Human rights across the world are in a parlous state as leaders shun their obligations to uphold international law, according to the annual report of Human Rights Watch (HRW). In its 2024 world report, HRW warns grimly of escalating human rights crises around the globe, with wartime atrocities increasing, suppression of human rights defenders on the rise, and universal human rights principles and laws being attacked and undermined by governments. The report highlights political leaders’ increasing disregard for international human rights laws. The report says “selective government outrage and transactional…
Tag: Sudan
China, Myanmar and now Darfur … the horror of genocide is here again | Simon Tisdall
It’s happening again. In Darfur, scene of a genocide that killed 300,000 people and displaced millions 20 years ago, armed militias are on the rampage once more. Now, as then, they are targeting ethnic African tribes, murdering, raping and stealing with impunity. “They” are nomadic, ethnic Arab raiders, the much-feared “devils on horseback” – except now they ride in trucks. They’re called the Janjaweed. And they’re back. How is it possible such horrors can be repeated? The world condemned the 2003 slaughter. The UN and the International Criminal Court (ICC)…
James Cleverly on taking a new approach to foreign policy – and belting out the Beatles with Blinken
In the early hours of Friday morning New Zealand time, James Cleverly was holed up in the British high commission in Wellington calling international partners about the mounting crisis in Sudan. It didn’t take long for him to realise that he would have to cut short his visit and make the long journey back to London. Emergency meetings were already under way in Whitehall preparing for the evacuation of British diplomats from Khartoum. The clashes, which began last weekend as a power struggle between rival military factions, have derailed a…
Open secrets: inside the 21 April Guardian Weekly
A major new cache of classified US military documents emerged last week, revealing sensitive western intelligence in areas such as the Ukraine war, Russia and Chinese affairs. But, just as astonishing as the information within the documents was the story of how they emerged. This week we find out how a young, racist gun enthusiast and low-level US national guardsman came to be charged under the Espionage Act, suspected of leaking hundreds of top secret files on the gaming chat server Discord. “A top view of the Pentagon popped up…
Meet the World’s New Human Rights Crisis Manager. He Has a Lot to Do.
GENEVA — Barely a month after taking office as the United Nations’ new human rights chief, Volker Türk was in Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region last week meeting victims of a conflict that has displaced millions. A day later, in the capital, Khartoum, he met the generals who were clinging to power with the help of troops using lethal force against protesters. He told the generals that Sudan needed to transition to civilian rule and “make sure that the human rights for all people of Sudan are the driving force behind…
Even as Iranians Rise Up, Protests Worldwide Are Failing at Record Rates
Iran’s widening protests, though challenging that country’s government forcefully and in rising numbers, may also embody a global trend that does not augur well for the Iranian movement. Mass protests like the ones in Iran, whose participants have cited economic hardships, political repression and corruption, were once considered such a powerful force that even the strongest autocrat might not survive their rise. But their odds of success have plummeted worldwide, research finds. Such movements are today more likely to fail than they were at any other point since at least…
Your Friday Briefing: China’s Stimulus Plan
Good morning. We’re covering China’s economic stimulus plan, President Biden’s push for war funds and extreme heat in India and Pakistan. China’s Covid stimulus plan As China’s lockdowns continue and new infections continue to spread in Beijing, the central government has laid out a wide-ranging economic stimulus plan to staunch expected losses. The government will subsidize businesses, pausing unemployment insurance payments if companies avoid mass layoffs, as well as electricity and internet charges. Young people graduating from college will be subsidized if they start their own businesses, since few jobs…
Hospitals under fire and hard-won abortion rights: human rights this fortnight – in pictures
Rama, a 16-year-old Syrian refugee, holds a smiley face as she sits in the office of an organisation that cares for girls who have been forced into early marriage in Saadnayel, Lebanon. Rama was married at 14, divorced a year later and is a mother to an 18-month-old baby. Photograph: Marwan Naamani/DPA The Guardian
From Nicaragua to China, reckless autocrats betray the promises of revolution
Do revolutions always end in betrayal? Sudanese citizens are but the latest group to see a democratic dawn blotted out by the forces of reaction. It’s an age-old story. Napoleon subverted the French Revolution, imposing an imperium where freedom briefly reigned. Stalin purloined the power of the proletariat to build a totalitarian dictatorship. From southern Africa to Cuba to Myanmar, today’s ruling heirs to revolutionary political struggle dishonour their inheritance. European peoples who joyfully cast off the Soviet yoke watch liberties erode anew. The Arab spring swiftly wilted. The 1776…