About: human rights Archives

The EU on Thursday (17 January) decried the disproportionate use of force by Zimbabwe authorities during protests in which doctors say 68 people suffered gunshot wounds.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Monday (14 January) threatened to retaliate against the opposition if the European Union withdraws duty-free trading access over human rights concerns.

Today, Chechnya is a police state, likely the most brutal anywhere in Europe, that rules through extreme repression. The same future is reserved to Syria, writes Neil Hauer.

The EU should be aware of plans to amend the Egyptian Constitution that could extend the power of the President indefinitely, showing the true intentions of an authoritarian state, writes Wahid Al-Asmar.

In 1948, with the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, world leaders launched the human rights project rooted in the inherent dignity of every person.

The EU is taking seriously the idea expressed recently by the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev for holding a four-way summit to defuse global tensions, an EU diplomat told an audience on Tuesday (4 December).

EU countries failed on Tuesday (4 December)  to determine whether to impose tariffs on rice coming from Cambodia and Myanmar from the start of next year to curb a surge in imports, leaving the European Commission to take the final decision.

Cambodia's parliament is reviewing a five-year ban on more than 100 members of the main opposition party, which could allow them to return to politics, following threats by the European Union to deny duty-free trading access to the Southeast Asian …

By talking only to the Cuban government, and ignoring civil society groups, the EU is allowing the Cuban state to continue its programme of repressing democracy and human rights, write Ariadna Mena Rubio, Rosa Maria Payá and Erik Jennische.

The European Union is expected to define its strategy for Central Asia in early 2019. A preparatory meeting between the EU and the foreign ministers of the five Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) took place in Brussels on Friday (23 November).

Top EU officials rebuked Turkey on Thursday (22 November) over its arrests of journalists and academics and the long pre-trial detention of a Kurdish politician, holding a forthright press conference with Turkey’s foreign minister in Ankara that quickly turned tense.

Spanish premier Pedro Sánchez has embarked on the first official bilateral visit by a Spanish leader to Cuba in 32 years on 22-23 November, at a time when the Communist-run island is looking towards Europe as its ties with the United States fester.

An alliance of EU rice producers has called for restoring tariffs on rice imports from Myanmar and Cambodia, in part due to human rights concerns, but Commission sources clarified that the EU executive's ongoing safeguard investigation is linked to purely economic considerations.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Thursday (15 November) that Russia’s repeated arrests and detention of opposition leader Alexei Navalny were politically-motivated and breached his human rights, a decision certain to displease the Kremlin.

A group of 15 Western ambassadors in Beijing, spearheaded by Canada, are seeking a meeting with the top official in China’s restive, heavily Muslim Xinjiang region for an explanation of alleged rights abuses against ethnic Uighurs.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said Tuesday (13 November) he was prevented from flying out of Moscow for a European court ruling on whether his recent detentions have been politically motivated.

Climate-related litigations are set to break new grounds following a landmark report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) earlier this month, which provided lawyers with new evidence that limiting global warming to 1.5°C is still possible. 

The EU has long frowned at China’s action in Africa for not requiring respect for human rights as a condition for aid and thus promoting a Chinese-inspired authoritarian Africa. But in recent years the EU is not better, writes Fabian Wagner.

Some argue that we should tread carefully and refrain from asking too much in terms of human rights from the Vietnamese, because if we do so we could end up pushing Vietnam into China’s orbit. But this doesn’t hold, writes Jude Kirton-Darling.

European leaders sought to build support from Asia on Thursday (18 October) in defence of free trade and the fight against climate change, to counter the growing protectionism of President Donald Trump's America.

The chair of a United Nations inquiry that accused Myanmar's military of genocide is likely to brief the Security Council this month after Britain, France, the United States and six other members requested the meeting, diplomats said on Tuesday (16 October).

At a Luxembourg meeting of EU foreign ministers on Tuesday (15 October), Hungary called on the EU to stop funding for NGOs that undermine the sovereignty of neighbouring countries such as Israel and Egypt or states that contribute to illegal migration.

When he looks back on his youth in China's far-west Xinjiang region, Akikat Kaliolla, an ethnic Kazakh, recalls the place's natural beauty and the big, colourful weddings typical of his majority-Muslim community.  

The nominees for the 2018 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought have been announced on Thursday (27 September), including Oleg Sentsov, the Ukrainian film director imprisoned in Russia and NGOs saving lives of migrants in the Mediterranean. Since 1988, THE European …