Full Coverage: Human rights

30.12.2005 At least 14,000 minors were abducted by State and Maoists, of which 60 were killed during conflict, in the past ten months, says a report.The report presented by Child Workers in Nepal, (CWIN), at Kathmandu, Nepal said that all the minors were abducted and disappeared in between January 2005 to November, by the belligerent sides

30.12.2005 Now religious and spiritual leaders would be brought together to focus on the alarming fall in the child sex ratio in Rajasthan. Agencies working in the field planned to involve religious and spiritual leaders of Jains, Jats, Sikhs, Rajputs, Gurjars and Muslim community as they attain a powerful hold in their community and bestow upon the community a voice and the presence in the larger societal framework.

23.12.2005 KosovoÂ’s Ombudsperson Marek Antoni Nowicki voiced his concerns, during a farewell conference today, on the situation of human rights in Kosovo, emphasizing that they are still far from the international standards.

23.12.2005 When Dil Bhushan Pathak, a popular newscaster in Nepal, was reading the news one night, he came across an item that caused him to skip a heartbeat. In the remote Achham district in far-western Nepal, a woman had died a painful death. She was undergoing a clandestine abortion using a traditional method - the insertion of a heated rod smeared with herbal paste into the uterus.

23.12.2005 A National Human Rights Commission report says that the number of child labourers in UP has seen an increase, the first since around 70,000 bonded children were freed at the behest of the Supreme Court in 1997.

22.12.2005 The National Social Watch Coalition and ActionAid India provide the latest information and news from Hong Kong. The information has been provided in the form of two newsletters in PDF - wto news5.pdf and wto news11.pdf.

21.12.2005 Freedom House, the U.S. based non-profit organization, released on Monday, December 19, its Freedom in the World 2005 report. Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovenia were graded free countries, based on the criteria of political rights and civil liberties. Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina are only partially free countries.

21.12.2005 Mothers who had lost their families and their children to the tsunami, nearly one year back, are again giving birth and bringing up new families in coastal Tamil Nadu with help from the government and local doctors.

21.12.2005 When the first big wave came in on December 26 last year, H Priyantha thought it was just that — a big wave. Then the sea pulled back. The fisherman from Balapitiya in southern Sri Lanka rushed into the sea to tie his boat — and saw the monster wave coming.

21.12.2005 The Home Office has admitted it was searching for an Iraqi Kurd who had been unlawfully deported to Iraq.

20.12.2005 Sitting in his bed in a field hospital, Safir, 3, is coughing heavily, while his mother, Meerjan, gives him water to soothe the outbursts. The reason is pneumonia, say doctors at the field hospital run by the Pakistan Islamic Medical Association (PIMA) in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

20.12.2005 Vietnamese victims of the defoliant known as Agent Orange wound up a month-long visit to the U.S. at the invitation of veterans, Vietnamese Americans and peace activists, to press their case for reparations from the U.S. government and the companies that made the deadly chemical.

20.12.2005 Accounts from detainees at Guantánamo reveal that as recently as last year the United States operated a secret prison in Afghanistan where detainees were subjected to torture and other mistreatment, a human rights group said.

19.12.2005 The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has condemned the police brutality and inhuman treatment of WTO protestors by the Hong Kong police. The AHRC has alleged that the police used excessive force on unarmed protestors.

15.12.2005 Nearly a third surveyed in a UK Mori poll said that they condoned torture in some circumstances. A leading UK human rights group said that people are losing sight of the horrific reality of torture - enabling the UK to turn a blind eye to other countries' torture records by seeking ‘Memoranda of Understanding’ with countries like Algeria.
*Campaign against torture

15.12.2005 Meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the broader aims of the Millennium Declaration would transform the lives of millions of children. Unicef's report - The State of the World's Children - that documents global trends affecting children says that hundreds of millions of children are suffering from severe exploitation and discrimination and have become virtually invisible to the world.

15.12.2005 Unicef's flagship report - The State of the World's Children - that documents global trends affecting children says that hundreds of millions of children are suffering from severe exploitation and discrimination and have become virtually invisible to the world. It says that millions of children disappear from view because of trafficking or when they are forced to work in domestic servitude.

15.12.2005 Global teachers union - Education International - has said vehemently opposed the inclusion of education in the WTO process. It has urged member countries to remove education services from the GATS on grounds that education is a human right that serves the public interest and should not, therefore, be treated as a commodity that is governed by commercial trade rules.

14.12.2005 Goran Svilanovic, the Chair of the First Table of the Stability Pact for SEE, said that the so-called “Schengen Wall” is the biggest barrier in Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

14.12.2005 Amnesty's London season of films that tackle rights issues ends with Hotel Rwanda, feature film set during the genocide. The screening will be followed by a talk and Q&A with invited guests.