Human Rights | WPN World People News

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed an alternate report to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child documenting the ongoing worldwide sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. The UN committee has summoned the Vatican to report on its record of ensuring children are protected from sexual violence and safeguarding children’s well-being and dignity, the first time the Holy See will have been called to account for its actions on these issues before an international body with authority. The first meeting will take place in Geneva in June.

The Army’s records management division, responsible for responding to requests made under the Freedom of Information Act, released 84 judicial orders and rulings in the court-martial proceedings for PFC Bradley Manning.

A UNHCR-supported camp for internally displaced people near Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin state.

Resistance to polio vaccination has been going through a constant phase of evolution in Pakistan, and with every passing day, it goes one notch up from its previous level involving people from conservative camps to enlightened ones as well. About six months ago, Maulvi Ibrahim Chishti of Muzaffargarh’s rural Khan Pur Bagga Sher area declared polio drops as ‘poison, un-Islamic’ and a ‘western conspiracy’ to render the population impotent. A few days later, tribal elders from 18 villages of North Waziristan decided to boycott polio vaccination, and then the Taliban warlord, Gul Bahadur, decreed that polio vaccination in North Waziristan would remain suspended until the US stopped drone attacks in the area. WHO immediately suspended its polio drive in the tribal areas and government of Pakistan silently accepted the loss of its writ in the area. The people from the remaining parts of Pakistan took it as a sign of the backwardness these remote areas of Pakistan are assumed to be infected of.

At least a dozen houses were destroyed in an attack on the Jabal Badro neighborhood in Aleppo city on February 18, 2013.

It was with a deep sense of satisfaction that I muttered to myself "Amen!" after I read an article in the Phnom Post of December 4, 2012 titled, "Shift in CNRP's political strategy to win elections."

Yarmouk camp for Palestinian refugees in the Syrian capital Damascus.

Australia's parliament passed legislation this week that will criminalize forced marriages and forced labor. The laws are aimed at protecting what activists call a “silent army” of victims, many of them migrants.

Women in Kitchanga, eastern DR of Congo, wash clothes in a water source that is also used for drinking and cooking.

Damaged buildings in Sirte in the aftermath of the conflict.