Ingmar Runge, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) administrator Alexander De Croo on Thursday warned in an interview that frequent drone attacks on Chernobyl are ‘really gambling with the safety of millions of people’, calling for urgent international action to prevent a nuclear catastrophe. Upon visiting the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station, and witnessing firsthand the damage caused by [...]

Stephan Sprinz, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Human Rights Watch and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran said in a joint report Thursday that Iranian authorities were unlawfully executing protesters and political dissidents on a weekly basis. Characterized as a relentless attack on the right to life, Iranian authorities have arbitrarily executed at least 59 men on politically motivated [...]

READ MORE

Amnesty International on Thursday condemned Russia’s recruitment of foreign nationals from socioeconomically disadvantaged countries to fight in Ukraine as human trafficking, stating that they were primarily recruited via deceptive job offers, had their immigration status exploited, and were handed over to Russian military forces by third-party actors.  Commenting on the issue, Agnès Callamard, a French [...]

READ MORE
Jason Patinkin (VOA), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (OHCHR) in South Sudan on Thursday has issued a stark warning about escalating violence, entrenched impunity, and the grave violations of human rights that these pose to civilians and the country’s fragile democratic transition. The Commission emphasised that impunity remains a defining feature of South Sudan’s conflict. Commissioner [...]

READ MORE
Hanay, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Smoke fills the air, making it thick and palpable. The pollution creates an acrid stench that burns and is impossible to escape. Strikes on oil depots and energy plants cause black rain to fall from the sky, depleting the soil of the vital nutrients necessary to grow food and turning drinkable water sources acidic.  This [...]

READ MORE

The Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Simon Stiell, warned on Thursday that political divisions and treating climate change as a partisan issue risk worsening the current environmental situation as well as the economic toll of climate change on Europe. In a statement to the European Parliament, Stiell asserted that [...]

READ MORE
Xuthoria, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Wednesday urged world leaders to take concrete action and invest in peace, warning that violence, division and conflict are deepening worldwide and that needed dialogue to resolve conflicts is absent. Guterres spoke during the annual Japanese Peace Bell ceremony at UN Headquarters in New York, held ahead of the International [...]

READ MORE
Tony Webster, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A federal appeals court in Boston on Thursday rejected the Trump administration’s request to remove an injunction barring the US Postal Service (USPS) from implementing the rule restricting the issuance of mail-in ballots, affirming a decision from a lower district court. The injunction, issued at the end of August by US District Judge Indira Talwani [...]

READ MORE
SPC Jessica Reyna DeBooy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned Wednesday that worsening repression, poverty and forced returns were deepening Afghanistan’s crisis, criticizing the international community for abandoning the Afghan people at a time when humanitarian funding for the country has sharply declined. Calling on governments to put the lives of citizens first and pressure the [...]

READ MORE