Human Rights | WPN World People News

Divina Beamkoma, 7, was shot in the legs while fleeing heavily armed Seleka fighters and Muslim Peuhl herders attacking her village of Boawi on February 26, 2014.

A joint declaration by 27 United Nations member states expressing concern about Egypt’s repeated use of excessive force against demonstrators turned the international spotlight on Egypt’s human rights abuses. It was the firstsuch action at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva since Egyptian security forces killed hundreds of protesters in dispersing a sit-in at Raba’a Square in Cairo on August 14, 2013.

A 14-year-old girl holds her baby at her sister’s home in a village in Kanduku, in Malawi’s Mwanza district. She married in September 2013, but her husband chased her away. Her 15-year-old sister, in the background, married when she was 12. Both sisters said they married to escape poverty.

Antonyia Parvanova

OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Astrid Thors is alarmed about the situation in Crimea.

A human rights group said Vietnam has the highest number of political prisoners in Southeast Asia.

A 14-year-old girl holds her baby at her sister’s home in a village in Kanduku, in Malawi’s Mwanza district. She married in September 2013, but her husband chased her away. Her 15-year-old sister, in the background, married when she was 12. Both sisters said they married to escape poverty.

The international community should agree to provide assistance to Libya’s flailing judicial system, Human Rights Watch said following the international ministerial conference on Libya on March 6, 2014. The assistance should include urgently needed training for judicial police and trained personnel to help Libya end the crime of mass arbitrary detention. They should review the cases of the thousands of people detained in Libya without charge, some for as long as three years.

World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim called domestic violence “an outrage” that should no longer be considered a private matter, but a public issue and a major challenge for all who work in development.

Kenya could become the next battleground for gay rights as lawmakers plan to introduce a motion in parliament to compel authorities to more strongly enforce the country's anti-homosexual laws. Gay rights activists say the pressure has already increased since neighboring Uganda passed a strict anti-gay law last month.