Daily Brief Audio Series

“We want justice. We want the perpetrators to be punished.”

“We want the truth to be established. We want to know why this was done to us...”

These are the words of those who survived terrible events that unfolded in two villages in Burkina Faso recently.

On the morning of February 25, eye-witnesses recount, a military convoy with more than 100 Burkinabè soldiers arrived in the village of Nondin. They came on motorbikes, in pickup trucks, and in armored cars. The soldiers went door-to-door, ordering people out of their homes.

They then rounded up villagers in groups and opened fire on them. Soldiers also shot at those trying to flee or hide.

About an hour later, the military unleashed a similar horror on the village of Soro, some five kilometers away.

By nightfall, the Burkina Faso military had summarily executed at least 223 civilians, including at least 56 children, in the two villages.

These were not the first mass killings of civilians by the military in their counterinsurgency operations, but they were the worst in nearly a decade. What we’re talking about here now looks like crimes against humanity, that is, offenses knowingly committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against the civilian population.

Survivors of the attacks in Nondin and Soro want to know who’s responsible for these massacres – who gave the orders? They want military commanders held to account.

But they also know what’s happened after other atrocities in the past: nothing. The Burkinabè authorities have repeatedly failed to investigate such abuses and repeatedly failed to prevent them from happening again.

The only real hope for survivors is that the outside world gets involved to help justice along. International assistance is critical for a credible investigation. Burkinabè authorities can not – or will not – do it alone. They should get support from the African Union and the United Nations.

“We no longer know who to confide in,” says another survivor from Soro, “when even our own soldiers massacre us.”

All they’re asking for is justice. And they deserve it.

North Korea has one of the worst human rights situations in the world, and it’s about to come under a new global spotlight.

I say, “one of the worst,” because Human Rights Watch doesn’t rank countries. We don’t say, West Ruritania has the seventeenth worst human rights record in the world, and East Ruritania is somehow better in eighteenth position.

Such comparisons are unhelpful, because every government should work to improve its respect for human rights, regardless of what other countries are doing. More importantly, ranking would demand thousands of impossible judgements about relative suffering.

What’s worse, for example, authorities that systematically torture people or authorities that deliberately block life-saving aid from reaching starving people? There’s no comparing them – they’re both awful.

So, we don’t rank countries; however, if we did make a list of the worst, North Korea would clearly be up near the top.

Third-generation dictator Kim Jong Un runs the country with totalitarian ferocity. The government forces extreme obedience through torture, executions, brutal imprisonment, forced disappearances, and forced labor. All basic liberties – like freedoms of expression, association, and religion – are denied. Independent media, civil society groups, trade unions: all banned.

North Korea has been so horrific for so long, in fact, it sometimes gets forgotten in international news. Media don’t consider the horror newsy, because it’s not new.

But the situation will hopefully get more global attention in the coming months, after the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution that strengthens investigation of North Korea’s abuses, both past and present, and boosts resources for accountability efforts.

Importantly, the new resolution also stresses the link between North Korea’s weapons program and human rights. For decades, the government has diverted billions to the development of nuclear weapons and missile programs, ignoring people’s basic rights, like the right to food and the right to health, and making North Korea one of the poorest countries in the world.

Not only is it critical to recognize the connection between the development of weapons systems and human rights in North Korea, but this focus will also help keep the appalling rights situation in the international eye.

Some may be skeptical about the impact a resolution like this can have, but it is the most ambitious such resolution in many years. It carries immense importance for victims who’ve been suffering repression in isolation, in what is, by any objective ranking, one of the worst human rights situations in the world.

Today will see a key step in a long-running effort by the UK government to be cruel. The appalling Rwanda deportation bill finally passed through Parliament last night and will soon be given the royal nod to become law.

The government has wasted no time in promising that the first flights of UK asylum seekers to Rwanda would happen soon. Expect a lot of legal challenges along the way, as well as more hate-mongering headlines against foreigners and demonization of human rights defenders in the coming months.

Over the past few years, the government has been pushing this Rwanda deportation idea hard. It’s been a kind of obsession for them. One former UK Home Secretary in the Conservative government even called it that: sending asylum seekers to Rwanda, she said was her “dream” and her “obsession.”

Never mind Rwanda is not a safe place to send people to – it’s well-known for things like extrajudicial killings, deaths in custody, enforced disappearances, and torture. Never mind the UK’s highest court confirmed Rwanda is not safe to send asylum seekers to.

Nope, the UK government has been plowing ahead regardless, trying to circumvent the Supreme Court ruling with this new bill. It’s a move that undermines rule of law and sets a dangerous, undemocratic precedent.

It also adds to their years of undermining evidence, ignoring human rights organizations’ reports, and even ignoring the government’s own assessments of the situation in Rwanda.

Just how far the UK government is willing to go in its obsession can also be put in numbers. According to the National Audit Office – that’s the official spending watchdog in the UK – the plan will cost taxpayers £1.8 million per expelled asylum seeker. That’s US$ 2.2 million each.

Cruelty doesn’t come cheap, apparently.

Has the UK government really not stopped for a second to consider the costs here? Have they not realized they could treat these people humanely in the UK for a fraction of that price?

But the government clearly doesn’t care about the cost of the scheme to taxpayers any more than it cares about the cruelty it will inflict on asylum seekers. What matters to them appears to be signaling that they’re “tough” on asylum seekers, no matter who pays in blood or money.

This obscene obsession has motivated them for so long, they can’t seem to think rationally about the consequences at all. And as with many unchecked obsessions, it has led to madness – financial and moral madness.

Today is Earth Day, and in the run up to the annual commemoration of our planet, media headlines have been typically grim. We’ve seen news stories on extreme weather warnings related to the climate crisis, species being driven toward extinction, and air pollution causing insects to mate with the wrong species. There’s also the evergreen story of politicians failing to fulfil their promises on the environment, and painful headlines like: “Should we reconsider having children due to fears about the climate crisis?”

Cheery.

Now, fine, the reality is, news about the environment isn’t great generally, and the impacts of human-generated climate change in particular are often grim.

However, if we’re only fed a diet of disaster, our sense of hope will be malnourished. On Earth Day, we should not succumb to despair nor miserablism. We should realize there have also been some positive environment stories lately. Here are four.

First, government representatives from around the world are meeting in Ottawa, Canada, this week to continue negotiations on a legally binding international agreement on plastic pollution. The latest draft isn’t everything that’s needed, but it does contain some positive measures.

Second, at the European Court of Human Rights recently, a group of women from Switzerland won a landmark case against their government. They successfully argued Switzerland’s failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is a violation of human rights.

Third, the US Environmental Protection Agency – under pressure from concerned activists, of course – has introduced new regulations requiring more than 200 petrochemical plants to curb toxic pollutants. It’s good news for people living in places like “Cancer Alley.”

The fourth example comes from Peru. Last month, residents from the town of La Oroya, who’d been exposed to extreme levels of toxic lead and other metals from a mine and smelter complex, won a landmark case at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The Court found the government responsible for violating the right to a healthy environment, among other rights.

So much environmental news around the world is depressing, and it can give a sense that we’re all doomed to unstoppable pollution and a climate catastrophe. But there are some bright spots out there. People are fighting back and winning – often when they use human rights as the framework of their arguments.

On Earth Day, let’s remember: we have a right to a healthy environment, and pushing governments to uphold this right is one key way to make environmental progress.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my thousands of hours on social media over the years, it’s this: block early, block often.

I have a personal set of “blocking rules” I post frequently – on Bluesky, LinkedIn, Mastodon, and Twitter/X – explaining who gets blocked. For example, when I see someone in my replies supporting war crimes - boom, instant block. Pushing the propaganda lines of abusive governments? Block. Flinging hate? Block.

But wait, some say, aren’t you a human rights guy? Don’t you believe in freedom of speech?

Of course, I believe in freedom of speech. But just because someone is free to speak, does not mean I am obligated to listen to them – nor share their ideas.

There’s a responsibility I feel I have – that we all have – when using social media. We can control parts of these online spaces, and like a micro-editor of a micro-publication, we get to decide what we want our readers to see, and not to see.

Not only do we have control over our own posts and replies, we have some control over the replies of others. And for both: control implies responsibility. Blocking accounts that are spreading poisonous ideas in the replies to your social media posts is simply responsible behavior.

This always becomes an issue for me when I post about ongoing conflicts. Yesterday, I saw it in replies to social media posts linking to my latest Daily Brief article on Israel/Palestine, but it happens with every conflict. I block people who still seem to think the laws of war and other standards should only apply to the “other side” and not to “their side.”

Defending atrocities is appalling. Those who do so are denying the suffering of innocent individuals, and in doing so, they are denying the fundamental humanity of everyone, including themselves, actually.

In a way, it’s not their fault, of course. Conflicts can negatively impact people’s brains, push their minds into vicious desires for, or at least acceptance of, revenge and punishment, even of the innocent.

But that doesn’t mean I want to see their verbal violence and incitement to hatred in social media replies. And I don’t want my inaction to help such ugliness spread.

So, yes, I block people on social media. Often. I encourage you to do the same.