Today the Swedish prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, and the foreign minister, Carl Bildt, will visit Moscow to hold talks with President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. One of the topics on the agenda will be human rights. The Swedish representatives should speak up and take Russia to task on this issue. The criticism should be clear, concrete and public.

According to the Olympic Charter, the goal of Olympism is "to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity".

Yet there is no mechanism to ensure that this lofty ideal is upheld. Now that the torch has passed from Vancouver to London, there's a unique opportunity for the UK to bequeath to the Olympic movement a simple means of ensuring that the Games do indeed contribute to "the preservation of human dignity" through the protection of human rights.

Serbia’s recent arrest of nine men suspected of killing 41 Kosovo Albanians civilians in 1999 is a welcome step toward justice for the victims.

Downtown Grozny, Chechnya's capital, is ablaze with lights and full of chic shops now. But the paralysing fear remains. Human Rights Watch's Tanya Lokshina and her Memorial colleagues tell a rare visitor from the West about the kidnappings, about the relatives too fearful to complain...

The Uzbek government should immediately release a human rights defender convicted on fabricated religious extremism charges.

The Azerbaijani government should release two bloggers who have been detained since July 2009 as the result of a staged fight designed to frame them. The bloggers, Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade, lost their appeal against their conviction today.

A UN review of Uzbekistan’s human rights record on March 11 and 12, 2010, is a rare opportunity to highlight the government’s abysmal record and to urge specific steps to end abuses. The government’s persecution of human rights defenders, rampant torture and ill-treatment, and religious persecution top the list of concerns.

The Irish government should implement the will of the Irish population by liberalizing the country’s restrictive abortions laws. In a survey published today by YouGov, a polling organization, more than 60 percent of those who responded said they support access to abortion in Ireland in cases of rape, incest, fatal fetal abnormalities, or danger to the pregnant woman’s life or health.