Human Rights | WPN World People News

Myanmar’s military government, with soldiers scattered throughout the country, is arbitrarily levying fees from the rural poor, pushing some into hunger and debt, experts say.

A court in Bangladesh court has ruled that people should not be forced to wear Islamic regalia, such as skull caps, veils or other religious clothing.

Aid agencies in Niger and Chad have begun giving tens of thousands of malnourished children a product called Plumpy’doz to save them from sliding into often-fatal severe malnutrition.

In an effort to alleviate alarming food shortages that have caused high malnutrition rates among children in Niger, the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) has allocated an additional $15 million to enable the UN food agency to provide relief to an estimated 1.7 million people.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is mobilizing emergency relief supplies in north-western China to help authorities respond to the devastating series of landslides that have killed more than 700 people.

The global youth unemployment rate is at a record high and is expected to climb even higher as the year progresses, the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) announced today.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has begun a major round of feeding for 670,000 children under the age of two and their families in drought-stricken Niger, where as many as eight million people need assistance.

A rise in insurgent attacks has led to a 31 per cent increase in the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan in the first six months of 2010 compared with the same period in 2009, the United Nations said in a new report released today.

On a Friday in Goma central prison in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, 25 dirty, barefoot men accused of illegal fishing in Lake Edward are gathered before three judges, who come once a week to hear cases against those locked up in a building unrenovated since the Belgian colonial era.

Save the Children deployed its rapid response team to the worst-affected and hardest to reach communities in Pakistan's Swat Valley, where record-breaking monsoon rains have triggered deadly floods and mudslides. The team had to navigate the rushing waters using rafts linked to ropes and pulleys in order to distribute temporary shelters and supplies to stranded children and their families.