Human Rights | WPN World People News

On March 20, the provisions agreed between the EU and Turkey to stem the large-scale arrival of refugees and migrants to Greece and beyond into Europe came into effect. Starting already on Saturday, the Greek authorities accelerated the transfer to the mainland of an estimated 8,000 refugees and migrants who had arrived on the islands before the 20th of March. This was to separate them from people arriving after that date and who will be subject to the new return policy.

A media monitoring service that creates a text-searchable database of television and radio content is defending its fair use rights before a federal appeals court. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), New York University’s Technology Law and Policy Clinic, and Public Knowledge urged the court Wednesday to protect this innovative technology—and others that have yet to be developed—from being shut down by copyright infringement claims.

The open and casual way that a soldier appears to execute a wounded, prone Palestinian, which was captured on video, suggests a dangerous climate of impunity for war crimes. The soldier fired an assault rifle at the head of a man identified as Abd al-Fatah al-Sharif, on March 24, 2016 in the West Bank city of Hebron, after al-Sharif and another man allegedly stabbed and wounded an Israeli soldier, the Israeli rights group B’tselem and local media reported.

The conviction of Radovan Karadzic, the former president of the Republic of Srpska, for his role in the Srebrenica genocide and other grave crimes shows that persistence can deliver justice, Human Rights Watch said on March 24.

Iran should remove restrictions on access to lawyers for people charged with national security crimes, Human Rights Watch said on March 24. Nine months after Iran’s new criminal procedure expanded detainees’ access to a lawyer during the investigative phase, authorities are denying people charged with national security and political crimes access to an independent legal defense. These defendants should be able to choose their own lawyers.

Former Chadian dictator Hissene Habre is escorted by military officers after being heard by judge in Dakar, Senegal on July 2, 2013.

Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein, recently appointed UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, holds his first press conference in Geneva, 16 October 2014.

Radovan Karadžic at his initial appearance in court, July 2008.

Sudanese security forces have used sexual violence, intimidation, and other forms of abuse to silence female human rights defenders across the country, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on March 23, 2016. The government should investigate all alleged abuses, hold those responsible to account, and undertake legislative reforms to protect women’s rights.