Human Rights | WPN World People News

Henry Montgomery, sentenced to life without parole for a crime he committed at 17, has spent “each day of the past 46 years knowing he was condemned to die in prison.” The United States Supreme Court gave him new hope on January 25, 2016.

The Sri Lankan government should fulfill its commitments to the United Nations Human Rights Council by ensuring that foreign judges and prosecutors play a significant role in the mandated accountability mechanism for wartime abuses, Human Rights Watch said on January 25. On January 21, 2016, President Maithripala Sirisena told the BBC, contrary to Sri Lanka’s council commitments, that he will “never agree to international involvement,” saying “[w]e have more than enough specialists, experts and knowledgeable people in our country to solve our internal issues."

OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatović on 23 January expressed concern about reports that Russian journalists are being repeatedly denied entry into Moldova.

Unidentified forces fired at least four rockets at two camps for internally displaced people in Benghazi on January 9, 2016.

Britain will provide £30million in new funding to help the most vulnerable people – including children and infants - arriving in Europe and fleeing the Syrian conflict, UK International Development Secretary Justine Greening has announced.

Senior United Nations humanitarian officials on 23 January called on the authorities and various factions in war-torn Yemen to allow sustained access into the besieged central city of Taiz after seeing first-hand the desperate state of its inhabitants, who lack critical medical supplies, food and other basic needs for survival.

The Thai government should urgently investigate the abduction and alleged beating and mistreatment of prominent student activist Sirawith Seritiwat by army soldiers, Human Rights Watch said on January 22. The arrest, which Prime Minister Gen. Prayut Chan-ocha said was for violating the ban on public assembly and political activity, is itself unjustified under the right of all persons to peacefully assemble and protest.

A year ago this week, two young ethnic Kachin school teachers, Hkawn Nan Tsin, 21, and Maran Lu Ra, 20, were raped and murdered at a teacher’s dormitory in the town of Kaung Kha in Burma’s Shan State. The main suspects in this horrific crime are Burmese army soldiers stationed just a few hundred meters from where the women lived. The Burmese military strenuously denied the charges, staged a perfunctory investigation and threatened to take legal action against anyone who publicly alleged army personnel were responsible. To date, no one has been arrested for the crime and a police investigation is going nowhere.

Child soldiers released in South Sudan.

Anti-government insurgency groups should immediately stop intentionally targeting civilians, Human Rights Watch said on January 21. The January 20 suicide attack on a minibus in Kabul transporting journalists affiliated with Tolo TV, Afghanistan’s 24-hour news channel, was an atrocity designed to undermine Afghanistan’s still-fragile media freedom.