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In our final edition of the year, we look back at some of the key issues of 2024 – in alphabetical order…
Afghanistan: Another year of the “most serious women’s rights crisis in the world” brought more misery for Afghan girls and women under the Taliban’s thugocracy, in which violence against women is a system. The international community has responded poorly, at times even siding with the oppressors against the oppressed and are also deporting people into the arms of the Taliban.
Children: Much of what happened in 2024 was not encouraging, but we did find at least ten good-news stories around the world related to children’s rights.
China: On the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre, the struggle between memory and forgetting loomed large. We also wrote about the authorities’ attempts to erase local culture in the Xinjiang region, how the situation in Hong Kong has deteriorated fast, and how EU leaders are failing to take China’s grave human rights abuses seriously.
Climate Crisis: Another year, another overall failure of leaders to deal with the one issue that impacts every human being living today and all those who come after us. The UN climate conference – COP29, held in the authoritarian petrostate of Azerbaijan – was a flop. Also, the EU called for a delay to a regulation aimed at countering deforestation, the second largest source of the greenhouse gas emissions causing the climate crisis, after the burning of fossil fuels. All this, as global temperatures keep rising…
Gaza/Israel: On the one-year anniversary of the October 7 attacks by Hamas-led Palestinian armed groups, I tried to write something balanced, looking both at those atrocities and the atrocities by Israel in response over the course of the subsequent 12 months. Read it and judge for yourself if I got that balance right. (more on Gaza/Israel below)
Haiti: We looked at the collapse of order in the country many times over the year, as criminal gangs tightened and expanded their grip through horrific violence, including sexual violence. Hunger pushes some children into the arms of the gangs. The situation demands a full-fledged UN mission.
International Justice: It was a mixed year for those seeking justice for humanity’s most serious crimes around the world. On the one hand, important prosecutions at the International Criminal Court (ICC) moved ahead. On the other hand, the ICC faced moves to thwart justice, from non-ICC-members like the US and Russia, as well as from members like France. The problem threatens to get even worse in 2025.
Myanmar: In the armed conflict between the junta’s military forces and the ethnic armed group, Arakan Army, both sides are committing atrocities. These include mass killings, arson, and forced recruitment against Rohingya. Some people trying to flee have been blocked by Bangladesh at the border.
Russia: In addition to its atrocities in Ukraine (see below), the Kremlin has been tightening its authoritarian noose around the necks of Russians at home. This newsletter has looked at, among other things, the death in prison of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, wave after wave of repressive legislation and policies, and Russia’s repression of the childless,
Saudi Arabia: As the year drew to a close, world football organization FIFA tapped the country to host the Men’s 2034 World Cup, despite Saudi Arabia’s appalling human rights record. This pretty much guarantees we’ll be writing a lot about those abuses over the next decade – in particular, serious abuses of migrant labor. Because who do you think is going to build all the new stadiums and such?
Sudan: If not the biggest conflict-driven crisis in the world, then surely the one receiving the least international attention in comparison to the scale and severity of its atrocities. Crimes we’ve investigated include looting and arson; attacking critical civilian infrastructure, like hospitals and markets; razing entire neighborhoods to the ground; ethnic cleansing in the Darfur region; and rape and sexual slavery. More than 11 million people have been displaced from their homes inside the country, and more than 1.2 million more have escaped to neighboring countries. With a couple exceptions, the international community has seriously dropped the ball on Sudan, and millions of innocent civilians are paying the price.
Syria: The eye-blink-quick collapse of the brutal Assad regime is perhaps the best good-news story of 2024. Yes, I write this in the broadly hopeful moment of mid-December 2024 – many challenges no doubt lie ahead for the ravaged country. But at least Assad’s torture centers have been emptied. There now needs to be justice for the former regime’s crimes.
Ukraine: Russia’s full-scale, atrocity-ridden invasion of its neighbor grinded on, with international fugitive from justice Putin – wanted for mass abduction of children in Ukraine – no closer to The Hague. The list of Russian atrocities in Ukraine is long. Ukraine’s countless victims deserve justice.
United States: There are deadly concerns around US foreign policy, like its continued approval of arms sales to Israel, despite the Israeli military’s atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon. Domestically, the country is failing to address human rights issues including “cancer alley,” rising censorship, a roll-back of reproductive rights, and threats to democracy. And as a second Trump presidency approaches, the US hasn’t even cleaned up the rights abuses from the first one. I also wrote about how many Americans forget their own family history.
Of course, these are just some of the stories we’ve covered in the Daily Brief in 2024. We also looked at:
I didn’t always write about a single country. I sometimes took a step back from specifics to examine, for example, the role of facts in ending atrocities, how politicians and the media ask the wrong questions about asylum, and how to think about voting from a human rights perspective.
The Daily Brief also took a breather from more serious concerns on occasion. I did one edition of the Daily Brief from a tram station. I offered some advice on how and when to block people on social media. Another time, I discussed how to get a job in human rights.
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The human rights movement will need everyone we can get in 2025.
