Photo by Ozodbek Erkinov on Unsplash According to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), Uzbekistan should be added to the U.S. State Department’s Special Watch List for engaging in systematic violations of religious freedom. The recommendation comes in the commission’s latest reporting, which highlights an array of laws and administrative practices that it says punish…
Schools on the Front Line: What Rising Antisemitism Means for Europe’s Children In the days after 7 October 2023, classrooms across Europe changed. In Paris, Jewish teenagers reported classmates whispering that they were responsible for Gaza. In London, a boy who wore a Star of David necklace was told to take it off or get…
Photo by Rainier Ridao on Unsplash EC president Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union has acknowledged Europe’s social crisis and the need for fair competitiveness. However, a campaign group says that without Roma economic and political empowerment, both Europe’s economy and democracy will remain incomplete. That is the view of The Roma Foundation…
Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash Twenty years after Saddam Hussein was hanged, Iraq remains mired in corruption, sectarianism, and repression, particularly towards Kurdish citizens and women, writes Denis MacShane. The hope that the 2003 US-UK invasion would bring democracy and the rule of law has long faded. One woman’s story reveals just how…
Freeing all the unlawfully detained in the Ukraine war should be an absolute priority. That is the view of Oleksandra Matviichuk, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and prominent Ukrainian human rights lawyer. Matviichuk was speaking to this website on Monday ahead of a crunch meeting in the White House between President Donald Trump and his Ukraine…
Photo by Boris Smokrovic on Unsplash The EU has thrown its weight behind efforts to support marginalised people. This is timed to coincide with This year’s International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples (Friday 8 August). Brussels says the event is about shaping futures and defending rights. This was the message on Friday from Kaja…
Photo by Elgin Akyurt on Unsplash The French NGO CAP Liberté de Conscience (CAP) and Brussels-based Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF) have filed a joint written statement to the United Nations expressing their deep concern about the use of chemical weapons by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in the violent civil war that has raged…
Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash On 9 July the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that Russia is fully responsible for the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in July 2014, which resulted in the deaths of all 298 onboard, most of them Dutch citizens. The ruling was part of a…
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash The Association de la Presse Internationale – International Press Association (API-IPA) marked its 50th anniversary this week (10 July), celebrating five decades of supporting journalists in Brussels. “We honour 50 years of API’s volunteer-driven efforts to defend correspondents’ interests,” said Dafydd ab Iago, API-IPA president. “Brussels is kinder…
Photo Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), made a legitimacy dash to Seville in Spain last week, to attend a UN international development summit, the first of its kind in a decade. Addressing the conference, he made sweeping claims about Sudan’s important steps toward ‘civilian-led democratic transition’, claims…
