Human Rights | WPN World People News

UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O'Brien (top, centre), on a visit to South Sudan, meets with women representatives in the Protection of Civilians site 3, in the capital Juba.

Thailand’s national assembly should reject the nominees for the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), whose selection process did not meet international standards, Human Rights Watch said on July 24. Upcoming revisions to the Thai constitution should ensure that the NHRC is credible, independent, and accountable, and that its commissioners are chosen in a transparent manner, open to public scrutiny and broad-based participation.

Cambodian authorities should immediately exonerate and unconditionally release 11 opposition activists convicted after an unfair trial, Human Rights Watch said on July 21. The three judges at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court took just 15 minutes after the close of proceedings on July 21, 2015, to sentence the members of the Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) to 7-20 years in prison on trumped-up charges of “insurrection.”

Problems with overcrowding and poor sanitation at the UNMISS camp in Bentiu have intensified during the rainy season when sections of the camp flood. Conditions are expected to improve as people are relocated to new sections of the camp.

Thirteen people who were detained in the course of an unprecedented nationwide attack on human rights lawyers remain in police custody incommunicado, leaving them vulnerable to torture and other abuses, Human Rights Watch said on July 20. Police have not informed the families of the detainees of their whereabouts, nor given them access to lawyers. Six other lawyers and activists have disappeared, and it remains unclear whether they have also been detained by authorities.

The evidence in an Israeli colonel’s fatal shooting of a Palestinian boy on July 3, 2015, indicates that the shooting violated international standards on the use of lethal force in policing, and possibly also Israel’s own open-fire regulations. A recently released video supports witness accounts and forensic evidence that Col. Israel Shomer killed Mohammad al-Kasbeh, 17, while al-Kasbeh was fleeing, apparently contradicting the military’s initial statement exonerating the colonel on the grounds that he faced a “mortal danger.”

Thai authorities should drop charges against a prominent migrant worker rights activist, Human Rights Watch said on July 19. The charges violate the free expression rights of the activist, Andy Hall, and undermine his research into labor rights abuses by companies in Thailand.

High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein.