World News

Photo by Tomasz Proszek on Pixabay.com Rising sea levels are often spoken of as a purely environmental issue, but for many Pacific Island communities, they are also a fight for cultural survival, dignity, and legal recognition. The world continues to react with slow diplomacy, even as entire nations confront the possibility of becoming uninhabitable within a generation. Climate change is no longer a future threat, but a present human rights emergency, and the international sy

Photo by @ ELG 21  on Pixabay.com The Netherlands’ system of legal and policy protection of women against domestic violence has been the target of warnings by the Council of Europe’s expert group on violence against women (GREVIO). In its most recent report, GREVIO lauded the Netherlands’ efforts to implement the Convention in recent years, but warned that significant changes need to be made in order to better recognise the way in which domestic violence disproportionately af

Photo by Angelo_Giordano on Pixabay.com On September 1st, a magnitude 6 earthquake hit the eastern part of Afghanistan . The aftermath was catastrophic: 2,200 killed, 3,600 injured, and thousands of people were left homeless . The current Taliban government faced its first major natural disaster earlier in 2022 , when another earthquake killed 1,000 people in the same region as this year.  The aid agencies working in the territory were already confronting funding cuts, worse

Photo by consolersafari on pixabay.com From the bombs that fell on city streets to the dusty roads of villages in Darfur and Kordofan, the war in Sudan has turned women’s bodies into battlegrounds. According to UN Women, there is mounting evidence that rape is being used “deliberately and systematically as a weapon of war.” In the besieged region of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, women fleeing bombardment, hunger and displacement recount terrifying stories of gang r

Photo by hosnysalah on pixabay.com Hospitals across Gaza are facing a critical shortage of essential medical supplies as Israeli airstrikes intensify, according to medics and aid workers on the ground. Despite a fragile, U.S. backed ceasefire, facilities like Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis are overwhelmed, with daily inflows of casualties and dwindling stocks of gauze, antiseptics, thermometers and antibiotics. Mohammed Saqr, Director of Nursing at Nasser, described the situa

Photo by Danilo A renas on pexels.com   The United Nations (UN) has urged the government of Colombia to act on what it has been described as “a human rights emergency”. A recent evaluation demonstrated that the high levels of mercury in the Atrato River In Colombia are threatening the health of people living in the area. The UN presented evidence  that more than a third of the population living in the Atrato River basin has been exposed to mercury levels exceeding the paramet

Photo by Levi Meir Clan cy on unsplash.com   The majority of the education systems in Europe often overlook or completely leave out the role of women within human history. Recently, research conducted by the English group  End Sexism in Schools  (ESIS) discovered that, during the first three years of secondary education in England, women were “largely absent from history”. According to this research, 29% of history classes at key stage 3 mentioned women’s role in the given to

Photo by @pezhman1355 on Unsplash.com NGO Iran Human Rights is denouncing a record number of executions being carried out in Iran in September 2025, and more generally in the first 9 months of 2025. The NGO denounces at least 171 executions in the month of September 2025 alone, an unprecedented number which brings the number of executions since the beginning of the year to over 1000 . This is the fifth consecutive year that Iran has experienced an increase in death penalties

Photo by jorono on Pixabay.com Since late January, fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has intensified after the Rwandan-backed M23 rebel group seized the strategic cities of Goma and Bukavu, sparking a wave of human rights abuses.   Amnesty International reports that M23 fighters have raided hospitals, abducting patients, including wounded soldiers and civilians, from their beds and subjecting them to torture.  The organization has documented cases of

Photo by dimitrisvetsikas1969 on pixabay.com   Houthi rebels have recently released United Nations (UN) staff members who were illegally detained in Yemen. In recent years, dozens UN employees have been imprisoned, and some have died while in custody; this highlights an ongoing human rights issue that has been firmly addressed by the international community. In October, Houthi rebels detained 20 UN staff  in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, including five Yemeni nationals and 15 int