Human Rights | WPN World People News

An Albino student (right) attends school in Niambly, near Duekoue, Côte d’Ivoire.

The first European Games will open in Azerbaijan on June 12, 2015, in an atmosphere of government repression unprecedented in the post-Soviet era, Human Rights Watch said on June 11.

An Egyptian criminal court on June 11, 2015, sentenced a police officer to 15 years in prison for killing the activist Shaimaa al-Sabbagh during a peaceful march in downtown Cairo. However, none of the security forces responsible for killing more than 1,000 protesters since July 2013 are in prison.

Governments should endorse the new Safe Schools Declaration at the United Nations Security Council debate on children and armed conflict on June 18, 2015, Human Rights Watch said on June 12. Human Rights Watch released a short video on protecting schools during armed conflict, featuring Ziauddin Yousafzai, UN special adviser on global education and the father of the education activist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai.

MEPs state their concern at the high number of child pregnancies in Paraguay, calling for "access to safe and legal abortion" when the health and life of women or girls are in danger, "where there is severe foetal impairment and in cases of rape and incest". In separate resolutions they also call for the protection of the Palmyra site and draw attention to the situation of children in Nepal.

UN High Commissioner António Guterres, accompanied by Jean Todt, UN Special Envoy on Road Safety, kicks off campaign with pledge to support safe road use.

The European Parliament asks the European Commission to assess the situation in Hungary and to establish an EU mechanism to monitor democracy, the rule of law and human rights annually across the EU, in a resolution voted on Wednesday. Reinstating the death penalty in Hungary would breach the EU Treaties and Charter of fundamental rights, and the wording of the Hungarian government’s public consultation on migration is "highly misleading, biased and unbalanced", it says.

International gold refiners who use gold from Ghana may be benefitting from hazardous child labor in unlicensed mines, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on the eve of World Day Against Child Labor, June 12, 2015. The refiners should take immediate steps to eliminate child labor in their supply chains.

51-year-old Gervais with his wife, four children and two nephews, who paddled across Lake Cahoha, in Northern Burundi, into Rwanda.

The Brazilian Congress should vote down a proposed Constitutional amendment that would allow 16 and 17-year-olds to be tried and punished as adults, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to congressional leaders on June 9. The amendment would violate the country’s obligations under international law and undermine its efforts to reduce crime, Human Rights Watch said.