Human Rights | WPN World People News

Ten-year-old Prophète (left) and his friend Ardi, 7, live on the streets in PK5, one of the last neighborhoods in Bangui, Central African Republic, where Christians and Muslims still live side by side.

A high level regional workshop on the World Bank Group's Women, Business and the Law project concluded with renewed commitment to gender parity. Eleven African economies participated in this event: Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Togo.

Egyptian authorities should ensure a full, speedy and effective investigation into the February 16, 2014 bombing of a tourist bus in the Sinai Peninsula that killed four civilians. The investigation should lead to the identification and prosecution of those responsible for planning as well as for carrying out the attack.

Uganda is reaping blistering international criticism and a loss of aid revenue after President Yoweri Museveni signed a law imposing harsh penalties for homosexuality.

President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan arrived in the Democratic Republic of Congo for a conference of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), Congolese media reported. Bashir faces charges by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Darfur, in Sudan.

UNICEF, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Mercy Corps, Save the Children and World Vision issued an impassioned appeal to the general public, urging it to voice its outrage at the devastating impact on children and alarming long-term consequences of a lost generation as the conflict in Syria approaches its fourth year.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s signing of the Anti-Homosexuality bill into law is a deeply worrying infringement on the human rights of all Ugandans. The law, signed by Museveni in Kampala on February 24, 2014, increases penalties for some forms of consensual same-sex conduct between adults; curtails constitutionally protected rights to privacy, family life, and equality; and violates internationally protected rights to freedom of association and expression.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) should carry out a series of reforms to avoid the human rights abuses that tainted the Sochi Winter Games, 33 human rights groups said in an joint letter to the IOC president, Thomas Bach. The IOC should reform the host city selection process and amend the Olympic Charter’s nondiscrimination principle to include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories, the groups said.