Egypt should under no circumstances deport Eritrean asylum seekers now in detention without first allowing the UN refugee agency access to assess their refugee claims.
Egyptian authorities are currently detaining around 98 Eritrean migrants in the Nakhil detention center in the North Sinai, near the city of al-Arish. According to one lawyer familiar with their cases, [...]

Tags: Egypt, Eritrea

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Nigerian police and army forces were implicated in more than 90 arbitrary killings in responding to inter-communal violence between Christian and Muslim mobs in Jos, Nigeria, on November 28 and 29, 2008. Human Rights Watch called on the Nigerian government to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the killings, mostly of young Muslim men from [...]

Tags: Nigeria

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Morocco violates the rights to expression, association, and assembly in Western Sahara, Human Rights Watch said in a new report, revealing stark limits to the progress that Morocco has made in protecting human rights overall. Human rights conditions have also improved in the Sahrawi refugee camps managed by the Polisario Front in Algeria, although the [...]

Tags: Morocco, Western Sahara

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In a powerful victory for the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, last Thursday 66 nations at the UN General Assembly supported a ground breaking statement confirming that international human rights protections include sexual orientation and gender identity. It is the first time that a statement condemning rights abuses against lesbian, gay, bisexual, [...]

Tags: Global, LGBT, UN

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The President of India  should reject new amendments to anti-terror laws which would violate international human rights treaties, said Amnesty International today, in response to India’s speedy introduction of new legislation after the November attacks in Mumbai city in which more than 170 people died.
The organization calls upon the President, Indian authorities and lawmakers to [...]

Tags: India

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Today Human Rights Digest launch the Human Rights Links Directory.

We’ve received many link inclusion requests this year and struggled to accommodate and do justice to them on the site as it was, so we’ve created a links directory that has an unlimited capacity.
At the moment categorisation is by region or in the global category for [...]

Tags: Global, Human Rights Links

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The Origins of “Sodomy” Laws in British Colonialism
A new HRW report “This Alien Legacy“describes how laws in over three dozen countries, from India to Uganda and from Nigeria to Papua New Guinea, derive from a single law on homosexual conduct that British colonial rulers imposed on India in 1860. This year, the High Court in [...]

Tags: Global, LGBT

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Israel should extend an open invitation to all United Nations human rights experts to visit the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and reverse the expulsion of Richard Falk, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian Territories.
Israel refused to allow Falk to enter the country when he arrived at Ben Gurion airport [...]

Tags: Israel, UN

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Millions of Domestic Workers Lack Adequate Legal Protection
Governments in the Middle East should act quickly in 2009 to fulfil long standing promises to protect migrant women’s rights, said Human Rights Watch today, ahead of December 18, 2008, International Migrants’ Day. A number of governments have promised major reforms in the response to widespread and egregious [...]

Tags: Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates

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The Chinese government should release laboratory results and ensure access to appropriate treatment for imprisoned human rights activist Hu Jia, Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights said in a letter sent to President Hu Jintao today. The two organizations expressed concern that Beijing prison authorities have failed to release to him or his [...]

Tags: China

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