Human Rights | WPN World People News

Colombian academic Dr Miguel Ángel Beltrán Villegas

Vietnam is using vague national security laws to stifle dissent and arrest critics, Human Rights Watch said on November 19. The United States and other signatories to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) should press Vietnam to drop proposed legislation that would add even more rights-abusing penalties to its already draconian criminal code.

Ali, a young Iraqi boy, is reunited with his family after becoming separated from them at a Roszke detention camp in Hungary. September 10, 2015.

Pakistan’s government should take all necessary measures to end the rampant police harassment, threats, and violence against Afghans living in Pakistan, Human Rights Watch said in a new report on November 18. Incidents of police abuses against Afghans have skyrocketed since the Pakistani Taliban attacked a school in Peshawar in December 2014, and is prompting many Afghans to return to war-torn Afghanistan and possibly seek asylum in Europe.

The Obama administration should not sell aerial bombs to Saudi Arabia in the absence of serious investigations into alleged laws-of-war violations in Yemen.

The United Nations member countries should vote in favor of Resolution A/C.3/70/L.45 on the promotion and protection of human rights in Iran, Human Rights Watch said in a joint letter signed by 36 human rights and other organizations on November 17.

Leading technology companies, governments and international organizations have committed to protecting millions of children from online sexual exploitation at the #WeProtect Children Online Global Summit hosted by the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom in Abu Dhabi, said UNICEF.

Despite dangerous sea conditions, the number of refugees and migrants arriving on Lesvos continues to be high, at an average of 3,300 people per day so far in November. Of the 660,000 refugees and migrants who have reached Greece this year more than half have landed at Lesvos. With winter approaching, reception conditions and capacity there remain overstretched and inadequate.

The Afghan government should reject a new law that permits indefinite detention of security suspects without trial, Human Rights Watch said today. A September 2015 amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code, imposed by presidential decree, allows Afghan authorities to detain for a renewable one-year period anyone suspected of “crimes against internal or external security,” or believed “likely to commit such a crime.”