Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 10 June

The highly anticipated immigration reform debate kicks off in the US Senate... Human Rights Watch's roadmap to immigration reform calls on Congress and the Obama Administration to create a fairer, more effective, and more compassionate immigration system based on these four principles... A new amendment to the Farm Bill would shut out thousands of poor families from food stamp programs. Antonio Ginatta, D.C. advocacy director, called on Congress to strip the amendment from the legislation in an op-ed published in The Hill... Tweets to Senator David Vitter, Republican Senator from Louisiana who introduced the amendment, have not yet received a reply... Globally, progress for domestic workers as new countries ratify the Domestic Worker's Treaty of 2011... The US surveillance scandal continues to dominate the international news, with the man at the center of the leaks making himself public in an astounding interview on Sunday... The media frenzy around the story is pushing the Syria crisis out of the spotlight. But that conflict continues, of course, and the brutality goes on. Most recently, following the fall of Qasair, international calculations appear to be changing... The Syria Coalition responded to Human rights Watch's report highlighting attacks on schools... HRW's Priyanka Motaparthy gave an interview about that report at the weekend... Yeasterday also brought grim news out of Aleppo...