The past week has been another reminder of the urgent need to build global food systems that treat food as a human right rather than a commodity. On May 13, India banned most wheat exports to safeguard domestic food security for its 1.4 billion…

During the parliamentary committee session on security on April 26, 2022, Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi revealed that Japan will once again accept Myanmar military personnel for training at Japan’s defense facilities. This is the second time…

A magistrate in India’s Jammu and Kashmir region approved the detention of the respected Kashmiri journalist and editor Fahad Shah under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act (PSA) on the grounds that he had been “misguiding common masses by…

Tunisian President Kais Saied has set about dismantling institutional checks on his authority since his July power grab, and state television is an obvious target. Before the 2011 revolution that ousted authoritarian President Zine el-Abidine Ben…

On March 14, 2021, “Zarni” joined protests in Hlaing Tharyar, near Yangon, against the Myanmar military’s February 1 coup. The large protests were planned by factory workers, a large portion of the industrial area’s residents. Protesters prepared…

This week, Russia’s Education Ministry provided schoolteachers with “information for a social studies session.” “Disinformation” would have been a more accurate title for the two-page text, which teachers are apparently meant to read out loud in their…

A week of legal proceedings at the International Court of Justice in the Hague ended with Gambia making a plea for the judges to move swiftly and ensure that justice for the Rohingya is delayed no longer. On February 28, the hearings on Myanmar’s…

Japanese beverage giant Kirin Holdings Company is pulling out of Myanmar. The decision, announced on February 14, came after a year of fruitless negotiations with the military-owned Myanmar Economic Holdings Public Company Limited (MEHL) to…

Choe Kum Chol, a 33-year-old North Korean military information technology officer, escaped his North Korean minders in July 2021 while working in Vladivostok in far eastern Russia. He was assisted by an activist, also a North Korean escapee, who…

The recent protests in India’s Karnataka state over the wearing of the hijab, or headscarf, in educational institutions have exposed communal rifts in India that are increasingly fueled by divisive political campaigns. These rifts are so strong, they…

Over the past month, several government-run educational institutions in India’s Karnataka state have banned Muslim female students from wearing the hijab, or headscarf. The state government, led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP),…

This week, Russia's Justice Ministry filed a lawsuit seeking to “liquidate” Sphere Foundation, the legal entity under which the Russian LGBT Network operates, arguing the group’s activities run contrary to “traditional values.” The network works to…

United Nations Security Council member countries should abandon their timid approach to the Myanmar military’s mounting atrocities and replace mealymouthed statements with tough action. A year ago, on February 1, 2021, Myanmar’s military ousted the…

“I’m not sure whether to laugh, get angry, or feel utter frustration,” Myriam Bribri, a Tunisian activist told Human Rights Watch in response to the fine and four-month prison sentence a court in the city of Sfax gave her on December 21, 2021. Bribri…

As all eyes are focused on growing tensions between the Kremlin and NATO, Chechen authorities seem emboldened to be unrestrained in their use of lawless tactics in their war with dissent. Yesterday, Chechen police broke into the apartment of 52-…

The final days of 2021 were marked by a particularly vicious escalation of Russia’s crackdown on independent reporting and activism. Amid a flurry of new “foreign agent” designations, arrests of political activists, and appalling court rulings…

United Nations member countries currently haggling over the organization’s 2022 budget should stand firm against Russia and China-led efforts to slash funding for UN human rights work. Every December, diplomats on the UN General Assembly’s fiscal…

In a year where atrocities by Myanmar’s military have been commonplace, credible reports of a massacre of 11 people, including 5 children, who were bound, shot, and then burned, have sparked revulsion and outrage. Photos and video circulated online…

On December 10, 2019, Abubacarr Tambadou, then Gambia’s justice minister, posed a question to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. “Why is the world standing by and allowing such horrors again in our lifetime?” It was the first…

Since October 29, numerous fires have severely damaged Thantlang, a remote town in Myanmar’s northwestern Chin State. The evidence from space is undeniable: residential homes, places of worship, commercial buildings, and more have been reduced to ash…