Human Rights | WPN World People News

New information has corroborated allegations of enforced disappearances and secret detention by Ukraine’s security services, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said in a joint letter to Ukraine’s military prosecutor. The new information indicates that at least five victims of enforced disappearances remain in secret detention at Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) in Kharkiv, one of the secret detention sites the groups documented in a July 21, 2016 joint report.

Save the Children is concerned about the fate of civilians being evacuated from the besieged town of Daraya, Syria. The movement of people to other areas of Damascus and to Idlib is ongoing on August 27, with six buses apparently leaving this afternoon.

The forced commitment to a psychiatric clinic of Ilmi Umerov represents a worrying new low in Russia’s stigmatization of the Crimean Tatar community and should be immediately reversed, said the Chair of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly's human rights committee, Ignacio Sanchez Amor (MP, Spain) on 27 August.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May is on 27 August launching an unprecedented audit of public services to reveal racial disparities and help end the burning injustices many people experience across Britain.

Stressing that “time is of the essence” amid the increasingly dire situation in Aleppo, the United Nations Special Envoy for Syria on 27 August called for all sides in the conflict to agree by Sunday on allowing aid delivery and repairs for the war-ravaged city's power and water systems to provide some relief for the nearly two million people trapped there.

The agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas on August 24, 2016, to end their 52-year conflict is an unprecedented opportunity to curtail abuses in the country, Human Rights Watch said on Aug 25. But it includes a serious defect that risks its unraveling: a flawed victims’ agreement reached in December 2015, that could guarantee impunity for those responsible for human rights abuses and war crimes.

Burma’s government and ethnic armed groups should ensure that women meaningfully participate in efforts to end the country’s longstanding armed conflicts, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Aug 24. The government should also make women’s rights a priority as Burma continues its political transition. In late August 2016, the National League for Democracy-led government that was elected in November 2015, and various armed groups will meet at the “Panglong 21st Century Peace Conference” to begin talks.

Separatist insurgents in Thailand’s southern border provinces have committed an apparent series of bombings against civilians that may amount to crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said on Aug 24.

Bahraini authorities are targeting Shia clerics in a systematic campaign of harassment that violates their rights to freedom of assembly and speech, and to religious freedom, Human Rights Watch said on Aug 23.

A WHO emergency health team arrived 19 August 2016 in Maiduguri city to assess and respond to the health needs of 800 000 people in north eastern Nigeria, formerly held by militant insurgency groups. WHO is scaling up its emergency response activities, together with partners, to assist hundreds of thousands of people in desperate need of health services. More than half of the health facilities in Borno State, the area most severely affected, are not functioning.