Human Rights | WPN World People News

In Libya, dozens of migrants sleep alongside one another in a cramped cell in Tripoli's Tariq al-Sikka detention facility.

Displaced persons near Sittwe, Myanmar in December 2013.

Cambodia’s Supreme Court should resist government pressure to rule on dissolving the country’s main opposition party, Human Rights Watch said on Nov 15. Cambodia’s international donors and supporters should state clearly that dissolution of the Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) will delegitimize national elections scheduled for 2018.

The Chinese government should take immediate steps to stop public hospitals and private clinics from offering conversion therapy, Human Rights Watch said in a new report on Nov 14. Those facilities’ “treatments,” which aspire to change an individual’s sexual orientation from homosexual or bisexual to heterosexual, are inherently discriminatory and abusive.

The Burmese military’s latest claim that its forces did not commit abuses during recent operations against ethnic Rohingya in Rakhine State is contrary to a large and growing body of evidence, Human Rights Watch said on Nov 14. On November 13, 2017, a Burmese army “investigation team” issued a report finding that there were “no deaths of innocent people,” while at least 376 “terrorists” were killed during fighting.

Tanzanian domestic workers in Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) face excessive working hours, unpaid salaries, and physical and sexual abuse, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Nov 14. Abusive visa-sponsorship rules in those countries and gaps in Tanzania’s policies leave the women exposed to exploitation.

The remarkable progress Guatemala has made in prosecuting corruption and abuse could be reversed if the country’s highest courts don’t stop the egregious delays that are keeping powerful defendants from going to trial, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Nov 12.

The ballistic missile strike by Houthi-Saleh forces in Yemen on Riyadh’s main international airport on November 4, 2017, is most likely a war crime, Human Rights Watch said on Nov 07. Saudi Arabia responded to the attack by claiming Iran, which it accuses of aiding the Houthi rebels who control much of northern Yemen, smuggled the missile to Yemen and announcing a “temporary” closure of all Yemeni land, sea, and air ports. Saudi claims about the missile’s origin could not be verified and, according to media reports, Iranian officials denied the allegation.

A year after a US election marred by divisive rhetoric, thousands of families have been torn apart and millions are living in fear because of cruel and ineffective deportation policies, Human Rights Watch said on Nov 07. Americans who want to push back should ask their representatives to oppose the Trump administration’s funding request for these harmful policies by participating in a campaign called “Immigrants Are US.”

The World Bank should fulfill its commitment to protect workers through its investment in tea plantations in Assam, India, six Indian and international nongovernmental organizations said on Nov 06. In November 2016, the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO), the accountability office of the World Bank Group’s private sector lending arm, released an investigation report that found low wages, abysmal sanitation, lack of pesticide safety equipment, and inadequate housing on India’s tea plantations – but the bank has since done little to address the problems.