Human Rights

Brussels – The United Nations agency assisting Palestinian refugees unveiled 10 commitments through which it will strengthen support to and better engage young refugees.

“Racism and racial discrimination have been used as weapons to engender fear and hatred. In extreme cases, ruthless leaders instigate prejudice to incite genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity”. With these words, UN secretary general marked this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which focuses on the theme of racism and conflict.

A massive vaccination campaign, launched by the UN, is under way in Yemen, where a new outbreak of measles has killed at least 126 children under the age of five.

After 20 years, Kenyan officials are talking of closing down the world’s largest refugee camp, but to those who call it home, would repatriation be another form of exile?

Yemen has been facing a new wave of internal displacement, with tens of thousands of civilians fleeing tribal clashes in the north and fresh fighting between Government troops and militants in the country’s south.

Cairo – The women of Egypt were at the vanguard in the eighteen day January 2011 mass uprising that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak. But since then, they have been sidelined and pushed back into the shadows.

Beirut – Bahrain has routinely convicted hundreds of opposition activists and others of politically motivated charges in unfair trials, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a new report. The government should void the convictions in trials before Bahrain’s military and civilian courts that fell far short of international fair trial standards, Human Rights Watch said.

After escaping Ethiopia, Oromia refugees were subjected to further human rights violations including being hunted by armed groups. Within the last two days, Somaliland Authorities destroyed belongings of refugees and asylum seekers outside of the Social Welfare Center in Hargeisa. They used bulldozers to clear the surrounding with armed men inside the Social Welfare Center.

On 19 March last year, the UN Security Council decided to intervene militarily in Libya to protect unarmed, civilian citizens. The military intervention, which lasted more than seven months, consisted of continuos air surveillance, raids, reported ground actions and arms provision to the “insurgents” as part of such “protection” to the population of the oil-rich country.

The foundation “Humanist Home for Children”, established in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India, in 2001, was legally registered in 2006 and since then has been surging forward at full strength. The largely volunteer staff have been conducting awareness programmes across the whole of Tamil Nadu, targetting both rural and urban sectors. Now an orphanage is developing.