In response to pressure from Human Rights Watch to heed the crisis in refugee camps for Somalis in Kenya, five foreign governments committed a total of more than US$11 million to improve conditions in the camps.
On April 7, Alberto Fujimori was found guilty by a three-judge panel of the Peruvian Supreme Court on charges involving serious human rights violations.
In a major turnaround in US policy, new legislation signed into law by President Obama on March 11 permanently bans nearly all cluster bomb exports by the United States.
On February 13, the Probation Department in Los Angeles County announced a moratorium on billing parents for the incarceration costs of their children, as urged by Human Rights Watch and the LA-based organization Youth Justice Coalition.
Human Rights Watch’s advocacy led the Vietnamese government to release five ethnic Khmer Krom Buddhist monks imprisoned for participation in a 2007 peaceful protest.
As recommended by Human Rights Watch, Germany’s Ministry of Justice has created three dedicated positions in the general prosecutor’s office to investigate cases of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes that fall under Germany’s universal jurisdiction law.
In a momentous step for international justice, the International Criminal Court (ICC) on March 4 issued an arrest warrant for Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
On March 11, 2009 President Barack Obama signed legislation banning the export of any cluster munitions with a “dud rate” of greater than one percent. Only a tiny fraction of the US arsenal can meet that standard, so the ban is nearly comprehensive.
A child lying on a hospital bed, his face blank with shock, his stomach ripped open. Bloodied bodies of civilians strewn in the streets. The look of panic and anguish on a woman’s face as she falls under a rain of shrapnel.
