Saturday, 6 March 2021, 6:10 pm
GENEVA (5 March 2021) – UN human rights experts today
deplored the disproportionate prison terms handed to exiled
senior leaders of the disbanded Cambodian National Rescue
Party (CNRP) and called on the Government to protect
freedoms of association and expression to ensure democratic
processes and political activities.
The experts said
the Phnom Penh Municipal Court’s verdict could potentially
deprive their right to engage in public affairs. Since June
2019, more than 150 people associated with the CNRP have
been arrested detained, and subjected to judicial
proceedings.
On 1 March, the court convicted nine
senior leaders of the former CNRP in absentia on charges
GENEVA (5 March 2021) – UN expert Mary Lawlor said today hundreds of human rights defenders are killed for their peaceful work every year, and States must find the political will to protect them and prevent the killings. “It is shocking that between .
GENEVA (4 March 2021) - Emergency declarations by the U.S. Government that authorise unilateral sanctions are resulting in severe human rights violations and must be brought in line with International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), .
Thursday, 4 March 2021, 7:51 am
GENEVA (3 March 2021) – A UN human rights expert today
called for a robust and rapid global response to the
world’s worsening water crisis, saying that climate change
had become a “risk multiplier” - exacerbating pollution,
scarcity and disasters.
“The world faces a water
crisis and it is getting worse,” David Boyd, the UN
Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, said
in a report presented to the Human Rights Council. “Human
use of water, water pollution and the degradation of aquatic
ecosystems continue to accelerate because of population
growth, economic growth, the climate emergency, land-use
change, extractivism, inefficient use of water, and weak
Thursday, 4 March 2021, 7:40 am
GENEVA (3 March 2021) - A UN human rights expert today
called for urgent reforms to the international debt
architecture, saying the ‘big three’ credit rating
agencies had excessive influence over lending decisions, and
conditions and interest rates of sovereign debts.
In
her first report
to the Human Rights Council, the UN Independent Expert on
debt and human rights, Yuefen Li, said that “past
financial and debt crises, in particular the sub-prime
mortgage crisis and the Asian financial crisis, already
exposed the inherent structural problems of credit rating
agencies”.
“Instead of warning of the coming of a
debt crisis, and playing a role in preventing it, they end