Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 9 January 2015

Dominic Ongwen, the former commander of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) who ended up in the custody of US soldiers this week, should be transferred to the International Criminal Court to face justice for his atrocities. Snow and extreme cold are making a bad situation much worse for the refugees that have fled Syria for the relative safety of southern Lebanon. Poor housing and a lack of essentials have rendered the groups extremely vulnerable to these dangerous elements. A new United Nations report released today sheds light on the mounting atrocities in South Sudan and confirms that there has been no accountability for the extensive crimes, including the targeted killing of civilians by government and opposition forces. Tumultuous events have marked a tragic beginning to 2015. Find out what was most popular in human rights news this week with our Most Read Dispatches and Top Tweets. From this morning: There's been surprising news out of Sri Lanka today, as the country's increasingly authoritarian president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, admitted election defeat, clearing the path for his former health minister, Maithripala Sirisena, to take office. This raises hopes in some quarters that perhaps Sri Lanka's thus far dismissive attitude toward the UN investigation into war-time atrocities might finally evolve. During the election campaign, Sirisena had called for another domestic inquiry, a path that has so far not delivered justice for the tens of thousands who suffered abuses in the final stages of that conflict. France and the world continue to mourn the victims of the attack on the office of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, as the authorities try to bring the culprits to justice. Despite a widespread feeling of solidarity in the country, some anti-Muslim attacks have already occurred, and there are fears that France and other EU countries may use this tragedy to push for counter-terrorism measures that undermine rights.