Human Rights | WPN World People News

Pakistani authorities should halt the execution of Imdad Ali, which is scheduled for September 20, 2016, Human Rights Watch said on Sep 19. Imdad Ali has a mental disability.

The Philippine Senate has ousted the chair of the Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights in an apparent reprisal for her inquiry into the surge in killings linked to President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” Human Rights Watch said on Sep 19. The Senate should seek Sen. Leila De Lima’s immediate reinstatement to signal its support for justice and human rights.

The number of South Sudanese refugees sheltering in neighbouring countries has this week passed the 1 million mark, including more than 185,000 people who have fled since fresh violence erupted in the country in Juba on July 8, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, said on 16 September.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ Regional Representation for South-Eastern Europe (UNHCR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Mission to BiH welcome the decision of the BiH Council of Ministers to form a Co-ordination Team to follow the implementation of rights of refugees and displaced persons under Annex VII of the Dayton Peace Accords.

The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and the Animal Protection League of New Jersey (APLNJ) on September 15 provided video footage to all members of the New Jersey Legislature demonstrating the barbarity of enclosed leghold traps. In contravention of New Jersey’s ban on steel-jaw leghold traps, the New Jersey Fish and Game Council (Council) allowed the traps’ use on raccoons and opossums in the Garden State during last year’s trapping season and seeks to do so again when the trapping season begins in November. AWI and APLNJ are calling on legislators to support a resolution condemning all steel-jaw leghold type traps, reaffirming the state’s ban.

Our organisations strongly condemn on September 16’s arbitrary arrest of Kashmiri human rights defender Mr. Khurram Parvez, and call for his immediate and unconditional release.

The Zeinhom Criminal Court’s decision on 17 September to freeze the personal and organizational bank accounts of a group of leading and award-winning human rights lawyers and campaigners over politically motivated accusations that they are using foreign funds for illegal purposes is a reprehensible blow to Egypt’s human rights movement, Amnesty International said on 17 September.

The American Civil Liberties Union on September 16 filed a motion to intervene in a case challenging a section of the Affordable Care Act that prohibits health care entities from discriminating based on race, national origin, sex, age or disability. The lawsuit, Franciscan Alliance v. Burwell, was filed by a group of states and religiously affiliated health care organizations who are suing the federal government.

Pregnant at 11, a girl raped by her own father, will have no choice but to give birth. Equally, a woman at high risk of dying in childbirth or of carrying a dead baby, will not be able to seek a termination. This will be the impact of new legislation due to be debated on in the Polish parliament later this week which, if passed, would usher in an almost complete ban on abortion.

Just days before the 19 September Summit for Refugees and Migrants, at a ceremony in New York on 16 September, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon accepted a 1.3 million signature-strong petition that expressed solidarity with millions of refugees.