Human Rights

Geneva – The UN launched an emergency appeal for just over $300 million to assist Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank who are still dealing with the effects of the conflict that ended three years ago as well as various humanitarian needs.

Dramatic improvements in water and sanitation services are needed to eliminate cholera in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, health experts who took part in a UN-organized briefing to outline concrete steps to stem the spread of the disease in the region stressed.

Geneva – A massive humanitarian operation to bring succour to people affected by inter-ethnic violence in South Sudan’s state of Jonglei is under way with United Nations having carried out relief needs assessments in most of the affected areas, a UN official said.

Geneva – Two years after the devastating earthquake that flattened Haiti, the country remains “a fragile State, beset by chronic poverty and under-development. Its weak institutions leave children vulnerable to shocks and the impact of disaster”.

Geneva – In a move that seemingly does not apply to the cases of death sentence in the U.S., the United Nations has now relaunched its campaign against this capital punishment, expressing “alarm” at the increase of death penalties in Saudi Arabia.

Cairo – A civilian court has ordered an end to the practice of forced virginity tests on female detainees in military prisons. Judge Ali Fekry, head of the Egyptian Administrative Court, read out the ruling at noon on December 27 in a courtroom packed with pro-democracy activists and journalists. The crowd immediately erupted in cheers of jubilation and anti-military chants.

Rome -“They expected that we were all dead, but we are still alive.” Silvano Sarti talks through a bullhorn to the people gathered in Dalmazia square, in Florence.

Somaliland officials are abducting and refouling Oromo, Ogaden and Eritrean asylum seekers. This is against international law as it pertains to refugees. Dr Trevor Trueman has co-ordinated a report on this matter which turns around the incident that took place late December 2011 where twenty refugees from Ethiopia were detained by Somaliland security forces.

Geneva – “In 2011, the very idea of ‘power’ shifted,” High Commissioner for Human Rights said on the occasion of this year’s Human Rights Day on December 10. “We know there is still too much repression in our world, still too much impunity, still too many people for whom rights are not yet a reality,” Navi Pillay said.

Geneva – Hundreds of refugees in southern Ethiopia have been relocated from an overcrowded transit centre to a new camp, the fifth one in the area for Somalis fleeing conflict and drought in their homeland.