Full Coverage: Human rights

31.03.2006 On March 28, the very first doctor in India was sentenced to two years in prison for violating the Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act. In the 11 years since the Act was enacted, why have lawbreakers got away?

31.03.2006 HIV infections in southern India have fallen by a third over a four-year period, raising hopes that the tide of the disease could be reversed in one of the country's worst-hit regions. A study published in the Lancet looked at data from the four south Indian states that account for 75 per cent of India's 5.1 million people infected with the virus.

30.03.2006 The UN wants a strong people-centred approach to early warning systems and feels that science and technology, which are advancing rapidly, must go hand in hand with human needs.

30.03.2006 WASHINGTON, D.C., Mar 29 (OneWorld) - Former Liberian strongman Charles Taylor is to stand trial nearly three years after a UN-backed court indicted him on 17 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his alleged role in West African massacres.

29.03.2006 Le CAPMA, Collectif pour l'Autonomie du peuple Mapuche (capmamtl@riseup.net), veut informer qu'actuellement 13 prisonnierEs politiques MAPUCHE sont incarcérées en permanence dans différentes prisons du Chili, accuséEs injustement par différentes lois, principalement par la loi anti-terroriste (18.314), une loi au service de l’oppression et de répression de l'État chilien.

29.03.2006 Just hours after his disappearance was announced, Charles Taylor was caught at the northern Nigerian border Wednesday, nearly 1000 miles from his home. He was attempting to leave the country in a jeep with diplomatic plates and a trunk full of U.S. dollars.

29.03.2006 Less than three days after revoking his asylum, the government of Nigeria announced Tuesday that Charles Taylor had disappeared, drawing outrage from rights groups and causing unease in Liberia's capital.

28.03.2006 The full US Senate is due to debate a controversial immigration reform bill that would toughen laws dealing with illegal immigrants.

28.03.2006 India's left-leaning, United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has on the anvil controversial legislation that would see jobs reserved for 'Dalits' (people socially deemed low caste by birth) in private corporations after a pattern that has long existed in the public sector.

28.03.2006 23-year-old American peace activist Rachel Corrie was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer aiming for a Palestinian home on March 16, 2003. Her powerful emails and journal entries have been transformed into a one-woman play, but political pressure might keep it from ever reaching a U.S. stage.

28.03.2006 The United States' recent human rights record could make it difficult for the self-styled leader of the free world to get elected by its peers to sit on the new UN Human Rights Council.

27.03.2006 Nigeria has announced that Liberian officials are now "free to take" former warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor, but it's in Sierra Leone that he's really wanted--to face charges of crimes against humanity.

27.03.2006 The International Advocacy Mission for Press Freedom in Nepal that is currently here to assess the situation of press freedom has met Maoist leaders in a village in Palpa district and discussed the problems faced by journalists from the rebels.

26.03.2006 Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is said to have assured a delegation led by Medha Patkar of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) that he would talk to the Ministers concerned in the next two days on resettlement and rehabilitation of those displaced by the Sardar Sarovar dam across the Narmada in Gujarat.

24.03.2006 The assertion that access to water is a human right was not included in the ministerial declaration adopted at the Fourth World Water Forum, which ended in Mexico on Wednesday, World Water Day. Although all of the delegates said they agreed with the principle, some argued that it was not feasible to include it in the final declaration, because it could generate legal problems at the national and international level.

23.03.2006 As L K Advani gets busy scoring political points over the Varanasi blasts with his Ekta Yatra, a similar, though silent, yatra along the Ganga has completed its halfway mark and reached this holy city. And it has come armed with nothing but an indelible zeal to fight female foeticide and other womenÂ’s issues.

23.03.2006 Goa is every tourist's dream vacation. But there is a darker side. Cases after cases of paedophilia involving tourists have been reported from the state. An alarmed Goa government has now passed a Children's Act.

22.03.2006 Mutual distrust and even suspicions of a "conspiracy" separate the organisers of the Fourth World Water Forum, taking place in the Mexican capital, and the activists holding their own simultaneous alternative gathering.

22.03.2006 An international mission plans to visit Nepal to draw attention to the serious threat to press freedom and also the free expression violations that are continuing to occur in the country. The mission's aim is to support the country's media community and raise concerns with authorities over attacks on journalists.

20.03.2006 Sixteen Jewish campaign groups are urging the Archibishop of Canterbury to support the General SynodÂ’s vote to withdraw its investments in bulldozer manufacturer Caterpillar. A War on Want report shows that the company sells its bulldozers to the Israeli military fully aware that they will be used for the demolition of houses in the Palestinian Occupied Territories.