Human Rights | WPN World People News

The collapse of an eight-story factory building near Dhaka shows the urgent need to improve Bangladesh’s protections for worker health and safety, Human Rights Watch said Thursday. Reforms should include a drastic overhaul of the government’s system of labor inspections and an end to government efforts to thwart the right of workers to unionize.

The government of Taiwan should immediately reinstate its moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.

Mexico’s congress should reject a proposed constitutional change on preventive detention, Human Rights Watch said Thursday. The proposed change, which would reduce the maximum preventive detention period from 80 days to 40, would not meet international human rights standards.

The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Dunja Mijatović, at the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum, Bonn, 20 June 2011.

The European Union’s premature lifting of all targeted sanctions on Burma means the EU will need a new platform to press the government to improve the country’s still dire human rights situation. On April 22, 2013, EU foreign ministers ended decades of EU travel bans and targeted sanctions on Burmese army and government individuals and entities, except its export ban on arms.

Burmese authorities and members of Arakanese groups have committed crimes against humanity in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims in Arakan State since June 2012, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.

Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan’s highly repressive policies are coming up for rare international scrutiny on April 22 and 24, 2013, Human Rights Watch said today.

Protesters have taken to the streets in the Indian capital following the reported brutal rape of a five-year-old girl, who remains hospitalized with severe internal injuries. India's prime minister and president have expressed shock and anguish at the crime, which comes just four months after a similar incident rocked the country.

Indian police on Saturday say they have arrested 22-year-old Manoj Kumar who had fled to the neighboring state of Bihar after allegedly kidnapping, raping and torturing the young girl.

Emergency supplies sent by UNICEF to the Central African Republic being unloaded in the capital Bangui.

Mahmadali Hayit, deputy head of the Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan, lies in his hospital bed at the National Medical Center in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on April 20, 2013 after being beaten outside his home by unknown assailants the night before. Hayit, 56, suffered severe wounds to the head, face, eyes, ribs, back, and stomach. Hayit is well-known for his outspoken criticism of the policies and human rights record of the current Tajik government, which has been ruled by President Emomali Rahmon continuously since 1994.