Hungary’s troubling record on rights is putting Europe to the test. How to respond to Budapest’s continued refusal to heed repeated calls for reform following critical assessments by a growing number of expert bodies has turned into a major preoccupation for Europe’s policymakers and parliamentarians.

Prime Minister David Cameron’s two-day visit to Kazakhstan this weekend happens to overlap with a Supreme Court hearing concerning the conviction of a prominent opposition leader in a seriously flawed and politically motivated trial. It should be both easy and timely for Cameron to publicly raise concern about the imprisoned opposition leader, Vladimir Kozlov, at the highest levels. But will he?

Arif was only 15 when he fled Afghanistan, without his parents, and paid smugglers to take him to Indonesia. There, he was detained for months in sordid, overcrowded immigration detention facilities where the guards beat him. When he got out, he felt he had no options in Indonesia, so he risked the boat journey to Australia.

I have interviewed many boys who, like Arif, are traveling alone. They are often their family’s last hope – their parents sell off their last piece of land or borrow money to help them flee the violence or poverty of their homelands. They are resilient and brave, undertaking these remarkable journeys alone. They also carry a heavy weight on their shoulders – they know the sacrifices their family made to send them into safety, and they are desperate to make good on their opportunities, no matter how slim.

After the Turkish government’s forcible evacuation of Taksim Gezi Park on June 15, bringing to an end the 19-day occupation, police cordoned off the park. Regular police officers now guard its entrance from the square, seated on white plastic garden chairs in a long line at the top of the main steps. The park is sealed off with tape as though it were a crime scene.

The courts can be reformed in countless ways but fair trials are possible only when the judiciary asserts its oversight over the police and tempers its readiness to accept contested statements into evidence.

When European Union ministers meet their counterparts from the Gulf Cooperation Council states for a summit in Bahrain on June 30, the dismal state of that island kingdom's human rights record needs to have a prominent place on the agenda. Despite King Hamad's claims of reform, Bahrain is clearly heading down the road of greater repression and the EU ministers should make a point of clearly and publicly saying so.

Resentment of the west is making emerging powers hold back when they could be using their strengths and experiences to challenge the world’s abusive regimes.

In 2012, Mwamini K. a sex worker in Dar es Salaam, was raped at gunpoint by a client who got angry when she asked him to use a condom. She did not report the case to the police nor seek medical assistance because she did not trust that she could get the help that she needed, she told me. (Mwamini’s name, like all others here, has been changed.) Mwamini explained that in 2011, she sought treatment for a sexually transmitted infection at Mwananyamala Hospital. The nurse refused to treat her unless she brought her sexual partner. Mwamini told the nurse that she was a sex worker and did not know who infected her. The hospital turned her away.

On Tuesday (18 June), the German chancellor and the US president will embrace each other. Eyes will be shining as both sides praise the German-American friendship. After all, this visit from Washington is an election campaign present for Angela Merkel, and the president can hope for symbolic pictures to build his own legend.

Even in the basement of the courthouse, safe behind a closed door, I’m sure the defendant could still hear the women screaming at him. I certainly could hear the women, standing just metres away, and I definitely felt their violent rage as one hit me in the arm, shouting at me - “What are you drawing in your notebook, girl, what are you drawing?” - as I walked out of the courthouse.

It has been a long and eventful week in Istanbul. It will be hard for many who were there to forget the scenes reminiscent of war on the streets around Taksim Square and Gezi Park, the site of the protests, on Tuesday evening and into the night. After apparently conciliatory tweets from Istanbul governor Hüseyin Avni Mutlu to the young protesters occupying Gezi Park just a day earlier, and following indications that the prime minister was ready to sit down to talks over the protests on Wednesday, both leaders made an astonishing about-face.

The women, about a dozen in all, had just finished breakfast at the Tijuana shelter when I arrived. Like many people in Mexican towns on the US border, they had been deported from the United States for not having proper documentation. When I asked them if they had kids living in the United States, most raised their hands and started crying. All these mothers, missing their children, unable to legally return to their families in the United States. I passed around tissues. These days, I always carry tissues with me.

Akech B. loved to study and dreamed of becoming a nurse. But when she was 14, her uncle who was raising her forced her to leave school to marry a man Akech described as old and gray-haired. The man paid 75 cows as dowry for Akech. He was already married to another woman with whom he had several children.

An anti-hunger program should be no place to mete out punishment. But that, in effect, will soon start happening all over the country - unless the US Senate changes course.

HRW's Carroll Bogert began the day in Taksim Square, Istanbul as police again moved against protesters. After visiting the medical tent at Gerzi Park, Bogert interviewed an emergency room doctor at Sisli Hospital. The evening began calmly but the police returned and began teargassing again...