Human Rights | WPN World People News

Combating trafficking in human beings all over the OSCE region is in focus of OSCE conference in Kyiv in June 2013. Anti-trafficking poster designed as part of OSCE-supported awareness campaign in Tajikistan.

More than a dozen anti-corruption activists in Beijing and Jiangxi Province were detained between late March and late May after participating in or organizing demonstrations calling for government officials to publicly disclose their assets, China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group, Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers, Front Line Defenders, Human Rights Watch, and Independent Chinese PEN said. The Chinese government should release the anticorruption activists and drop all charges against them, the organizations said.

Police and security guards at the trial of Mahamad Bizurukov stand by while relatives berate and throw a shoe at the defendant during a hearing in Osh, Kyrgyzstan on June 5, 2013.

A child gets measured for malnutrition in Mali.

A pro-Condé rally in Guinea’s capital Conakry. Political unrest has intensified recently.

Somalis stand in front of a kiosk in market area of the port city of Kismayo, south Somalia.

A life-saving donation.

United Nations member states should focus urgent attention and decisive action to improve conditions for Dalit women, four international nongovernmental organizations said. The combination of caste and gender makes millions of Dalit women extremely vulnerable to discrimination and violence, including rape, forced prostitution, and modern forms of slavery.

Police and security guards at the trial of Mahamad Bizurukov stand by while relatives berate and throw a shoe at the defendant during a hearing in Osh, Kyrgyzstan on June 5, 2013.

"Governments have to be realistic and effective in fulfilling their responsibility of providing protection to their people." That is quoted from the State of India’s response to the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions' report (full text of the Rapporteur's report available here) after his visit to India. This statement was referring particularly to the use of force by India’s security forces in light of terrorist threats. National security has become an increasingly convenient catch phrase. Yet, one should be cautious about the role of government and the boundaries it entails. Being realistic does not give governments the allowance to underperform its responsibility, and being effective does not give governments the right to undertake illegitimate means in the name of its end goal, regardless of the ends involved.