#human-rights-groups

#human-rights-groups

The Venice Architecture Biennale and Neom's Zero Gravity Urbanism exhibition presented two alternative visions for the future, writes Dezeen editor Tom Ravenscroft.This year's Venice Architecture Biennale was a significant moment - a moment of enthusiasm, a moment of youth, a moment to celebrate the future.

If diplomats were on TikTok, de-risk would be trending.The word has suddenly become popular among officials trying to loosen China's grip on global supply chains but not cut ties entirely, with the joint communique from this weekend's Group of 7 meeting making clear that the world's largest democratic economies will now focus on de-risking, not decoupling.

The founder of the Kremlin-affiliated Wagner mercenary group, known for its ruthless tactics and harsh discipline, said on Thursday that it would no longer recruit fighters in Russian prisons.That would end a practice that has raised criticism from human rights groups but helped Moscow grind out advances in Ukraine's east.

The head of Russia's paramilitary Wagner Group said that a first group of prisoners whom it recruited to fight in Ukraine have completed their service and been pardoned, state media reported on Thursday.Human rights groups said the move highlights the Kremlin's extralegal use of prisoners to replenish its decimated military.

In the West, he is known as a convicted illicit arms trafficker, the merchant of death who helped fuel wars around the world.But in Russia, Viktor Bout was welcomed home this week as something of a hero, or at least an innocent victim of American politics.The Russian government, its allies and the relentlessly pro-Kremlin media hailed the release of Mr. Bout, 55, by the United States, in exchange for the American basketball star Brittney Griner, and claimed that it meant that President Vladimir V. Putin had bested President Biden.

U.S. weapons sales fly in the face of Biden's claims to be leading "democracies" in a global fight against autocracy.U.S. President Joe Biden being welcomed by Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at Alsalam Royal Palace in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on July 15, 2022.Royal Court of Saudi Arabia / Handout / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images President Joe Biden claims that the United States is leading "democracies" in a fight against "autocracies" to establish a peaceful international order, but his administration approved weapons sales to nearly three-fifths of the world's authoritarian countries in 2022.

"Justice is not advanced by taking a life," Democratic Gov. Kate Brown said.Oregon Gov. Kate Brown speaks at an Axios News Shapers event on February 22, 2019, in Washington, D.C.Shannon Finney / Getty Images Outgoing Oregon Gov. Kate Brown announced this week that she is commuting the death sentences of every person on death row in the state as one of her final acts in office, citing the cruelty of the death penalty.

Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted, for a third time, to advance the dangerous EARN IT bill (S.1207)-a law that could lead to suspicionless scans of every online message, photo, and hosted file.In the name of fighting crime, the EARN IT Act treats all internet users like we should be in a permanent criminal lineup, under suspicion for child abuse.

The British Parliament may start debating the Online Safety Bill  again as soon as this week.The bill is a deeply flawed censorship proposal  that would allow U.K. residents to be thrown in jail for what they say online.It would also force online service providers to use government-approved software to search for user content that is deemed to be related to terrorism or child abuse.

Judges at Britain's High Court are set to rule Monday on whether the U.K. government's controversial plan to send asylum-seekers on a one-way trip to Rwanda is legal.Several asylum-seekers, aid groups and a border officials' union are trying to stop the Conservative government acting on a deportation agreement with Rwanda that aims to deter migrants from crossing the English Channel in small boats.

FILE - Britain's Home Secretary Suella Braverman leaves after attending a Cabinet meeting in Downing Street in London, on Dec. 13, 2022.Judges at Britain's High Court are set to rule Monday on whether the U.K. government's controversial plan to send asylum-seekers on a one-way trip to Rwanda is legal.

England defender Eric Dier described the "terrible situation" for migrant workers in Qatar as "disappointing" and said the issues surrounding the World Cup in the Gulf state had dampened the players' excitement before the showpiece event.Qatar has faced intense criticism from human rights groups over its treatment of migrant workers, who with other foreigners comprise the bulk of the country's population.

Asylum seekers will be housed in the most basic accommodation possible, including disused army bases and possibly ships, to save money and to dissuade people from coming to the UK, the government has said.In a Commons statement setting out the next stage in the plans to prevent asylum claims in the UK, Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, said the plans would meet legal requirements to ensure those who arrived were not made destitute, but nothing more.

Iain Duncan Smith has accused the Chinese governor of Xinjiang of murder as he joined Uyghur activists protesting against his reported visit to Britain.Demonstrators gathered outside the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) on Monday after it emerged that Erkin Tuniyaz, the chairman of the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region, could meet UK officials, a scenario Duncan Smith branded unacceptable.

A high-profile trip by two senior UK parliamentarians to Kazakhstan to examine its human rights record has almost immediately run into trouble as they were denied access to a jailed opposition leader who is the focus of the visit.The former director of public prosecutions Ken Macdonald and the former justice secretary Robert Buckland were not permitted to meet the head of the unregistered Democratic party of Kazakhstan, Zhanbolat Mamai, or senior Kazakh diplomats.

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email The message to asylum-seekers from British Home Secretary Suella Braverman was stark.If you enter Britain illegally, you will be detained and swiftly removed.The government hopes that decisive and divisive measure will stop tens of thousands of migrants reaching Britain in boats across the English Channel.

The UK government has paid compensation for at least 64 deaths of Afghan children, four times more than the 16 publicly acknowledged casualties by British forces during military operations.An analysis of the compensation payments - an average of 1,656 to each children's family - revealed there were 38 incidents involving 64 confirmed children deaths, according to the charity Action on Armed Violence (AOAV).

The attack came as girls' education has become a contentious issue for the new government.In a new protocol instituted by the Taliban government, the classroom had been divided into separate sections for girls and boys.Credit... Agence France-Presse - Getty Images KABUL, Afghanistan - A suicide attack on Friday at an educational center in Afghanistan's capital killed at least 19 people, mostly young female students, adding to fears among many Afghans, particularly in the ethnic Hazara minority,about whether the new Taliban government can protect them from rising violence by extremist groups.

The Syrian leader made the comments during a visit to Moscow, adding that Russia's presence should become permanent.Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said that he would welcome any Russian proposals to set up new military bases and boost troop numbers in the Middle Eastern country, suggesting Moscow's military presence there should become permanent.

Read this story in Russian.Soon it'll be a year since the start of the war that the Kremlin unleashed against Ukraine.It has taken thousands of human lives, destroyed entire cities, and turned millions of families into refugees.Vladimir Putin, as the one responsible for this tragedy, has become a true symbol of evil, cursed around the world.

A cemetery used by the notorious Russian mercenary group Wagner has grown rapidly in size over the past several months, according to interviews and an analysis by The New York Times of satellite imagery and video footage.The expanded burial ground is rare visual evidence that shows the toll the invasion of Ukraine is taking on Wagner, especially its rank-and-file soldiers.

A show trial carries with it a noxious whiff of Soviet times and in the case of Belarus, a country trapped by its past, the allusion is wholly appropriate.Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, elected president in 2020 in a contest stolen by Belarus's dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, was accused of treason by a court in Minsk last week.

A pilot gestures from the grounded EC-LZO Boeing 767 flight, initially meant to deport Rwandan asylum-seekers, at Boscombe Down Air Base in Boscombe Down, England, on June 14.The flight taking asylum-seekers from the U.K. to Rwanda was grounded at the last minute, after the intervention of the European Court of Human Rights.

More than a million people have signed a letter calling for Fifa to finally compensate migrants who suffered appalling human rights abuses while working on the World Cup in Qatar.The letter, which was handed to football's governing body by the human rights groups Amnesty and Avaaz, also urges it to stop looking the other way as its congress meets in Rwanda this week.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino committed to avoiding conflict over OneLove armbands at the Women's World Cup, promising to "have a position in place well before" the tournament begins.A number of national teams at the Qatar 2022 men's World Cup, including Denmark, England and Germany, were planning to support the campaign that promotes inclusivity and opposes all discrimination.

Fifa's decision to appoint supermodel Adriana Lima as an official fan ambassador ahead of the Women's World Cup was tone deaf and unnecessary, according to former football administrators, players and gender equality campaigners.Fifa president Gianni Infantino said Lima, a former Victoria's Secret model, lives and breathes football and would be an excellent link between the sporting body and fans worldwide.

6:54 PM ET



Jeff CarlisleU.S. soccer correspondent

CloseJeff Carlisle covers MLS and the U.S. national team for ESPN FC.U.S. women's national team forward Alex Morgan spoke out against FIFA possibly bringing on Visit Saudi -- the official tourism authority for the kingdom of Saudi Arabia -- as a sponsor of the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup.

Fifa has written to all 32 teams competing at the World Cup to tell them the time has come to "focus on the football".The tournament, which starts in Qatar on 20 November, has been surrounded by controversy.Qatar has been criticised for its stance on same-sex relationships, its human rights record and its treatment of migrant workers.

Gareth Southgate has been criticised by human rights groups after the England boss said workers in Qatar are "united" in wanting the World Cup to go ahead.Southgate claimed workers in the Gulf state "want the football to come to Qatar" because they "love" the sport.Amnesty International said migrant labourers are more concerned with having their rights "fully protected".

Days after his Nicaraguan citizenship was revoked, the Rev. Erick Díaz was welcomed with booming applause at St. Mary of Lake Catholic Church.The churchgoers witnessed the introduction of Díaz to his "new home" in Uptown, where he was given refuge by Cardinal Blase Cupich."Even though I am no longer a Nicaraguan by citizenship, I still am Nicaraguan and fully intend to support my new Nicaraguan community here," Díaz said.

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov pledged military support to Mali during his first visit to the West African nation Tuesday and dismissed criticism of Moscow's growing influence on the continent.

The chief executive of the Qatar World Cup has been criticised by human rights groups for saying "death is a natural part of life" when asked about a migrant worker's death at the tournament.Football's world governing body it was "deeply saddened" following the death of the worker during the group stages.

Suella Braverman has labelled Just Stop Oil extremists and said their protests are out of control amid continued action on the M25.Addressing a major police conference in London, the home secretary called for officers to take harsher action against activists and said it was their duty to take a firmer line to safeguard public order.

France on Tuesday repatriated another group of women and children from former Islamic State group-controlled areas of Syria, the latest return of French nationals who'd been stranded in camps there.The group was made up of 32 minors and 15 adult women, France's national counterterrorism prosecutor's office said.

Iranian hardliners on Sunday burnt France's flag outside of its embassy in Tehran where they were protesting cartoons published by the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that lampoon Iran's ruling clerics.The Charlie Hebdo caricatures largely aligned the Paris-based magazine with the demands of anti-government protests that have swept Iran calling for the downfall of its Islamic Republic and challenged its hardline establishment.

DHAKA, Bangladesh  The United Nations on Tuesday appealed to countries in South Asia to help rescue a boat carrying at least 160 Rohingya refugees stranded in the Andaman Sea without food for weeks.The situation unfolded as Rohingya refugees continued to undertake the perilous journey from Bangladesh, where they have lived for years in squalid shanties since fleeing their homes in Myanmar in the aftermath of a military-perpetrated massacre.

Twitter's new brand safety deal with measurement company DoubleVerify aims to attract advertisers, but some marketers say it'll take more than tech partners to win a bigger share of their wallets.The companies are rolling out a way to analyze where their ads appear within users' timelines, giving marketers more context for understanding which tweets appear above and below each ad.

An activist group erected protest billboards in FIFA boss Gianni Infantino's Swiss home town of Brig on Wednesday to demand the world football body compensate migrant workers for alleged human rights abuses in Qatar, host of the World Cup.The mobile billboards carried the messages "Infantino: your family were migrants," "Thousands like them were victims of this World Cup," and "Compensate them now."
- Qatar World Cup 2022: Sportswashing, security and soccer - Infantino helped set me free in Qatar - World Cup protester
The protest by the Avaaz campaign group included an Infantino impersonator holding a World Cup trophy.

Family members of a former Russian prison inmate, who defected to Ukraine after being recruited by the Kremlin-linked private military group Wagner, have expressed horror over his apparent execution after a gruesome video emerged on Friday that showed him being repeatedly struck with a sledgehammer.

Australia have released a collective statement against Qatar's human rights record, becoming the first 2022 World Cup team to do so.The video message criticises the World Cup hosts' treatment of migrant workers and LGBTQ+ people.Football Australia also released a statement saying the "suffering" felt by workers and their families caused by the tournament "cannot be ignored".

The FIFA World Cup in Qatar is becoming a real headache for football's governing body.The host's questionable human rights record has been thrust into the spotlight right on the eve of the world's biggest sporting competition, and all efforts to sweep it under the rug only invite more condemnation.One of the recent major controversies surrounds the use of the rainbow-colored "One Love" armband.

The World Cup, U.S. coach Gregg Berhalter has grown fond of saying, is really two tournaments.The first, the group stage, is a four-team competition that simply qualifies teams for the main event, a single-elimination tournament that ends Dec. 18 with a champion.The U.S. qualified for those playoffs Tuesday, beating Iran 1-0 to move on to the final 16.

The Netherlands squad will meet migrant workers who helped build the stadiums for the World Cup in Qatar, coach Louis van Gaal said on Friday.The team will meet a group of about 20 migrants on Nov. 17 to talk about their working conditions and to give them the opportunity to join the players in training.

Pope Francis has sparked fury in Russia over an interview in which he suggested that non-Christian members of its armed forces showed more cruelty in Ukraine than ethnic Russian soldiers.In an interview with the Catholic magazine America published Monday, the pope said that soldiers from the Buddhist region of Buryatia and the Muslim-majority Chechnya republic were the cruellest while fighting in Ukraine.

The BBC should have spoken out more about Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea and its human rights record when the country hosted the World Cup in 2018, said Gary Lineker, the broadcaster's prominent soccer commentator.I do look back four years ago and feel slightly uncomfortable, Mr. Lineker, a former star soccer player for England, said in a BBC interview that aired on Wednesday.

A deployment of facial recognition cameras in London led to just a handful of arrests despite taking the biometric data of thousands of people, new figures show.According to a freedom of information request obtained by the Standard, five deployments of live facial recognition cameras in Oxford Circus from February 27, 2020 to July 16, 2022, resulted in an estimated 125,786 faces which were scanned by the Met Police.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz is making his first visit to China as German leader this week, a diplomatically delicate trip while Germany and the European Union work on their strategy toward an increasingly assertive and authoritarian Beijing.Scholz's messages will face close scrutiny.While his nearly year-old government has signaled a departure from predecessor Angela Merkel's firmly trade-first approach, he is taking a business delegation and his trip follows domestic discord over a Chinese shipping company's investment in a German container terminal.

Gareth Southgate is facing criticism from human rights groups after claiming that workers in Qatar were united in wanting the World Cup to take place, despite the country's poor employment rights record.The England manager's remarks were questioned by Human Rights Watch, which said families of migrant workers who had died, been injured, or cheated of their wages had told it they would like to support the World Cup but cannot because their children are starving and their breadwinners died in Qatar.

British LGBT rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has called on team captains to "devote 30 seconds" after each match at the 2022 World Cup to speak out on Qatar's human rights record.It comes after Australia issued a statement  criticising Qatar's treatment of migrant workers and LGBTQ+ people.