China has weighed in on a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution on racism and discrimination first introduced by African nations, but made no mention of the ongoing inquiries into its own treatment of Uyghur and other minorities. Zhao Lijian, spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Wednesday…
The United Nations human rights chief warned Friday that allegations about mass killings in the northern Tigray region of Ethiopia, if confirmed, may amount to war crimes. Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, called for a full inquiry as the fighting between the Ethiopian military and Tigray’s…
Senior government officials in South Sudan have embezzled US$36 million from the country’s coffers with the aid of international institutions and multinational banks, says Yasmin Sooka, the head of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights for the nation. “It is worth noting this is just what we were able to…
Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said Friday that recent death threats targeting Dr. Denis Mukwege, a human rights defender and 2018 Nobel Prize winner in Democratic Republic of Congo, are causing concern for his safety and must be taken seriously. Mukwege, founder of the Panzi…
As the United Nations Human Rights Council holds its annual meeting in Geneva, High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet of OHCHR, the UN human rights agency, provided an overview on Thursday of concerns in various African nations beginning with the Democratic Republic of Congo. Bachelet, a former president of Chile who was…
Cameroon’s government is denying allegations that its military was involved in a massacre last week in the village of Ngarbuh, a community in the country’s Northwest Anglophone region. Spokesman René Emmanuel Sadi, speaking to reporters Tuesday, said the accusations against security forces were false. “Without the slightest preliminary investigation, several…
The head of the United Nations rights agency, speaking ahead of the United Nations Climate Summit in New York in two weeks, says climate change is a rapidly growing and global threat to human rights. “The human implications of currently projected levels of global heating are catastrophic. Storms are rising…
Since October 2016, when Cameroon’s English-speaking lawyers and teachers first launched peaceful protests to press government reforms for its Anglophone populations, there’s been no shortage of international concern over the deepening cycles of violence. Yet they continue, with a new report from Human Rights Watch detailing the deaths, abductions and…
Burundi’s antagonism towards United Nations investigators and the UN human rights agency has spanned the years since President Pierre Nkurunziza insisted on a third term in 2015, touching off a political and humanitarian crisis in the small east-central African nation. Now the government has forced the closure of the…
A United Nations human rights expert has welcomed Angola’s leadership in decriminalizing same-sex relations, and urged other countries to follow the example in establishing human rights. “All other countries that still criminalize homosexuality and other forms of sexual orientation and gender identity, without exception, must observe these processes of decriminalization…
The United Nations human rights agency, OHCHR, said Wednesday that some 900 people died during three days in December in Democratic Republic of Congo’s Mai-Ndombe province, in communal violence stoked by the country’s heightened political tensions. The clashes between the Banunu and Batende people stretched across four villages in the…
The United Nations human rights office said Tuesday it is increasingly concerned over the violence in Cameroon, and said it stands ready to help the West African nation deal with its crisis. “We continue to receive reports of abductions and killings by armed groups, as well as extrajudicial killings by…
Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), warned Friday that Angola’s deportation of Congolese nationals is resulting in serious human rights violations by security forces on both sides of the border. Some 330,000 people have crossed from Angola back into the troubled Kasai and Kwango provinces…
Former president of Chile Michelle Bachelet has officially been appointed as the new United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, following a vote Friday at the UN General Assembly in New York. The Bachelet announcement was warmly received by UN Secretary General António Guterres, who called her “a pioneer, a…
Hundreds of migrants rounded up in Algeria have arrived in Niger, despite the Algerian government’s strong denials that it is forcibly removing the primarily West African migrants and dumping them in the desert. Migrants from Guinea, Cameroon and other nations tell the International Organization for Migration (IOM) that they are…