You Are All Terrorists came the dreaded words, as the blows and kicking mercilessly rained down before a police car pulled up and took the suspect away.
From Australia to Mozambique, Indian mining firms are taking the lead on lucrative, globally important projects. But some of these opportunities come with serious human rights risks that could threaten both the reputation and financial health of Indian companies.
“The police [are] working within the parameters of the law,” Uganda’s information minister, Mary Karooro Okurut, told journalists on Monday in Kampala, hours after police had forced two newspapers and two radio stations to shut down while they conducted a search – and kept them shut. After years of documenting human rights abuses in Uganda, including threats to free expression, I was not impressed by her words. Her claim that the day’s events were grounded in law only further illustrated the government’s emerging practice of citing laws to justify repression.
Kwamboka W. was still in primary school when she had sex with her first boyfriend. She had no information about contraception and didn’t use any protection. Three months later, she was shocked to learn that she was pregnant.
The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) was founded in 2003 with the goal of strengthening governance by increasing transparency over revenues from the oil, gas, and mining sectors. EITI has contributed to much greater disclosures of information and helped spur dialogue in many countries. But EITI has not made progress toward its ultimate purpose of enhancing accountability in resource-rich countries. An independent evaluation commissioned by EITI in 2011 concluded, “EITI has not been a significant driver of change. While transparency has improved, accountability does not appear to have changed much.” The evaluation attributed this problem to the absence of a coherent strategic vision, explaining that without clarity on how publicizing credible data on natural resource revenues would lead to better governance, EITI would not be able to direct its efforts to where they would be most likely to deliver results.
Victoria J. married in 2009 at age 14, and became pregnant shortly after. “I started labour in the morning on a Friday …. The nurse kept checking and saying I would deliver safely. On Monday she said I was weak.
Victoria J. married in 2009 at age 14, and became pregnant shortly after. “I started labour in the morning on a Friday …. The nurse kept checking and saying I would deliver safely. On Monday she said I was weak.
Far from giving in to any effort by Kenya to drive a further wedge between the AU and the ICC, the AU should use its upcoming summit to call publicly for the new government’s full co-operation with the ICC.
50 Countries will meet in London on May 7 to support the nation-building project in Somalia. It is crucial that women, children and displaced people are at the forefront of the debate.
Nearly two years have passed since the end of Côte d’Ivoire’s brutal five-month long post-electoral crisis, which resulted in the slaughter of at least 3,000 civilians and the rape of 150 women.
Kenya's new president missed the opportunity on day one to declare unequivocal commitment to the International Criminal Court and his administration should do so as soon as possible, says campaign group
The harsh experience of Somalis driven to seek shelter in Mogadiushu 's unsafe camps should be an urgent priority for the country's new government and its foreign donors.
“There’s no reason to despair,” Cameroonian president Paul Biya told journalists in January 2013. They had questioned him, at a Paris news conference, on Cameroon’s startling level of arrests and prosecutions for same-sex conduct – by some accounts, the highest number of “homosexuality” prosecutions in the world. “Minds are changing,” Biya reassured the journalists. He mentioned a recent case appeals court ruling overturning the conviction of two transgender people, Jonas K. and Franky D., who had been sentenced to five years in prison.
Former Guatemalan strongman Efraín Ríos Montt went on trial in Guatemala City late last month on charges of genocide relating to the massacres of indigenous Mayan people during his rule.
Darfur desperately needs help – but not just to repair damage from the horrific conflict that erupted in 2003, which killed 300,000 people, destroyed hundreds of villages and pushed 2 million people to camps inside Darfur and across the Chadian border. Darfur also desperately needs to overcome the marginalization and underdevelopment that helped fuel the conflict.
This week’s high-level ministerial meeting about gender equality in international development assistance should promote the rights and needs of women with disabilities, Human Rights Watch said today. Specifically, governments should address the marginalization of women with disabilities in the declaration to be adopted on July 1, 2010.
The Chinese call it jin zhuan, or golden brick. The Russians have suggested calling it briuki, an acronym meaning trousers in Russian. And what about the ambiguous S? It originally was just a plural for the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, places where a Goldman Sachs analyst was urging greater investment. Now it stands for South Africa, which joined in 2010 despite having an economy roughly on the order of China’s sixth-largest province.
Official communiqués on the BRICS summit in Durban are promising new initiatives on trade, economic development and technical co-operation. But Russia wants more from its partners than just trade. With concern rising in Europe over the worst crackdown on Russian democracy since the Soviet Union collapsed more than 20 years ago, Vladimir Putin is coming to Africa to find supporters of its world view.
Aguet, from South Sudan, was forced at age 15 to marry a 75-year-old man. Her family received 80 cows as dowry in exchange. “I resisted the marriage,” she told Human Rights Watch. But her uncles beat her and the marriage went ahead. Aguet dropped out of school and went to live with her husband, who now also beats her.
To be forced into marriage and pregnancy as a child--when your own life has barely begun--is a serious violation of human rights. Far from creating a nurturing and safe space, child marriage is a driver of poor maternal health, violence, poverty, and pain.
In his new report, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez, the UN’s leading expert on torture, has drawn attention to severe abuses, such as neglect, mental and physical abuse and sexual violence, against people with mental or intellectual disabilities in health-care settings.
"This will be bloody." So reads a text message received by a Cameroonian lawyer in October 2012. "Tell your accomplice that nowhere in this country will [his children] have peace." Over the last four months, two Cameroonian lawyers have received a series of death threats by email and SMS. The messages have become increasingly vitriolic, with threats to kill the lawyers, their children, and their clients.
It’s an occupational hazard when you work on women’s rights, to routinely face women who have been subjected to unspeakable violence, horrible beyond anything you could imagine. As a young lawyer in South Africa in the 1990s, one of first my clients was stabbed by her estranged husband. I held her hand as she bled to death on the pavement. When I worked as the director of the Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre to End Violence Against Women in Johannesburg, I, and the other lawyers who provided legal advice at the centre, saw women every day looking for help to protect themselves from rape, beatings and other violence. Many of our clients arrived at the office with the signs of violence clearly visible on their bodies and their faces.
Les mêmes causes produisent les mêmes effets (“The same causes produce the same effects”). It’s a phrase I’ve heard Ivorian lawyers, taxi drivers, and civil society leaders utter repeatedly in recent months to describe Côte d’Ivoire’s uneven prospects for reconciliation so long as President Alassane Ouattara’s government makes little progress toward impartial justice and addressing abuses by the security forces. But the phrase applies just as aptly to the failure of Côte d’Ivoire’s most important partner, France, to publicly make human rights issues a priority in its diplomatic relationship.
A Somali woman who said she was raped by state security forces, a journalist who interviewed her, her husband, and two others who tried to assist her, have been charged with multiple crimes, including insulting a government body. They face a court hearing on February 2. The journalist is sitting in a Mogadishu prison right now. All of them – including the woman herself – could face years of prison in the war-torn city if they are convicted.
The new Somali government, in power since September and much feted by international donors, seems to think they can silence the discussion of sexual violence by the security forces by clamping down on women reporting rape and journalists. The UK - a key donor to Somalia - needs to send an urgent message to the contrary before Saturday's hearing date.
This weekend, more than 140 governments agreed on the text for a new legally binding convention on mercury, a highly toxic metal. It has taken three years and many compromises to get here. What often seemed like a dry and bureaucratic process – delegates arguing over nuance during long night sessions – has very real implications for millions of people around the globe.
When the new Somali president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, took office in September, the United States encouraged him to “usher in a new era of governance that is responsive, representative, and accountable.” This week, President Hassan Sheikh is in Washington to discuss how to get this done.
Despite recognition in the Millennium Declaration of the importance of human rights, equality, and non-discrimination for development, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) largely bypassed these key principles. The fundamental human rights guarantees of equality and non-discrimination are legally binding obligations and do not need instrumental justifications. Discrimination can both cause poverty and be a hurdle in alleviating poverty. Even in countries where there have been significant gains toward achieving the MDGs, inequalities have grown. The MDGs have supported aggregate progress—often without acknowledging the importance of investing in the most marginalized and excluded, or giving due credit to governments and institutions which do ensure that development benefits these populations. Recognition of this shortcoming in the MDGs has brought an increasing awareness of the importance of working to reverse growing economic inequalities through the post-2015 framework, and a key element of this must be actively working to dismantle discrimination.
Aminata D. is a self-confident, energetic 11-year-old girl who lives in southern Mali. When I meet her at the Worognan gold mine, she tells me that she never goes to school. Instead, she works in gold mining, using toxic mercury on a daily basis. She describes her work to me: "Once the ore is panned, you put a bit of mercury in. You rub the ore and the mercury with your two hands. Then, when the mercury has attracted the gold, you put it on a metal box and burn it."
Central government forces in Sudan, under the country’s longtime ruler, Omar al-Bashir, use tactics against communities it believes support the SPLA-North that were characteristic of the conflict: indiscriminate bombing, assaults on civilians by soldiers and allied militia, and obstructing humanitarian aid.
On 1 January 2013, Ethiopia took up its seat on the United Nations Human rights Council. The uncontested election – Africa put forward five countries for five seats – has raised some eyebrows, given the country’s own poor rights record. Elected member countries are obliged to ‘uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights’. Yet, in Ethiopia, hundreds of political prisoners languish in jails where torture is common and a crackdown on the media and civil society is in full swing.
If Obama wants to bolster his legacy in his second term, he can and should get tough on some of the United States' most unsavory friends and allies. Here are eight leaders to start with.
On Nov. 19, armed men from a rebel group called the M23 were looking for a prominent civil society leader in a village outside Goma, a provincial capital in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. He'd been in hiding for several weeks after receiving text messages threatening him for his public denunciations of M23 abuses. When the rebels didn't find him, they shot his colleague, killing him.
Far from giving in to any effort by Kenya to drive a further wedge between the AU and the ICC, the AU should use its upcoming summit to call publicly for the new government’s full co-operation with the ICC.
Nearly two years have passed since the end of Côte d’Ivoire’s brutal five-month long post-electoral crisis, which resulted in the slaughter of at least 3,000 civilians and the rape of 150 women.
Official communiqués on the BRICS summit in Durban are promising new initiatives on trade, economic development and technical co-operation. But Russia wants more from its partners than just trade. With concern rising in Europe over the worst crackdown on Russian democracy since the Soviet Union collapsed more than 20 years ago, Vladimir Putin is coming to Africa to find supporters of its world view.