Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 24 April 2015

In response to the dramatic rise in migrant and refugee deaths in the Mediterranean, EU leaders meeting at an extraordinary summit have decided to expand funding for seaborne patrols. However, rights groups have criticized the plan's many shortcomings, including its failure to provide the enhanced operations with a clear search-and-rescue mandate. Today marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the Armenian genocide. Many are commemorating the horrific events in which up to 1.5 million may have died. Azerbaijan is hosting the new Olympics-linked "European Games" and playing games with the EU in the process... A new bill in the US would endorse and extend the National Security Agency’s mass violation of privacy rights. The Council of Europe, Europe’s leading human rights body with 47 member countries, adopted a landmark resolution on the rights of transgender people. The government of India has placed the Ford Foundation on its "prior permission" list, meaning that all its funds coming into the country will first have to be approved by the home ministry. The step comes amid other worrying moves against non-governmental organizations and their funding. One of Ethiopia's famous "Zone 9 Bloggers," imprisoned for a year without trial, has managed to smuggle a letter out of jail. Describing the conditions inside and the injustice of the case, Natnael Feleke calls on the US to help.