Human Wrongs Watch

Yemen has been facing a new wave of internal displacement, with tens of thousands of civilians fleeing tribal clashes in the north and fresh fighting between Government troops and militants in the country’s south.

Beirut – Bahrain has routinely convicted hundreds of opposition activists and others of politically motivated charges in unfair trials, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a new report. The government should void the convictions in trials before Bahrain’s military and civilian courts that fell far short of international fair trial standards, Human Rights Watch said.

NAIROBI – Huge mirrors in space, petrifying carbon dioxide, algae farms, and lots of white paint – these are some of the ideas being proposed to offset global warming amid fears that temperatures might rise by more than two degrees Celsius by the end of this century.

On 19 March last year, the UN Security Council decided to intervene militarily in Libya to protect unarmed, civilian citizens. The military intervention, which lasted more than seven months, consisted of continuos air surveillance, raids, reported ground actions and arms provision to the “insurgents” as part of such “protection” to the population of the oil-rich country.

One billion children live in urban areas, a number that is growing rapidly. Yet disparities within cities reveal that many lack access to schools, health care and sanitation. These children are at “high risk of exploitation and trafficking, as well as becoming victims of violence”.

Today there are more than 1.3 million internally displaced Iraqis, with 500,000 of them “living in extremely precarious conditions”. This is just one of the consequences of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, started in 2003 and ended -only officially- few weeks ago.

“Conflict-related sexual violence is not specific to one country or continent: it is a global risk […] Wars have entered the marketplaces where women trade; they follow children en route to school; and haunt the prison cells where political activists are detained.”

While rights groups stress that the brutal crackdown on protesters in Syria and other Middle East and North Africa countries underlines the absence of a global regulation on the trade of conventional arms, a number of states –including U.S., China, and Russia– are rejecting the Inclusion of strong human rights safeguards in an international Arms Trade Treaty.

With 60 percent of the world’s population, Asia has one of the largest concentrations globally of aging persons, creating a host of potential challenges, experts [warn](http://www.irinnews.org/printreport.aspx?reportid=94856). Over 65 percent of Asia’s elderly population will be women.

An estimated 10 million people or more are struggling to get enough to eat across the Sahel region, including 5.4 million in Niger alone, representing over one third of its total population. More than a million children under the age of five risk severe acute malnutrition in the region, up from 300,000 last year.