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Category: World news

  • ‘I watched every video to see my father’s face’: the woman who became the voice of Syria’s missing on why she isn’t giving up hope

    Assad’s notorious prisons may have been opened, but Wafa Mustafa and thousands of others feel abandoned in their struggle to find loved ones

    When insurgents threw open the doors of Aleppo central prison in northern Syria as they overran the city in December, Wafa Mustafa, 34, watched videos of the scenes from exile in Germany in disbelief. Shocked detainees could be seen running into the night as a decades-long dictatorship built on a network of prisons and torture chambers crumbled.

    Mustafa began praying that the insurgents would reach the detention centres in Damascus, where she believed her father, Ali, was being held by the feared intelligence services. He was kidnapped from their home in the Syrian capital more than a decade ago and she has not seen or heard from him since.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Relatives plead with Thailand not to deport 48 Uyghur men to China

    Detainees fear their return could be imminent despite UN experts urging Bangkok to halt possible transfer

    Relatives of Uyghurs detained in Thailand for more than a decade have begged the Thai authorities not to deport the 48 men back to China, after the detainees suggested their return appeared imminent.

    A UN panel of experts this week urged Thailand to “immediately halt the possible transfer”, saying the men were at “real risk of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment if they are returned”.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Europe overhauls funding to Tunisia after Guardian exposes migrant abuse

    Allegations of rape, beatings and collusion by EU-funded security forces prompt shift in migration arrangements

    The European Commission is fundamentally overhauling how it makes payments to Tunisia after a Guardian investigation exposed myriad abuses by EU-funded security forces, including widespread sexual violence against migrants.

    Officials are drawing up “concrete” conditions to ensure that future European payments to Tunis can go ahead only if human rights have not been violated.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Woman who refuses sex is not ‘at fault’ in divorce in France, court rules

    European court of human rights sides with French woman whose husband obtained divorce on grounds she was only person at fault

    • Europe live – latest updates

    A woman who refuses to have sex with her husband should not be considered “at fault” by courts in the event of divorce, Europe’s highest human rights court has said, condemning France.

    The European court of human rights (ECHR) sided on Thursday with a 69-year-old French woman whose husband had obtained a divorce on the grounds that she was the only person at fault because she had stopped having sexual relations with him.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • ‘So much of this seems vengeful’: alarm as Trump recommits to death penalty

    President says he’ll help states execute people but experts skeptical of bold pledge to expand capital punishment

    Donald Trump has signed an executive order committing to pursue federal death sentences and pledging to ensure that states have sufficient supplies of lethal injection drugs for executions.

    The order promises that Trump’s attorney general will seek capital punishment for “all crimes of a severity demanding its use”, specifying that the US will seek the death penalty in every case involving murder of law enforcement and a capital crime committed by an undocumented person, “regardless of other factors”. Trump has also pledged to pursue the overruling of longstanding US supreme court precedents that limit the scope of capital punishment.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Panama’s vast Cobre mine is closed. So why is their security still restricting access to local villages?

    First Quantum Minerals’ copper operation was shut down more than a year ago, but Indigenous people report restrictions on movement and unexplained illness and death

    For the people of the nine Indigenous communities within the perimeter of the sprawling Cobre Panamá copper mine, travelling into and out of the concession is far from straightforward. An imposing metal gateway staffed by the mining company’s security guards blocks the road. People say the company severely restricts their movement in and out of the zone, letting them through only on certain days.

    The mining concession, located 120km (75 miles) west of Panama City, is owned by Canada-based First Quantum Minerals, which operates through its local subsidiary, Minera Panamá. The company’s private security guards, not the national police, patrol the concession. Local residents, mostly subsistence farmers of modest means, say that First Quantum operates as a state within a state.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • ‘It was almost a relief when someone died’: former prisoners on the torture and terror of Eritrea’s secret prisons

    Those who have escaped one of the world’s most repressive states give a rare glimpse into their horrific ordeal in the country’s vast gulag system

    In the darkened office of his church, the preacher recalls how he was tortured. His guards would put a wooden pole behind his bent knees, suspend him upside down from the ceiling and beat the soles of his feet with rubber pipes.

    In the two decades before he fled Eritrea with his family in 2020, he spent eight years in detention. Some of it was in airless, underground cells so cramped there was no room to lie down. At other times he was made to break stones and harvest crops. Then there were the torture chambers.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Trump Stokes Fear Of China To Push Takeover Of Greenland

    The arguments in favor of Trump’s attempt to acquire Greenland has to do with natural resources, has to do with precious metals that we can’t get anywhere else, has to do with China making their move into Greenland. It has to do with the people in Greenland not being that crazy about the Denmark leadership […]

    The post Trump Stokes Fear Of China To Push Takeover Of Greenland appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • Aid increase in ceasefire deal ‘is admission Israel could have done more’, experts say

    Agreement to surge aid to Gaza shows Israel has been controlling access, lawyers and humanitarian groups say

    A provision to increase the aid entering Gaza under the ceasefire is welcome but insufficient, and shows Israel could have allowed more food, medicine and other supplies into the strip during the war, humanitarian and legal experts have said.

    The deal agreed this week allows for 600 trucks a day of aid to enter Gaza, where nine out of 10 Palestinians are going hungry and experts warn that famine is imminent in areas. Israel faces accusations it is using starvation as a weapon of war.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • 2024 witnessed ‘absolute failure’ of west to lead fight for human rights, says watchdog

    Leading democracies have stood by while allies have committed atrocities or supported perpetrators, Human Rights Watch chief says ahead of annual World Report

    The past year has marked the “absolute failure” of western democracies as champions of human rights around the world, the head of Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said.

    Tirana Hassan lambasted western capitals for their double standards over the course of 2024 and what she said was the abdication of their claim to leadership on global human rights.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • ‘Fadi is fighting for his life’: Israel blocks evacuation of cameraman shot in Gaza

    Fadi al-Wahidi’s condition is deteriorating, say hospital staff, who do not have medication needed to treat him

    It was about 3pm on 9 October when a small group of Al Jazeera journalists arrived at the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. The team say they were reporting on the displacement of Palestinian families after Israel launched its third offensive on the area, turning it into an unrecognisable wasteland of rubble.

    Among them was the cameraman Fadi al-Wahidi, who moved ahead and began recording as his team set up their equipment. “At the time, none of us were aware that the IDF was close by,” says the 25-year-old from his bed at al-Helou hospital in Gaza. “But suddenly, the sound of gunfire surrounded us.”

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • ‘I was crying, there was no anaesthesia’: the fight for legal and safe abortion in Nigeria

    In a country where thousands die every year from unsafe procedures, and rape is shockingly high, campaigners must overcome strict laws and religious beliefs, as well as misinformation and stigma

    In a modest house on a red dirt road in Ota in Ogun state, Adijat Adejumo, a 39-year-old auxiliary nurse, runs a small chemist shop. She treats common illnesses such as malaria and colds and sells painkillers, antidiarrhoeal medications and vitamins. For the past few years, she has also been selling packs of mifepristone and misoprostol, medicines included in the WHO essential medicines list to induce abortion safely.

    Both medicines are legal in Nigeria, a country with one of the world’s highest maternal mortality rates, but only if used to save women’s lives during obstetric complications. Adejumo does not stock them in her shop; instead when a woman comes asking for help to end an unwanted pregnancy, she has them delivered. On average, she gets three such requests a month.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • The Taliban made me marry my boss: how one word led to a forced marriage

    Afghanistan’s ‘morality police’ arrested Samira at work in Kabul – and then made the 19-year-old marry her employer

    It was a normal summer morning in July last year when 19-year-old Samira* made her way to the carpet-weaving shop where she worked in Kabul to pick up her wages. She had no way of knowing that in just a few hours, her life as she knew it would be over.

    She would end the day in a Taliban police station, a victim of forced marriage with her entire future decided for her by a group of strangers with guns.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Malala Yousafzai urges Muslim leaders not to support Taliban ‘gender apartheid’ – video

    Speaking at an inaugural conference on girls’ education in the Muslim world, Malala Yousafzai decried the state of women’s and girls’ rights in Afghanistan as ‘gender apartheid’. The conference in Islamabad brought together local and international advocates and dignitaries committed to advancing girls’ education. Representatives from Afghanistan, where girls’ education remains banned under Taliban rule, were notably absent

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Rachel Reeves says better ties with China will boost UK growth as she arrives in Beijing

    UK chancellor becomes first holder of her office to make an official visit to China in a decade

    Rachel Reeves has said the UK “must engage confidently with China”, as she arrived in Beijing amid market turbulence at home.

    The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats had demanded the chancellor call off her China trip after the value of the pound plummeted to its lowest level in a year. But ministers argue that improved relations with the world’s second-largest economy will help boost growth, and that under the Conservatives the UK lagged behind the US and EU when it came to high-level engagement with Beijing.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Libya expels 600 Nigeriens in ‘dangerous and traumatising’ desert journey

    Largest known deportation of people back to Niger to date comes as EU is accused of outsourcing cruelty to reduce Mediterranean crossings

    More than 600 people have been forcibly deported from Libya on a “dangerous and traumatising” journey across the Sahara, in what is thought to be one of the largest expulsions from the north African country to date.

    The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) confirmed 613 people, all Nigerien nationals, arrived in the desert town of Dirkou in Niger last weekend in a convoy of trucks. They were among a large number of migrant workers rounded up by the authorities in Libya over the past month.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • A failure of justice put Gaie Delap in prison. A failure of government is keeping her there | Zoe Williams

    A failure of justice, and draconian Tory law, put Gaie Delap in prison. A failure of government is keeping her there

    Gaie Delap will turn 78 on Friday, in Eastwood Park prison, Gloucestershire. Sentenced to 20 months last August for climbing a gantry over the M25 for Just Stop Oil, she was released in November to serve the rest of her sentence on a home detention curfew. But the electronic tag that she was required to wear couldn’t go round her ankle because she has deep-vein thrombosis and it might have risked causing her a stroke. It couldn’t go round her wrist because they couldn’t find a tag small enough, which people keep saying is because she’s frail. Delap hates being called frail. Her wrist is a perfectly reasonable size, 14-and-a-half centimetres. It’s the wrist-tag design that’s wanting. The topsy-turvy world where a government contractor, Serco, can fail and fail again, while a citizen with a social purpose gets called back to prison five days before Christmas to atone for that failure, isn’t even the most absurd thing about this story.

    Delap was engaged in direct action to raise awareness about the climate emergency, and the day citizens stop doing that is the day that progressive politics might as well give up and go home. Whatever pretzel twists Labour ministers have to perform to sound as if they’re on the side of the decent, honest commuter, while simultaneously signalling that they understand the scale of the climate crisis, they must surely remember this: the trade union movement, the peace movement, the suffragette movement, the civil rights movement, the climate justice movement; every known movement of change has relied on non-violent action to disrupt the status quo.

    Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

    Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Strasbourg court finds Greece guilty of ‘systematic’ pushback of asylum seekers

    In ‘potentially trailblazing’ decision, European court of human rights finds country engaging in illicit deportations

    The European court of human rights has found Greece guilty of conducting “systematic” pushbacks of would-be asylum seekers, ordering it to compensate a woman forcibly expelled back to Turkey despite her attempts to seek protection in the country.

    In a judgment described as potentially trailblazing, the Strasbourg-based tribunal awarded the complainant damages of €20,000 (£16,500), citing evidence that the frontline EU state was engaging in the illicit deportations when she was removed.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • More than 2,200 people died in Mediterranean in 2024, UN finds

    Figure includes hundreds of children, who make up one in five migrants trying to reach Europe fleeing war and poverty

    More than 2,200 people either died or went missing in the Mediterranean while trying to reach Europe in search of refuge in 2024.

    The figure, cited in a statement from Regina De Dominicis, the regional director for Europe and central Asia for the UN’s children’s agency, Unicef, was eclipsed on New Year’s Eve when 20 people fell into the sea and were reported missing after a boat started to take in water in rough seas about 20 miles off the coast of Libya.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Trinidad and Tobago’s streets are a bloodbath. Yet all our politicians offer are platitudes | Kenneth Mohammed

    A state of emergency has been declared amid unprecedented gun violence, but no one in our stagnating government is taking responsibility

    Just before the new year, Trinidad and Tobago’s government declared a state of emergency after a weekend of gun violence.

    Trinidad and Tobago, a country of about 1.5 million people and once the wealthiest in the Caribbean, has been plagued by decades of poor economic and social leadership, gang violence, home invasions, murders and corruption.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • In Gaza we were the happiest family I could imagine. Then came the worst days of my life | Fadwa al-Masry

    I am an academic, a mother, no threat to anyone. Yet those I love have been injured and killed, and I have endured indescribable hardships

    I am a Palestinian mother with a bachelor’s degree in physics and a master’s degree, and I am currently a doctoral student. I work as a lecturer at Gaza’s University College of Science and Technology.

    I married my first husband when I was 22 years old. We had two children: our son, Shihab, who is now 19, and our daughter, Maryam, who is 17. Tragically, in 2007, my husband was killed in a painful accident that I witnessed. I suffered a psychological breakdown and, after several years, married again, to my first husband’s brother. I became his second wife; he already had a wife and three children: Asmaa, 16, Ali, 13, and Muhammad, 12. Together, we had four children: Zeina, now 12, Yassin, 11, Naseeba, eight, and Zain al-Din, two.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Israel’s hospital attacks have put Gaza healthcare on brink of collapse, says UN

    Assaults on medical facilities could amount to war crimes in certain circumstances, human rights office report says

    Israel’s pattern of sustained attacks on Gaza’s hospitals and medical workers has brought the coastal strip’s healthcare system to the brink of “total collapse”, according to a report by the UN’s human rights office.

    The report, which catalogues the besieging and targeting of hospitals and their immediate grounds with explosive weapons, the killing of hundreds of medical workers, and the destruction of critical life-saving equipment, said that in certain circumstances the attacks could “amount to war crimes”. Israel has consistently denied committing war crimes in Gaza.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Gaza hospital director being held at notorious Israeli prison, say family

    Hussam Abu Safiya feared injured as Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza shut down after 11 weeks under siege

    One of the few doctors still working in northern Gaza has been taken to an Israeli prison and his hospital shut down, his family believe.

    Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan hospital in Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp, was initially taken to the Sde Teiman detention camp, according to his son, who has been told that the doctor’s leg was badly injured during a raid on the hospital by Israeli soldiers.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Despite oppression, far-right gains and lack of funds, feminists still dare to dream | Faye Macheke

    There are many challenges facing feminism, but a recent global gathering was a sanctuary and a rallying cry

    Last month, 3,500 feminists from every corner of the world came together in Bangkok for a conference hosted by the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (Awid). Eight years of planning went into the event, years that coincided with some of the most challenging and transformative global moments. The Covid pandemic, for example, ensured that an in-person 14th forum could not be held in 2020.

    This December’s theme, Rising Together, spoke not just to the collective resilience of feminist movements but to the journey I have witnessed over decades of activism: one defined by courage, solidarity and a refusal to give up, no matter the odds.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Friday briefing: Will Trump 2.0 turn America into an autocracy?

    In today’s newsletter: Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum says the president-elect won’t transform into a dictator – but he could set in motion an unstoppable democratic decline

    Good morning.

    The global surge of authoritarian rule in recent years has been stark and alarming. Strongman leaders like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have systematically consolidated power, while a new wave of autocratic rulers have emerged from Asia to South America.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • We can be heroes: the inspiring people we met around the world in 2024 – part one

    From an exuberant mountaineering woman to a boy representing unheard refugees, here are some of the brave individuals that gave us hope

    Nine years ago, Cecilia Llusco was one of 11 Indigenous women who made it to the summit of the 6,088 metre-high Huayna Potosí in Bolivia. They called themselves the cholitas escaladoras (the climbing cholitas) and went on to scale many more peaks in Bolivia and across South America. Their name comes from chola, once a pejorative term for Indigenous Aymara women.

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  • Gaza war victims take legal action against BP over oil supply to Israel

    Palestinians accuse UK firm of breaching human rights laws by piping oil allegedly used by Israeli army

    Palestinian victims of the war in Gaza are taking legal action against BP for running a pipeline that supplies much of Israel’s crude oil.

    The claimants have sent the British oil company a letter before claim, alleging it is breaching its stated commitments to human rights under international law.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Champagne’s sordid secret: the homeless and hungry migrants picking grapes for France’s luxury winemakers

    Exclusive: Guardian investigation finds an underpaid, underfed workforce, some of whom are forced to sleep on the streets, exploited by a system of labour providers

    • Photographs by Valentina Camu/Divergence for the Guardian

    A Guardian investigation has found workers in France’s champagne industry are being underpaid and forced to sleep on the streets and steal food to stave off hunger.

    Workers from west Africa and eastern Europe in the town of Épernay, home to the headquarters of some of the world’s most expensive champagne brands, including Moët & Chandon and Mercier, claim that they are either not being paid for their work or illegally underpaid by vineyards near the town.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Question of intent makes genocide hardest crime to prove

    International courts have set an extremely high standard of proof when it comes to showing intent to commit genocide

    The definition of genocide outlined in a 1948 UN convention is quite vague and the crime is extremely hard to prove in the international courts.

    The convention sets the bar for genocide as “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Israel accused of act of genocide over restriction of Gaza water supply

    Human Rights Watch says Israeli forces have acted deliberately to cut availability of clean water

    Israel’s restriction of Gaza’s water supply to levels below minimum needs amounts to an act of genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity, a human rights report has alleged.

    Human Rights Watch (HRW) investigated Israeli attacks on the water supply infrastructure in Gaza over the course of its 14-month war there.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.