Scotland's release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in connection with the Lockerbie bombing of 1988, was supposed to be Gaddafi's ultimate international relations coup in a year when, at times, Libya held the chairmanship of the African Union and the presidency of both the UN Security Council and of the General Assembly. But Megrahi's homecoming did not go as smoothly as planned.

The British Government's Inquiry into its Iraq War policies should include human rights abuses as part of its investigation, Human Rights Watch said today.

The UK government should order an independent judicial inquiry into mounting evidence that its security services and law enforcement agencies were complicit in the torture of terrorism suspects in Pakistan.

“Protection of human rights can only be achieved if the victims of human rights violations have access to an effective remedy.” Yet this fundamental human right, enshrined in so many instruments, including the European Convention on Human Rights, is being breached on a continuous basis in many member states. This fact underscores a serious enforcement gap that urgently needs to be addressed.

Legislation to allow the government to hold secret investigations into suspicious deaths involving state agents would undermine accountability and breach human rights law.

International donors should not resume development aid to Zimbabwe until the ZANU-PF element in the power-sharing government ends its ongoing rights abuses and backs serious reforms.

Last week's release of four top-secret United States Justice Department memos on torture demonstrates the readiness of the new administration to swap the secrecy and lies that have surrounded the treatment of terrorism suspects by the US Government in the past six years for some transparency and truth. But that should not be the end of it. Truth is no substitute for accountability.

The Cayman Islands, a British Overseas Territory, should revise a draft constitution that will be submitted to voters on May 20, 2009, to ensure that it gives full protections to all against unequal treatment, and the British government should ensure that this happens, Human Rights Watch said today in letters to the Cayman governor, Stuart Jack, and the British foreign secretary, David Miliband.