Explosive witness testimony from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda implicates Paul Kagame and the RPF in mass killings before, during and after the 1994 genocide.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Thursday formally appointed South African Judge Navanethem Pillay as his high commissioner for human rights.
The United Nations’s top human rights official on Wednesday issued a strong condemnation of the killing of opposition political activists in Zimbabwe. ”It is hard to get a very precise picture of the full range of the violence, or the exact number of politically motivated extra-judicial killings,” said Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Desmond Tutu, the South African archbishop, met the former Palestinian prime minister and Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Gaza at the start of a much-delayed United Nations investigation into the shelling by the Israeli military of a Palestinian house which killed 18 members of a single family in Beit Hanoun.
Zimbabwe’s main rights group accused the government on Tuesday of unleashing violence to help President Robert Mugabe cling to power as the wait for election results stretched into a second month. While the United Nations prepared to meet in New York to discuss the post-election crisis, Mugabe’s regime warned it would crack down on violence.
The United Nations will close its human rights office in Angola after the authorities there withdrew their cooperation, the office of the high commissioner said on Friday. Angola has ordered the office to cease its operations by the end of May after pulling out of talks to establish a formal agreement to regulate the rights body’s work in the country.
Muslim nations on Friday condemned a film by a Dutch lawmaker that accuses the Qur’an of inciting violence, and Dutch Muslim leaders urged restraint. Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigration Freedom Party, launched his short video on the internet on Thursday evening, prompting an al-Qaeda-linked website to call for his death.
Calls to end forced marriage, domestic abuse and job discrimination marked International Women’s Day on Saturday as demonstrators took to the streets worldwide. The issues highlighted crossed a wide spectrum, including abortion rights in Italy, violence against women in Iraq and women hostages in Colombia.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Canadian jurist Louise Arbour, said on Friday she will step down when her current term in office expires on June 30. ”It is very much for personal reasons. I’m not prepared to make this commitment for another four years,” said Arbour in Geneva.
The Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, on Tuesday called on Israel to stop its ”aggression” to create the right climate for negotiations as the United States sought to salvage a stalled peace effort. Abbas said ”peace and negotiations are our strategic choice” but fell short of announcing a resumption of peace talks.
No image available
/ 24 January 2008
Kenya’s opposition on Wednesday called off mass rallies scheduled for Thursday to protest disputed presidential polls. This was at the request of former United Nations chief Kofi Annan, who is in Kenya to mediate the crisis. Annan was in Nairobi in the latest attempt to mediate the turmoil sparked by the disputed re-election of President Mwai Kibaki last month.
No image available
/ 18 December 2007
More than 1 400 would-be migrants, mostly Somalis and Ethiopians, have drowned off Yemen this year trying to cross the Gulf of Aden on rickety boats run by brutal smugglers. About 28 300 people leaving northern Somalia, mainly Somalis and Ethiopians, have made it to Yemen’s shores on 300 boats this year.
No image available
/ 5 November 2007
Pakistani police used tear gas and batons to crush protests by lawyers against President Pervez Musharraf on Monday, despite world outrage at the imposition of a state of emergency. The White House said it was ”deeply disturbed” by the crisis, urging Musharraf, a key ally in the fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, to quit his military post.
No image available
/ 3 September 2007
There has been a ”marked reduction” in human rights violations, road ambushes and illegal firearms in Uganda’s north-east over the past six months, the United Nations said on Monday. In a report, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said the Ugandan national army had made important advances between April and August.