Category: Human Rights

For this final story in our special UN News series, we’ll hear from Fati Yahaya, who is 24-years old and comes from the village of Koghum in the north-east of Nigeria. She and her two young children were taken by armed insurgents in 2015 and spent three years as their prisoners. She has been living in Minawao, a camp for… Read More

Two years after exodus, Myanmar’s ‘desperate’ Rohingya youth need education, skills: UNICEF The daily struggle to survive for Myanmar’s Rohingya people in one of the world’s largest refugee settlements, has caused “overwhelming” despair and jeopardized the hopes of an entire generation, the head of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Henrietta Fore, said on Friday. In a report marking two years since the… Read More

“We are alarmed that the arrest and lengthy sentences handed to these women are directly related to the peaceful exercise of their rights to freedom of expression and assembly in the pursuit of gender equality in Iran,” the experts said in a joint statement on Friday. They called upon the Iranian authorities to quash the convictions and “immediately release all… Read More

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) will strengthen cooperation with OHCHR, as threats to individuals and communities defending their environmental and land rights intensify. Reports suggest that an average of more than three rights defenders were killed every week last year.  Although more than 150 countries have recognized the right to a health environment in their constitutions or legal frameworks, “significantly more work is… Read More

“We must not accept the suffering of children as the new normal. All parties must stop attacks on children and take all necessary measures to keep them out of harm’s way, in line with international human rights and humanitarian law,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. She added that children should be going to school and playing with their friends,… Read More

‘Preserve, revitalize and promote’ indigenous languages, or lose a ‘wealth of traditional knowledge’, UN chief says  Secretary-General António Guterres underscored the urgency to “preserve, revitalize and promote indigenous languages” in his message for the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, Celebrated on Friday.  “Languages are how we communicate, and they are inextricably linked to our cultures, histories and identity”, the UN chief… Read More

“Languages are how we communicate, and they are inextricably linked to our cultures, histories and identity”, the UN chief said, noting that 2019 also marks the International Year of Indigenous Languages.  Indigenous languages are disappearing at an alarming rate, each one taking with it a cultural and intellectual heritage. We must protect languages under threat of extinction. #IndigenousDay pic.twitter.com/GaHSKc6OKN —… Read More

Tensions started escalating at the end of January, when Juan Guaidó, head of the country’s National Assembly, challenged the legitimacy of sitting President Nicolás Maduro and was declared interim president by the National Assembly. President Maduro has been in power since 2013 and was sworn in again for a second term on 10 January. “The sanctions are extremely broad and… Read More

“Any progress will remain very frail unless accompanied by wider reforms and by measures to ensure that rights are reflected and enshrined in the constitution of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and not solely through royal decrees,” the six experts said in a joint statement. Saudi Arabia loosened some social restrictions on women in 2017. And now, by Royal decree,… Read More

UN Security Council ‘utterly failed’ Syrian detainees: a victim’s plea to ‘end impunity and stop this horror’ The Security Council has “utterly failed Syrian detainees and their families”, Amina Khoulani, co-founder of Families for Freedom, told the Security Council on Wednesday, during a meeting focused on those who have been jailed or gone missing across Syria, during years of brutal… Read More