Rights of Afghan women and girls at risk as the Taliban gain territory; Belarus increasingly unsafe for dissidents; UN envoy accuses Myanmar junta of massacre in township; failure to deliver justice in South Sudan; Facebook allows its platform to be used for fossil-fuel propaganda; and the Beijing Winter Olympics and human rights.  

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With the Taliban are making sweeping territorial gains in Afghanistan as the United States completes its troop withdrawal, the current Afghan state, and women’s rights in particular, are under threat.

While the suspicious death of a prominent Belarus exile in Ukraine raises concern, the defection of an Olympic sprinter in Japan and the trial of opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova behind closed doors at a court in Belarus’ capital Minsk show that Belarus is increasingly unsafe for  dissidents.

Myanmar’s ambassador to the United Nations has alerted the world body to a “reported massacre” by the junta in the township of Kani. Meanwhile, the country is reeling under a new wave of Covid-19 infections, as its health care system has all but collapsed.

The African Union Commission’s failure to ensure that justice is delivered for the countless victims of atrocities in South Sudan raises concerns about the regional body’s commitment to accountability.

Despite Facebook’s public support for climate action, it continues to allow its platform to be used to spread fossil-fuel propaganda.

And lastly: Join Human Rights Watch at 9pm EDT today on Zoom and at 1800 CET / 1200 EST on Instagram Live for more on the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and human rights in China, where people are enduring the most severe repression since the 1989 massacre that ended the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement.