning report.

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Rights groups call for inquiries into Uyghur abuses in China after damning UN report

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Governments urged to launch formal investigations after UN findings on treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang

Governments around the world should establish formal independent investigations into human rights abuses in Xinjiang, victims and human rights groups have said, after the 11th-hour release of a long-awaited UN report.

The report by the UN office of the high commissioner for human rights (OHCHR) was published minutes before Michelle Bachelet ended her tenure.

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First ship carrying grain from Ukraine docks on Horn of Africa

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Food experts say shipment is drop in bucket for drought-hit Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia but hope supplies pick up

The first ship carrying grain from Ukraine for people in the hungriest parts of the world has docked at Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, as areas of east Africa are badly affected by deadly drought and conflict.

Food security experts say it is a drop in the bucket for the vast needs in the worst-hit countries of Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, the country to which the shipment is going. But the flow of Ukrainian grain to other hungry parts of the world is expected to continue, with another ship leaving on Tuesday for Yemen. The UN World Food Programme has said it was working on multiple ships.

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Pakistan not to blame for climate crisis-fuelled flooding, says PM Shehbaz Sharif

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Sharif’s climate change minister called the flooding a ‘climate catastrophe’ and said the south Asian nation was ‘paying the price’ for western use of fossil fuels

Pakistan is not to blame for a climate crisis-fuelled disaster that has flooded much of the country, the prime minister has said, as he made a desperate plea for international help in what he said was the “toughest moment” in the nation’s history.

“We are suffering from it but it is not our fault at all,” Shehbaz Sharif told journalists on Tuesday afternoon at a press conference where his climate change minister referred to the flooding as a “climate catastrophe”.

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UN and Pakistan appeal for $160m to help flooding victims

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Call for emergency funding as nearly half a million people displaced and estimated $10bn damage to economy

The United Nations and Pakistan are to appeal for $160m (£135m) in emergency funding for the nearly half a million people displaced by record-breaking floods that have killed more than 1,150 people since mid-June.

Large areas remain underwater and more than 33 million people, or one in seven Pakistanis, have been affected by the floods. Rescuers have been evacuating stranded people to safer ground.

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