Human Rights | WPN World People News

Houthi forces and southern armed groups have committed serious abuses at a hospital in Yemen’s port city of Aden, forcing its evacuation in late April 2015.

The government’s response to a decade-long insurgency in Dagestan, a southern Russian republic, has been marked by serious human rights violations, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on June 18. Insurgents also have attacked civilians.

Five young activists from across Africa are sharing their powerful personal experiences of child marriage in UNICEF’s first ever global Twitter takeover on this year’s Day of the African Child (June 16).

The heinous attacks on civilians in Lamu and Tana River area of Kenya’s coast in mid-2014 were followed by abusive security force operations, Human Rights Watch and the Kenya Human Rights Commission said on June 15. One year later, no one has been held responsible for the attacks. Hundreds of people have been beaten and detained without charge while communities remain vulnerable to further attacks.

Egyptian authorities are increasing their pressure on independent organizations in Egypt that receive foreign funding or have criticized government policies, 10 international human rights organizations said on June 15. Independent groups have already been subjected to continuing harassment and ordered to comply with an onerous law on associations that dates to the rule of former President Hosni Mubarak.

RMNP/IPDC UNESCO safety of journalists training project implemented in rural Pakistan.

Attorneys for four American Muslim men with no criminal records who were placed or kept on the No-Fly List by the FBI in retaliation for their refusal to become informants urged a federal court to reject the government’s motion to dismiss their case. The lawsuit alleges the FBI attempted to coerce the men into spying on their religious communities through their placement on the No-Fly List and that agents told them they could get off the list if they agreed to work for the FBI.

A U.S. federal judge ordered the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC) to release emails regarding UIUC’s firing of tenured professor Steven Salaita over his personal tweets criticizing the Israeli government’s 2014 bombing of Gaza. Documents obtained through previous FOIA requests revealed pressure from donors, who threatened to withdraw financial support from UIUC if the university did not fire Salaita. The judge ruled on June 12 from the bench, following oral argument in a FOIA lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)’s co-counsel, the Chicago law firm Loevy & Loevy, on behalf of Professor Salaita that sought university emails, including emails from donors, which the university had refused to turn over. The FOIA case is separate from the civil rights lawsuit against UIUC challenging his firing, Salaita v. Kennedy.

At least 68 children are reported to have been killed and 180 injured since March last year as a result of conflict in eastern Ukraine, UNICEF said on June 12. While no children were reportedly killed in the latest escalation near the town of Mariinka, west of Donetsk, there are anecdotal reports of children having been injured by heavy weapons fire.

Flags fly above the sign for Camp Justice at Guantanamo Bay.