Human Rights | WPN World People News

North Korea’s so-called dear leader, Kim Jong-Il, should be remembered as his country celebrates his birthday on February 16, 2015, for presiding over one of the world’s most brutal and repressive governments, Human Rights Watch said on February 13. During his 17 years of rule, Kim presided over the country’s worst famine and oversaw systematic crimes against humanity against his own people.

Women and minorities are the most marginalized faction of the Pakistani society; the Muslim majority is increasingly being intolerant towards people professing religion other than Islam. In a recent case of increasing rape incident of Christian girls, as reported by British Pakistani Christian Association, two minor Christian girls from Jaranwala, Punjab, Farzana aged 14 and Sehrish aged 16 were gang raped by three Muslim men. On December 3rd 2014 three men abducted the girls from outside their home when they had gone outside to answer the call of nature. As they are too poor to have toilet facility the girls are forced to use open fields. The rapist held the hapless girls all night subjecting them to rape and torture, as their poor father searched for them in vain. In the morning the distraught girls returned home and told their father of their ordeal. FIR no. 552/14 was registered at the Lundya Wala Police Station and one of the rapists Sajad was arrested while two of the rapists, Azeem and Shahbaz managed to run away. The police and local Muslims are pressurizing Ilyas Masih, the father of the girls to accept a compromise and settle the matter.

Children are increasingly vulnerable to recruitment and use by armed groups as conflicts around the world become more brutal, intense and widespread, UNICEF and the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict said to mark the International Day against the Use of Child Soldiers on 12 February.

A sign welcoming visitors to Murwi, a commune in Burundi’s northwestern province of Cibitoke. Burundian military and police summarily executed at least 47 members of an armed group who had surrendered in Murwi and Bukinanyana communes between December 30, 2014, and January 3, 2015.

Venezuela has granted powers to the military to use force to control peaceful demonstrations, Human Rights Watch said on 12 February. On January 23, 2015, the Defense Ministry issued a resolution authorizing the Armed Forces to maintain “public order” and “social peace” during “public meetings and demonstrations.”

Sudanese army forces raped more than 200 women and girls in an organized attack on the north Darfur town of Tabit in October 2014, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on 11 February. The United Nations (UN) and African Union (AU) should take urgent steps to protect civilians in the town from further abuses.

Iran’s judiciary immediately should halt plans to execute a man convicted at age 17 of terrorism-related crimes for an armed opposition group and vacate his death sentence.

A gathering to promote the rights of girls and education for all in Barrod village of Rajasthan’s Alwar district (2012).

Serious concerns about workers’ rights have not been resolved for a high-profile project in Abu Dhabi that will host branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums and a campus of New York University (NYU), Human Rights Watch said in a report released on February 10. These institutions should make their continued engagement with the Saadiyat Island project contingent on the developers’ commitment to more serious enforcement of worker protections and the compensation of workers who suffered abuses, including those arbitrarily deported after they went on strike.

Female genital mutilation has affected some 140 million women and girls around the world and in Europe alone half a million of them live with the physical and psychological consequences of this practice. To raise awareness 6 February has been designated the International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation. The EP, which has long fought to end all violence against women, will debate what should be done about it in plenary on 10 February. Follow the debate live on our website.