The EU institutions have been urged to act urgently in the case of Pakistan’s alleged continued human rights abuses. A coalition of respected human rights NGOs, coming together under the umbrella of Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF), delivered a letter to the EU’s High Representative Josep Borrell, calling for the suspension of Pakistan’s GSP+ status, which…
Thirteen human rights NGOs have called on the authorities of China, Iran and Russia to release religious prisoners under threat of being infected by COVID-19. These are the three countries that have the highest number of believers of all faiths behind bars, according to Human Rights Without Frontiers’ (HRWF) database of FoRB prisoners which documents thousands of…
At the last session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, a case of discrimination based on ethnicity in Croatia was submitted to their delegation, writes Willy Fautré. Twenty-five years after the end of Croatia’s war for independence from Serbia, many Serbs living in Croatia report ongoing discriminatory treatment in court by the judiciary. …
Brussels observers of the fight against corruption in Ukraine have expressed deep concerns about the efficiency of policies put in place in the last five years, during an online dialogue organised by the Brussels Press Club on 2 September, writes Willy Fautré. On 28 August 2020, the Constitutional Court declared a decree by President Petro…
As UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Ahmed Shaheed, solicits submissions from NGOs for the upcoming Report on the Elimination of Religious Intolerance and Discrimination and the Achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 16 (SDG 16), 12 European civil society organisations have co-signed a document denouncing the scapegoating of the Shincheonji Church in…
Respected businessman Vladimir Kokorev has been kept in “abusively” long pretrial detention and, though finally released, is still summoned to court every week despite repeated emergency hospitalization. Since his release in 2018 from nearly 2.5 years of pretrial detention in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Canary Islands), the health of the retired 65-year old Spanish…
Concern has been voiced over Spain’s human rights record, in particular “unfair” detention conditions and extensive pre-trial detention of suspects, during the Universal Periodic Review of Spain at the UN in Geneva on 22 January. The EU member state has been accused of “failing to abide” by international standards concerning fair trials. During the plenary…
