Human Rights

It is not easy to sum up a year that started with a series of faith-based assaults on religious minorities and came to an end with a massacre of young students that led to the highest death toll in a terrorist attack in the nation’s history.

Experiences in Afghanistan highlight the fundamental challenge IEDs pose to the humanitarian sector, as the principles of neutrality and impartiality are eroded and humanitarian aid is increasingly militarized and politicized.

Reports of 400 lives lost in the Mediterranean between April 11-13, 2015, should force the European Union to implement a vast search-and-rescue operation, Human Rights Watch said today. Eleven bodies have been recovered so far from one confirmed shipwreck over the past few days.

IDH is proud to announce its support for the premiere of Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s latest film, Taxi Téhéran, on 14 April in Paris at the MK2 Quai de Seine cinema, in partnership with Memento Films.

Women human rights defenders in Afghanistan who face mounting violence – including threats, sexual assault and assassinations- are being abandoned by their own government despite the significant gains they have fought to achieve, Amnesty International said in a new report today.

The abominable attack on Garissa University College in northeastern Kenya requires a measured response by Kenyan security forces to bring to justice those responsible and prevent further attacks

By extending the mandate of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Iran for another year, the Human Rights Council has recognized that serious human rights violations continue to take place in the country, and that international attention on human rights should not be diverted by the ongoing nuclear negotiations.

In an irony of sorts, as its 28th session concludes today, the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) has demonstrated its relevance as the main international human rights body only with regard to issues and countries – mass surveillance, the relationship between freedoms of expression and religion and, to some extent, Syria – in the face of which the international community has seemingly been in a stalemate.

Source: Aljazeera Meerut, India – The massacre took place on May 22, 1987, the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The families of Hashimpura – a predominantly Muslim locality in the city of […]

The Human Rights Council this afternoon closed its twenty-eighth session after it adopted eight texts, including on extending the mandate of the Independent Expert on Mali, on combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of persons based on religion or belief, on the prevention of genocide, and on the impact of the world drug problem on the enjoyment of human rights. The Human Rights Council also elected four mandate holders.