Three UN human rights experts on Wednesday urged Mexican authorities to support human rights groups who are facing extreme criticism in national media. UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders Michel Forst said that the Mexican government should recognize that the defense of human rights is a legitimate national interest and serves [...]

The Bangladesh government has failed to respond adequately to naturally occurring arsenic in rural drinking water, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report Wednesday. The report found that the government’s efforts to combat water-contamination has drastically fallen off since 2006. In particular, HRW said there is “little or no ongoing government water testing of [...]

2015 saw the highest number of recorded executions in more than 25 years, Amnesty International (AI) reported Wednesday. AI records show that at least 1,634 people were executed last year in 25 countries. However, the report also shows that there was a sharp decline in the number of death sentences between 2014 and 2015, falling [...]

A spokesperson for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on Tuesday expressed concern about increasing mob violence in Malawi, urging authorities to act to alleviate the situation. Spokesperson Cécile Pouilly expressed particular concern that mob uprisings have successfully been able to attack government buildings and remove individuals from custody. In one [...]

South African President Jacob Zuma on Tuesday survived a vote to impeach him after the African National Congress (ANC) gave him their support. The move to impeach Zuma came from opposition leaders after the constitutional court ruled that he had ignored their order to personally repay the amounts determined by the National Treasury, as they [...]

Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant on Tuesday signed a bill into law that will allow state employees to refuse to issue same-sex-marriage licenses and allow private companies and religious groups to deny services to the LGBT community without the threat of punishment. The legislation will also allow employers to use religion as a reason to establish [...]

France is failing to provide adequate mental health care and appropriate conditions for prisoners with psychosocial disabilities, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report Tuesday. The report claims that the number of prisoners with psychosocial disabilities in prisons remains high because of a 1994 law that directs courts not to take into account mental [...]

UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Kishore Singh, on Monday called on Chilean authorities to implement a sustainable model to education. He explained that “Chile is going through an historic period of transformation to recognize education as a right and not as a commodity” through its implementation of its Inclusive Education Act of [...]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has notified Maricopa County officials that it will investigate the issues voters in Arizona’s most populous county faced during the March 22 primary election. After the county decided to cut 60 polling locations, lines at the remaining locations were extremely long, with some voters reporting standing in line more [...]

The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Tuesday threw out charges against Kenyan Deputy President William Ruto . Ruto and Joshua Sang were accused of supporting murderous inter-ethnic violence in Kenya after the 2007 election, leading to more than 1,200 deaths. Ruto and Sang have denied the murder, deportation and persecution charges. Judges from the ICC [...]