Category: Human rights

Venezuela – ‘a nation with no future’?

     

About 20 percent of Venezuela’s children face problems of malnutrition, and the number of children admitted to hospitals for severe malnutrition has spiked, The Miami Herald reports: A survey carried… Read more »

Enough is Enough: Iranian Kurds Running Out of Patience

     

Two decades after a ceasefire, Kurdish fighters have resumed armed action in Iran, The London Times reports (subscription required). The result has been scores of deaths, cross-border artillery barrages into… Read more »

Russia: ‘Big Brother’ Law Harms Security, Rights

     

Russia’s controversial anti-terrorism legislation is reminiscent of Soviet-era surveillance and will also likely contribute to crippling the Russian economy, notes Anna Borshchevskaya, an Ira Weiner fellow at The Washington Institute… Read more »

Libyans ‘winning the battle’ against Islamic State

     

While the so-called Islamic State is losing ground across Libya, divisions among various Libyan factions make it difficult for the unity government to convert the group’s defeat into legitimacy, Carnegie… Read more »

Government specter hovers over foreign NGOs in China

     

  The European Union should press China to end its crackdown on civil society and peaceful dissent, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to European Commission President Jean-Claude… Read more »

A year on from JCPOA, Iran views civil society as security threat

     

To thwart widespread expectations that more open relations with the West would follow the signing of the international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program last year, Ayatollah Khamenei has repeatedly warned… Read more »

China’s Lhasa Consensus ‘can’t hide the rot underneath’

     

  China last week held a two-day Tibet Development Forum in Lhasa attended by 130 people from 30 countries and organized by the Communist Party’s Propaganda Department, VOA’s Yeshi Dorje… Read more »

Democracies join authoritarians in rejecting civil society space

     

The United Nations Human Rights Council has passed a resolution for the “promotion, protection, and enjoyment of human rights on the internet” which condemns any country that intentionally disrupts the internet access of its… Read more »

Elie Wiesel stood for solidarity, not neutrality

     

  “We must always take sides,” said Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who passed away last week. “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.  Silence… Read more »

Identity and interests trump ideology in countering sectarian radicalization

     

Extremist groups are able to recruit marginalized, impoverished youths because they give them a sense of belonging and identity, not because of their ideological appeal, says a leading Lebanese civil… Read more »