Human Rights

Top Human Rights Court Urged To Tackle Corporate Climate Crimes

May 4, 2024 Isabella Kaminski, DeSmog. Resist! climate crisis, Climate Justice, Human Rights, Legal System

In a landmark hearing at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, legal experts and campaigners argued that businesses, such as the fossil fuel and agriculture industries, have legal duties to stop climate-related human-rights breaches. A panel of six judges met starting April 23 in Barbados at the University of West Indies for the hearing, which was dubbed “The climate emergency and human rights.” It opened with statements from Chile and Columbia, which had requested that the court provide an advisory opinion on climate change and human rights in 2023.

With Few Workplace Protections, Latino Worker Deaths Are Surging

April 27, 2024 Stephen Franklin, In These Times. Educate! Human Rights, Latinx, Worker Rights and Jobs, Workplace Safety

A burst of shouts cascades as three men plunge downward. Other workers reach for them as the scaffold plummets. But no one can grab hold of them. Thinking he can still save them, a middle-aged construction worker scampers to aid the three men, one a long-time friend, he had helped get hired on the site. “I saw everything,” he says and then repeats himself. “I saw everything. In a video you can see me removing planks from them because I thought they were alive, but they were dead.” Jose Canaca, 26, Gilberto Monico Fernández, 54, and Jesus “Chuy” Olivares, 43, had been putting up an outer brick wall for a 17-story apartment building in a popular neighborhood in Charlotte, N.C., when they fell from the 10th floor.

When You’re Unsheltered, ‘Public Safety’ Doesn’t Include You

April 24, 2024 Dionicia Roberson, Next City. Educate! Homelessness, Housing, Human Rights, Philadelphia, Police, Public safety, Supreme Court

I’m going to tell you something you already know: Every human being is entitled to a roof over their head and a place to sleep at night. This is an indisputable truth, part of the catechism of humanistic virtue. In a world that lived up to its self-professed ideals of opportunity, any condition of homelessness would be rare, brief and non-recurring. The reality is cultural attitudes toward impoverished people – fueled by toxic portrayals, fear mongering in the media and systematic dehumanization – have made homelessness not a community problem to be solved, but an individual offense to be punished, and defines those who suffer this condition as enemies to the idyllic peace of ‘good (read: housed and well-fed) people’.

UN Human Rights Council Is Lending Support To US Regime Change Plans

April 19, 2024 Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition, Popular Resistance. Educate! Human Rights, Nicaragua, United Nation, US Regime Change

Human rights experts and activists are expressing concern over a flawed and seriously unbalanced report of the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN), released by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on February 24, 2024. The UNHRC, says the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition, is lending itself to the U.S. regime-change strategy against Nicaragua by highlighting only evidence supplied by opponents of Nicaragua’s government, while omitting highly pertinent information submitted to the GHREN by a number of individuals and groups.

SCOTUS Is Set To Make A Watershed Ruling On Homelessness

April 14, 2024 Mandy Chapman Semple and Nathaniel Fields, Next City. Create! Homelessness, Housing, Human Rights, Supreme Court

This month, the Supreme Court will begin to hear one of the highest-profile court cases about homelessness in generations. City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Gloria Johnson considers whether a local government can outlaw sleeping outside if adequate shelter is not accessible. If the Court sides with Grants Pass, cities will be able to rely on punitive policies that do little to nothing to decrease homelessness and often cause worse outcomes for unhoused people in the process. If it favors Johnson, local governments will be required to demonstrate adequate shelter is available for an individual before resorting to harsh enforcement tactics.

The European Court of Human Right’s First Climate Ruling

April 13, 2024 Isabella Kaminski, DeSmog. Strategize! climate crisis, European Union (EU), Human Rights, Legal System

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has today ruled that insufficient action to tackle climate change is a violation of human rights. In a historic judgement, the court ruled that Switzerland’s failure to do enough to cut its greenhouse gas emissions breached the rights to respect for family and private life of some of its most vulnerable citizens. It is the first time this court, which is responsible for interpreting the European Convention on Human Rights, a treaty signed by all members of the Council of Europe (including the UK), has ruled on a climate change-related matter.

Revolution’s Human Costs And Unintended Consequences

April 12, 2024 Kim Ives, Orinoco Tribune. Educate! Haiti, History, Human Rights, Revolution

On the night of August 21, 1791, the enslaved men and women of the French colony of Saint Domingue, then the richest in the Western Hemisphere, rose up in fury. They had been kidnapped from Africa, survived the deadly “middle passage,” seen their families separated, enslaved under inhuman conditions, worked around the clock, tortured, raped, abused, and humiliated. When the day of reckoning came, three centuries of anger erupted in a geyser of violence. The rampaging slaves burned the plantations and homes of their European enslavers.

India’s Supreme Court Expands ‘Right To Life’ To Include Climate Change

April 10, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Create! climate crisis, Human Rights, India, Supreme Court

In another landmark climate decision, the Supreme Court of India has ruled that an individual’s “right to life” includes protection against the impacts of climate change. The verdict reflects fundamental rights stated in Article 21 of the country’s constitution, reported The Independent. “Without a clean environment which is stable and unimpacted by the vagaries of climate change, the right to life is not fully realised,” the decision of the court said. “The right to health (which is a part of the right to life under Article 21) is impacted due to factors such as air pollution, shifts in vector-borne diseases, rising temperatures, droughts, shortages in food supplies due to crop failure, storms, and flooding.”

Ola Bini Sentenced To A Year In Prison; Ecuadorian Court Overturns Acquittal

April 9, 2024 Tanupriya Singh, People's Dispatch. Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Digital Rights, Ecuador, Human Rights, Ola Bini

A court in Ecuador has sentenced Swedish software developer and digital rights activist, Ola Bini, to one year in prison for “Attempted Non-Consensual Access to a Computer System”. The ruling by two out of three judges of the Provincial Court of Pichincha overturned the unanimous verdict issued by the Court of First Instance (trial court) in Quito in January 2023, which had declared Bini innocent. The acquittal had come nearly four years after Bini was arrested in April 2019, the same day as his friend, WikiLeaks founder and journalist Julian Assange was seized from the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 185: Israel Withdraws From Khan Younis

April 8, 2024 Qassam Muaddi, Mondoweiss. Educate! Genocide, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, Wars and Militarism

The Gaza-based Palestinian health ministry announced in separate statements on Saturday and Sunday that a total of 84 Palestinians were killed and 136 wounded by Israeli forces’ ongoing strikes on the Gaza Strip over the past 48 hours. Meanwhile, local media sources reported that Israeli forces bombed the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood and the Shejaiya refugee camp in Gaza City and its surroundings. On Saturday, the Israeli army allowed a medicine truck and a fuel truck to reach the northern Gaza Strip for the first time since the beginning of the war in October.

Why So Many Called For The Release Of Walid Daqqah

April 8, 2024 Dalia Taha and Walid Daqqah, In These Times. Educate! Human Rights, Israel, Occupation, Palestine, Prisons

According to Amnesty International, Daqqah was a Palestinian liberation and resistance fighter who had been in an Israeli jail for almost four decades “for his involvement with an armed group that abducted and killed an Israeli soldier in 1984.” He served his full sentence, but it was been extended. He was very sick, but was denied adequate care. Amnesty and many other groups, including the Haaretz editorial board, had been calling for his release. “Daqqah’s case illustrates the Israeli justice system’s cruelty towards Palestinians, including those who are seriously ill or dying,” said an Amnesty official. News broke of his death on April 7.

Thousands Have Lived Without Love, But Not One Without Water

April 5, 2024 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Gaza, Genocide, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, Starvation, Water

By November 2023, it was already clear that the Israeli government had begun to deny Palestinians in Gaza access to water. ‘Every hour that passes with Israel preventing the provision of safe drinking water in the Gaza strip, in brazen breach of international law, puts Gazans at risk of dying of thirst and diseases related to the lack of safe drinking water’, said Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, UN special rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation. ‘Israel’, he noted, ‘must stop using water as a weapon of war’.

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 181: Child Deaths In Gaza On The Rise

April 4, 2024 Qassam Muaddi, Mondoweiss. Educate! Children, Gaza, Genocide, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine

Israeli forces killed 62 Palestinians and wounded 91 across the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, according to the Gaza-based Palestinian health ministry. Meanwhile, local media sources reported that Israeli artillery shelled the Atatra neighborhood in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip. Simultaneously, accounts from al-Shifa Hospital continued to report the recovery of dozens of dead bodies in the surroundings of the hospital, three days after Israeli forces withdrew from the medical complex following two weeks of raids.

UN Human Rights Council Supports US Regime Change Plans For Nicaragua

April 3, 2024 Alfred de Zayas and John Perry, Popular Resistance. Educate! Human Rights, NGOs, Nicaragua, Regime Change, United Nations, US coup

When the United Nations sets up a “commission of inquiry,” it can result in a powerful analysis of violations of human rights law, such as the one appointed in 2021 to examine Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories and its Apartheid practices. But other commissions can become political platforms aimed at demonizing a particular government by crafting narratives that give the semblance of objectivity, while suppressing all evidence that contradicts the prevailing geopolitical consensus. The ultimate aim of such commissions is not to investigate or to provide advice or technical assistance, but to support a campaign of destabilization.

Rights Expert Finds ‘Reasonable Grounds’ Genocide Is Being Committed

March 27, 2024 UN News. Resist! Gaza, Genocide, Human Rights, International Law, Israel, Palestine, United Nations

Francesca Albanese was speaking at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, where she presented her latest report, entitled ‘Anatomy of a Genocide’, during an interactive dialogue with Member States. “Following nearly six months of unrelenting Israeli assault on occupied Gaza, it is my solemn duty to report on the worst of what humanity is capable of, and to present my findings,” she said. “There are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide…has been met.”

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

Daily movement news and resources