Human Rights | WPN World People News

The Afghan government should investigate the failure of police in Kabul to prevent a mob from beating to death a woman with a reported psychosocial disability, Human Rights Watch said on 20 March. On the morning of March 19, 2015, a group of a dozen or more men near the Shah-Do Shamshira shrine claimed the woman, Farkhunda, had burned a copy of the Quran and then beat her to death while police stood by. Media reports state that Farkhunda’s parents have said that their daughter had a mental health condition for many years.

The Baharka camp, 5km north of Erbil in northern Iraq, is home to thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) following the takeover of large swathes of the country by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Submunitions that failed to explode during a cluster munition attack on Stakhanov on January 23.

Former President Mohamed Nasheed addresses the sixty-fourth session of the General Assembly in 2009.

Militias, volunteer fighters, and Iraqi security forces engaged in deliberate destruction of civilian property after these forces, following US and Iraqi air strikes, forced the retreat of Islamic State fighters (also known as ISIS) from the town of Amerli and surrounding areas in early September 2014, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on 18 March. The Iraqi government should rein in the militias and countries participating in the fight against ISIS, including the United States and Iran, should ensure military operations and other related support in the fight against ISIS are not paving the way for such abuses.

The arrest of at least 26 activists and others in Kinshasa on March 15, 2015, raises serious concerns of a broader crackdown on free expression before the 2016 Democratic Republic of Congo presidential elections, Human Rights Watch said on 18 March.

Girls line up during a basketball drill in Mogadishu, Somalia.

Phone interviews with witnesses and photographic evidence reviewed by Human Rights Watch indicate that remnants of RBK-250 PTAB 2.5M cluster bombs were found at Bin Jawad in February 2015 and at Sirte in March. The good condition of the paint on the bomb casings and lack of extensive weathering indicated that the remnants had not been exposed to the environment for long and were from a recent attack. The Libyan Air Force recently bombed both locations, but denied using cluster munitions. It is not possible to determine responsibility on the basis of available evidence.

Pakistani authorities should immediately halt the execution of an alleged child offender scheduled for March 19, 2015, and commute his sentence, Human Rights Watch said on March 15.