As The Islamic State in Iraq and the Sham militants (ISIS) continues to take ground in Iraq, US president Barack Obama said that the US is looking at all military options, although he has no intention of sending ground troops. The brutality of ISIS, which formed in April 2013, and its precursor, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, has been well-documented. In its effort to establish a “caliphate” in the region, ISIS has committed crimes in Iraq and Syria, including car and suicide bomb attacks in civilian areas, summary executions, torture in detention, discrimination against women, and destruction of religious property. Iraqi forces under its Shia-led government have also committed repeated abuses against civilians while fighting ISIS and other armed groups, such as unlawful raids and arrests, torture, and largely indiscriminate shelling and barrel-bombing – rights violations that further alienated many of Iraq’s Sunni-dominated areas, which are now under ISIS control.
The International Criminal Court will try its first former head of state – former Côte d’Ivoire President Laurent Gbagbo, accused crimes against humanity for his role in 2010 of five months of fighting in Côte d’Ivoire that resulted in at least 3,000 deaths.
When is a family not a family? When that family does not include children, as far as Spain’s Constitutional Court is concerned. According to a recent judgement a couple with no children is ineligible to benefit as a ‘family unit’ from protection against eviction in the country’s housing meltdown.Child tobacco workers in the United States have some new allies in Congress. Today, on World Day against Child Labor, 17 US Senators sent a letter to the world's largest tobacco companies, urging them to prohibit hazardous child labor in their supply chains.
Giddy about football’s World Cup but unsure what country to root for from a human rights perspective? You’re not alone.
