War Crimes in Yemen: Daily Brief
War crimes in Yemen; people with disabilities are political pawns in Georgia (US); asylum seekers in Hungary finally get food; worrying promotions in Nicaragua; international pressure to save Israa al-Ghomgham in Saudi Arabia; Florida's death penalty; and Egypt arrests more critics.
The Saudi-led coalition’s investigations into alleged war crimes in Yemen have lacked credibility and failed to provide redress to civilian victims. The Joint Incidents Assessment Team (JIAT) was established in 2016 after evidence mounted of coalition violations of the laws of war, and so far has only provided deeply flawed laws-of-war analyses and reached dubious conclusions.
A county in Georgia, US, has proposed to close seven of its nine polling sites because they don't comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. However, this measure doesn’t help voters with disabilities. Rather than closing the stations for lack of accessibility, the county should update these public facilities to ensure that everyone can access them.
Asylum seekers held in transit zones on the Hungarian-Serbian border are finally getting food. Orders from the European Court of Human Rights and pressure from the Hungarian Helsinki Committee have been necessary to ensure the authorities provide food to asylum seekers who haven't received it for two weeks.
President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua has promoted two officials who have played a leading role in the brutal repression of protests in the country.
Israa al-Ghomgham might be one of the first women sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia for her peaceful activism. Read Hiba Zayadin's take on the need for the international community to pressure Saudi Arabia to revoke her death sentence and set her, and other imprisoned Saudi activists, free.
Florida is one of the US states which still has the death penalty. A new Amnesty report documents that it currently has the second largest death row in the country.
A former diplomat has been arrested in Egypt after he called for a referendum on President al-Sisi's government. Michael Page, our deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division, sees it as "the latest in an unending wave of repression against anyone who dares to criticize al-Sisi."