Overseas news archive

14.06.2006 The new United Nations Human Rights Council, which starts work on 19 June, has been urged to put indigenous rights on its agenda.

14.06.2006 A savage attack on a critic of China's massive Three Gorges dam - apparently for talking to a German television journalist - has left him with a fractured neck and possible permanent paralysis.

14.06.2006 Fewer than 50 countries have achieved 100 per cent voluntary blood donation, according to a statement marking World Blood Donor Day (14 June).

14.06.2006 A district magistrate in India has ordered the arrest of a human rights defender for the second time, according to an alert by the Asian Human Rights Committee.

14.06.2006 In a case that has major implications for the treatment of Roma and asylum-seekers throughout Europe, Roma advocates in Denmark are suing the Danish Red Cross over the treatment of Roma from Kosovo whose appeal for asylum has been rejected.

13.06.2006 A guard at the UN refugee agency's field office in Habila, western Darfur, was shot and wounded during an attack last night by four men in military uniform, the UNHCR said this morning.

13.06.2006 The European Commission is pressed to reconsider the imposition of anti-dumping duty and ensure that Vietnamese footwear workers do not pay the price of a mounting trade dispute.

13.06.2006 The failure of Norwegian peace brokers to get representatives of Tamil Tiger rebels and the Sri Lankan government to sit across a table after their arrival in Oslo appears to have served as the cue for renewed violence and brutality.
* OneWorld Guide to Sri Lanka

13.06.2006 A major humanitarian emergency could develop in Palestine as a result of the withholding of aid from the Palestinian Authority, the International Committee of the Red Cross said as it stepped up its own spending in the area.
* OneWorld UK Palestine Guide

13.06.2006 Serious violations of trade union rights are occurring in Guinea, including death threats against union leaders, warn international union groupings.

13.06.2006 South Africa's teacher shortage will reach crisis point by 2008 unless drastic steps are taken to increase the number entering the profession, according to a report in Business Day.

13.06.2006 As the row continued over suicides in Guantánamo, Reporters Without Borders condemned the arbitrary, four-year detention of an assistant Al-Jazeera cameraman in the US military prison on Cuba.
* Rights groups demand independent investigations into suicides

13.06.2006 The battle over a resumption of commercial whaling will reach crisis point at the meeting of the expanded International Whaling Commission that opens in St Kitts on Friday.
* Undercover footage proves there is no humane way to kill a whale at sea

13.06.2006 A delegation led by the not-for-profit Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA is to visit Guatemala to study violence against women, particularly the 1,800-2,400 women murdered in the last five years.

12.06.2006 UK and US policies in "the war on terror" are increasing the likelihood of attacks, a highly critical report claimed today. It said natural resource scarcity, climate change, trade inequality and nuclear "rogue" states were bigger problems than terrorism.

* OneWorld news by email

12.06.2006 Mona Jassem Al Kawari, a Bahraini lawyer, welcomed her appointment as the first woman judge in Bahrain as "a historic day".

12.06.2006 Turkish prosecutors are using the weeks before the trial of author Perihan Magden to build a case that they hope will see her jailed for three years, according to an anti-censorship group.

12.06.2006 Thousands of genocide survivors whose school fees should be paid by a solidarity fund no longer attend school and live in difficult conditions, said six Rwandan MPs.

12.06.2006 More than 8 million children are engaged in the worst forms of child labour - such as soldiering and prostitution - UNICEF’s senior advisor on child protection said in a statement marking World Day Against Child Labour (12 June).
* Together we can do it
* Help eliminate the worst forms of child labour
* International trade unions welcome child labour debate
* Eliminating child labor through community participation

12.06.2006 China is fast emerging as one of the world’s biggest, most secretive and irresponsible arms exporters, according to a new report issued today.