Botswana Decriminalizes Homosexuality: Daily Brief
Botswana decriminalizes homosexuality; businesses join Hong Kong extradition law protests; severe abuse of children at Senegal's Quranic schools; halt handover of UN peacekeeping mission in Darfur to Sudanese paramilitaries; Muslim countries fail to condemn China's mass incarceration of Uyghur Muslims; new UK welfare system hurts those who need it; Vatican pushes back against gender theory; and Human Rights Watch wins award for its work on the rights of people with disabilities.
In a landmark ruling the High Court in Botswana today scrapped the country’s anti-gay laws. The High Court rejected laws that impose up to seven years in prison for same-sex relationships, stating they were unconstitutional. The ruling follows a similar constitutional challenge in Kenya last month, where activists’ moves to overturn laws on gay sex were thwarted.
Scores of Hong Kong businesses have vowed to shut down as anger builds over government plans to push through a law which would make it easier for critics of Beijing to be extradited to mainland China despite a huge weekend protest.
Severe abuse, exploitation, and neglect of children known as talibés continue at alarming rates in many of Senegal’s Quranic schools, Human Rights Watch research shows. President Macky Sall should use his second term in office to protect these children and end forced child begging.
The UN Security Council should halt all plans to hand over its peacekeeping mission in Sudan's Darfur region to abusive paramilitary forces. Sudan's Rapid Support Forces have a long track record of violence in Darfur, and doctors have accused them of raping and killing peaceful protesters during a violent crackdown in Khartoum last week.
Many Muslim countries have remained silent in the face of China’s mass incarceration of Uyghur Muslims so as not to draw attention to their own human rights record or for fear of reprisals from China, the US envoy on religious liberty, Sam Brownback, told the Guardian.
The UK government’s roll out of a digital welfare system has heightened the risk that people in need might be denied essential benefits. The “British welfare state is gradually disappearing behind a webpage and an algorithm”, warned a UN Report on poverty and human rights.
In defiance of modern gender norms the Vatican has launched a paper to help Catholic school teachers counter ideas which “deny the natural difference between a man and a woman”. Catholics who advocate for a more inclusive approach to LGBT people warn that the church is inviting discrimination.
And finally more good news to end on: leading disability rights organization Access Living has awarded Human Rights Watch its annual Lead On! Award in recognition of HRW's contributions to the inclusion and rights of people with disabilities. In 2013, Human Rights Watch became the world’s first international human rights group to create a dedicated team to investigate and expose abuses against people with disabilities.