Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 1 April 2015

The woman that Iran had arrested last year for watching a volleyball game, and who is out on bail, will not go to prison. This is good news, but Ghoncheh Ghavami should should never have been jailed in the first place, and Iran should repeal its law banning women from attending sporting events. Palestine has officially joined the International Criminal Court treaty today. This means Palestine accepts the court's jurisdiction over crimes committed on or from Palestinian territory since June 13, 2014. This development should be praised, not objected to. Against the odds, Nigeria has succeeded in carrying out a mostly peaceful presidential election. But the country's new president, Muhammadu Buhari, comes to power with a questionable human rights record. The last remaining television station that broadcasts in the Crimean Tatar language, Ukrainian, and Russian has been forced to close for failing to meet the deadline to re-register under Russia's media laws. The number of executions taking place worldwide has decreased in the last year, but not for juvenile offenders, who are being executed in greater numbers, thanks in large part to Iran and a few other countries. In Kenya, women face rampant sexual harassment and violence. But while protesting this horrendous status quo, Kenyan women also face another nefarious hurdle: The fact the some - including those holding government office - would rather engage in victim-blaming than fixing the problem.