#Human Rights

#Human Rights

The Norwegian appeals court dismissed the extradition request for the activist accused of facilitating the illegal entry of people into Greece, calling the decision a rare victory for human rights. Lawyers for Tommy Olsen said the judgment was unprecedented, with the court unanimously rejecting the request and stating his actions were lawful and protected under international treaties binding both countries. The court also acknowledged that the charge was absurd, given that Olsen was charged with monitoring and reporting people in distress at sea.

Between 1995 and 1999, more than 12,000 Tibetans successfully sought exile. In the past five years, that number has plummeted to just 81. With fewer Tibetans able to leave, independent information is becoming scarcer, making Beijing's policies, like religious regulation, language reforms, or rural relocation, more opaque to the outside world. This comes as Beijing increasingly promotes its own narratives on development and stability in Tibet.

India is currently ranked 157th out of 180 countries in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index. A tricky encounter with a Norwegian journalist has shone a light on the reluctance of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and members of his government to engage directly with the media on uncomfortable issues. After Helle Lyng Svendsen from Norwegian daily Dagsavisen asked Modi why he wouldn't take questions from the press, and later the same day asked a senior official of India's Ministry of External Affairs about India's human rights record, Modi's response was to walk away without replying while his minister's was to try to deflect by talking about unrelated facets of India's past and present, and then to become visibly angry.

When Gabon's media regulator indefinitely suspended major social media platforms in February, citing security concerns during anti-government protests, it became the talk of town literally. Within weeks of the announcement, use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to bypass the restrictions surged in the central African country. When gendarmerie began stopping young men at road checkpoints in the capital Libreville and other urban centres to confiscate mobile phones with VPNs installed or detain the owners, warnings spread by word of mouth.

Osama Khalid was just twelve years old when he began contributing to Wikipedia Arabic. In the height of the blogging era, he became a prolific blogger, publishing writings on his home country of Saudi Arabia, meetups he attended, and his opinions and observations about open source technology and freedom of expression. He advocated for internet freedom, contributed time and translations to various projects-including EFF's HTTPS Everywhere -and was a thoughtful presence at the conferences he attended around the world...all while training to become a pediatrician.

“Growth at any cost leaves us all poorer.” Those were the words of United Nations secretary-general António Guterres last week at the launch of a landmark report, Counting What Counts, which he commissioned from a team of researchers and policymakers ( www.un.org/beyondgdp). It proposes how countries can move beyond gross domestic product (GDP), the world's main indicator for the health of economies.

Arbour is one of the country's most famous legal minds. A former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, she served as chief prosecutor for the international criminal tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, where she pursued cases against political and military leaders accused of atrocities. She was later appointed the United Nations' high commissioner for human rights. In Canada, she led major public inquiries, including a landmark review into sexual violence within the Canadian Armed Forces.

Around 42.5 million refugees worldwide have been forced to flee their own states and are unable to return because of severe threats to their lives, human rights, or basic needs. Having fled these threats, the vast majority have by no means found protection. Instead, most refugees live either in squalid refugee camps or face destitution in urban areas in regions close to their own states in the Global South. A small minority risk their lives on journeys to reach asylum in the Global North; many thousands lose them.

Shireen's killing was meant to scare Palestinians into silence. Instead, it has inspired many young Palestinians to speak up. I can't remember a time in my childhood when I didn't hear Shireen Abu Akleh's voice. She was one of the few constants in our ever-shifting landscape, an icon that anchored the Palestinian cause firmly in the Arab conscience.

An 80-year-old Palestinian man, Hussein Asasa, died of natural causes on Friday and was buried shortly after in a cemetery in Asasa village near Jenin. His son, Mohammed, said the burial had been coordinated in advance with Israeli security forces, which provided all necessary permits. However, shortly after the burial, settlers threatened the Asasa family, ordering them to exhume the body, claiming it had been buried on land that formed part of an Israeli settlement.

More than 2,500 people had visas and tickets to fly to Zambia for RightsCon this month. That's an annual gathering of digital rights and human rights advocates. And then in late April, the team of RightsCon director Nikki Gladstone got a call from a Zambian official. NIKKI GLADSTONE: In that call, they let us know that diplomats from the People's Republic of China were putting pressure on the government of Zambia because Taiwanese civil society participants were planning to join us in person.

Families in Colombia and Trinidad and Tobago have spoken out after past attacks, insisting those targeted were not narco-terrorists as the Trump administration has claimed, but fishermen and informal workers making routine journeys between the Caribbean and South America.

The High Court ultimately agreed with the Met's lawyers that 'the Policy contains adequate and lawful constraints' over how and where the technology can be used.

Atiana Serge Oulon was abducted from his home on June 24, 2024, by approximately 10 armed men in civilian clothing, contradicting the authorities' claims of his conscription into the military.

The US Southern Command posted about the strike on social media Tuesday evening, alleging that the vessel struck on Tuesday was operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations that it did not identify.

Avi Bluth, head of the Israeli military's Central Command, stated that Israeli soldiers can now shoot Palestinians on or below the knees when they approach the seam line, creating a deterrent effect he termed 'barrier consciousness.'

Lyle Prijoles, a 40-year-old human rights activist from Hayward, was among 19 people fatally shot by the Philippine armed forces on the island of Negros, located south of Manila, on April 19, as KTVU reports.

The Transnational Justice Working Group found that 153 people were condemned to death in North Korea between January 2020 and mid-December 2024 on various charges, marking a jump of nearly 250% compared to the equivalent time period before the January 2020 closure.

The attack, which Emergency Lawyers reported on Saturday, is the second to take place in the capital within a week, following months of relative calm in the city.