Human Rights | WPN World People News

The North Korean government should immediately stop exploiting school children by forcing them to work, Human Rights Watch said on Feb 13, releasing its submission to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. The submission details forced labor including farming, rock breaking, scrap-metal collecting, and other strenuous labor, as well as discrimination and other abuses faced by North Korean children.

Female students who are blind, are guided down a steep and slippery hill by their teachers. They have to walk through rough terrain to get from their secondary school to their school’s hostel in Mwanza city.

Pakistani authorities have carried out a campaign of abuses and threats to drive out nearly 600,000 Afghans since July 2016, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Feb 13. The returnees include 365,000 registered refugees, making it the world’s largest mass forced return of refugees in recent years. They now face spiraling armed conflict, violence, destitution, and displacement in Afghanistan.

The United Nations Human Rights Council is preparing to hear the complaint filed by Education International and six affiliates on behalf of the 43 Mexican student teachers who disappeared more than two years ago.

A move reportedly under consideration by the Trump administration to suspend a rule requiring companies to disclose their source for gold and other potential “conflict minerals” could enrich abusive armed groups in Africa, Human Rights Watch said on Feb 09.

А Russian lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activist and another person have been missing since January 31, 2017, in the separatist-controlled area of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, and are feared to be victims of enforced disappearances, Human Rights Watch said on Feb 09. Human Rights Watch is concerned that the de facto authorities of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) have detained them and are refusing to acknowledge their detention.

A US government designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization, which the Trump administration is reportedly considering, would threaten the rights to association of Muslim groups in the United States. Such a designation would also undermine the ability of the Muslim Brotherhood’s members and supporters to participate in democratic politics abroad.

The Bangladeshi government should immediately drop its plan to transfer Rohingya refugees to an uninhabited, undeveloped coastal island, Human Rights Watch said on Feb 08. Relocating the refugees from the Cox’s Bazar area to Thengar Char island would deprive them of their rights to freedom of movement, livelihood, food and education, in violation of Bangladesh’s obligations under international human rights law.

Egyptian prosecutors should drop all charges against at least 26 workers who were arrested and charged in recent months in connection with peaceful strikes and protests, Human Rights Watch said on Feb 08. The parliament should also revise a new trade unions draft law to fully legalize independent unions and amend penal code provisions that criminalize the right to organize and strike.

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child should press the North Korean government to end the exploitation of children through forced labor and discrimination, Human Rights Watch and three Korean nongovernmental organizations said on Feb 08. During the week of February 6, 2017, Human Rights Watch, the International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea (ICNK), the New Korea Women’s Union, and the Caleb Mission will brief the pre-sessional working group of the committee in Geneva about the situation of children’s rights in North Korea.