Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 19 January 2015

Israel is calling on governments funding the International Criminal Court to drop their support, after the ICC opened a preliminary investigation into the situation in Palestine. As Palestine has now joined the Court, the body has jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed by all sides in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, from 13 June 2014 onward, meaning the prosecutor could examine last summer's destructive conflict in Gaza. In Ukraine, there has again been heavy fighting around the airport at Donetsk, with the government claiming to have taken it back from Russia-backed rebels. People filled the streets of Kiev on Sunday to support the government's efforts against the insurgents. Demonstrators held signs reading, "I am Volnovakha", referring in #JeSuisCharlie-style to the 13 passengers who died near the city of Volnovakha after their bus was hit by shelling last week. Both sides have committed serious abuses in the conflict in the east, and Moscow has been responsible for a stark deterioration of rights in Russian-occupied Crimea. Lebanon’s religion-based personal status laws discriminate against women across the religious spectrum and don’t guarantee their basic rights, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Lebanon has 15 separate personal status laws for its recognized religions but no civil code covering issues such as divorce, property rights, or care of children. These laws are administered by autonomous religious courts with little or no government oversight, and often issue rulings that violate women’s human rights. A new report on the crisis in the Central African Republic details how arms are getting into the country and fueling atrocity crimes there. There's news from Cameroon that the Nigerian insurgent group Boko Haram has kidnapped some 80 people. Meanwhile in Chad, tens of thousands have marched in support of the country's deployment of troops to fight Boko Haram. In Niger, a protest against the publishing of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons in France has ended with churches being set on fire. Dozens were arrested, and the BBC reported at least three dead. Rights groups have called on Bahrain to immediately release Sheikh Ali Salman, the secretary general of Al Wifaq, a legally recognized political society, who has been in detention since his arrest on 29 December 2014. They say the authorities have failed to present any evidence that justifies his detention.