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Daily Brief, 7 May, 2024

United Nations member countries should use negotiations on the “Pact for the Future” to commit to strengthening human rights, including promoting economic justice and protecting the right to a healthy environment, Human Rights Watch said. The UN Pact for the Future, currently being negotiated, is expected to be adopted at the Summit of the Future, a special UN meeting slated for September 2024. Among the issues being discussed by the 193 UN member countries are economic policy reforms and how to realize the right to a clean, healthy, and safe environment, as well as the emphasis that should be placed on human rights generally.

An Israeli strike on an emergency and relief center in south Lebanon on March 27, 2024, was an unlawful attack on civilians that failed to take all necessary precautions.

Human Rights Watch appreciates the opportunity to submit its views and recommendations for consideration by the United Nations secretary-general in response to Resolution 78/241 on “Lethal autonomous weapons systems” adopted by the UN General Assembly on 22 December 2023.

A court in Dominica recently became the latest in the Eastern Caribbean to strike down pernicious colonial-era laws that criminalise consensual same-sex conduct between adults. In a disappointing bucking of this regional trend, the High Court of St. Vincent and the Grenadines recently did the opposite, upholding the country’s analogous laws. The High Court’s reasoning, at times unscientific and dubious, represents a stain on the country’s human rights record.

Candidates in South Africa’s forthcoming general elections have been scapegoating and demonizing foreign nationals, risking stoking xenophobic violence.

Daily Brief, May 6, 2024.

United Nations member countries should press the Cambodian government on its human rights abuses, including targeting political opponents and dissidents.

Recent high temperatures underscore the need to hammer out the details of a regional environmental rights declaration, work that is underway today in Jakarta as a working group formed by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) convenes.