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Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 7 July 2014

Ukraine, Kenya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Netherlands, Mexico, Sudan, Eritrea, Hungary

In some rare good news from Syria, the Kurdish armed group called the People’s Protection Units (YPG) pledged to stop using and recruiting children under 18 for combat. The YPG said it would decommission 128 children, although those over 16 will remain in the force with non-combat duties. Human Rights Watch recently released a report and video about the use of children for military purposes in this region of norther Syria.

Staying in the Middle East, Bahrain expelled a senior US diplomat, Tom Malinowski, after he met with members of a Shia opposition group. 
Tunisia has been a leader in the region in rights-based reforms and should play the same role in the fight against terror. But a draft counterterrorism law retains some of the most troubling provisions of a 2003 law that was implemented under ousted leader Ben Ali’s, and used by authorities to prosecute well over 3,000 people.
An epidemic of violence has claimed the lives of thousands of Pakistani Shia since 2008. As international attention focuses on the growing threat of Sunni-Shia sectarian violence in Iraq following the incursion of the militant group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS),  a  Human Rights Watch report documents an ongoing vicious campaign of violence against the Shia in Pakistan.

South Africa’s inexplicable support for a regressive resolution at the UN Human Rights Council brings into question its commitment to gender equality and the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. South Africa supported what amounts to an insidious attempt to undermine the universality of human rights, and specifically the rights of women and LGBT people.

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