Tag: UN
UN tribunal reaches ‘watershed moment’ in prosecuting crimes in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia
Two senior officials with the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT), briefed ambassadors on recent developments, including the arrest of a top fugitive from the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, and the final verdict related to atrocities committed in the Balkan wars. Judge Graciela Gatti Santana, Mechanism President, reported that in-court proceedings are all but concluded as…
Trafficking in the Sahel: Muzzling the illicit arms trade
In this feature, part of a series exploring the fight against trafficking in the Sahel, UN News focuses on the illegal arms trade that is fuelling conflict and terrorism. In the Sahel, home to 300 million people, it’s a buyer’s market for guns. Insurgency and banditry plague the region, rooted in, among other things, endemic intercommunal tensions, clashes between farmers…
Green light for global greenhouse gas tracking network
The landmark decision comes as heat-trapping greenhouse gas concentrations are at record levels – “higher than at any time over the last 800,000 years”, WMO warned. Data from Earth and space The new Global Greenhouse Gas Watch will combine observations from Earth and from space with modelling, to fill critical information gaps. It will build on WMO’s experience in coordinating…
Myanmar: Secretive military courts sentence scores of people to death
“The military continues to hold proceedings in secretive courts in violation of basic principles of fair trial and contrary to core judicial guarantees of independence and impartiality”, Volker Türk added, calling for the suspension of all executions and a return to a moratorium on death penalty. Dealing out death On Wednesday, a military court sentenced at least seven university students…
Central African Republic: Said trial opens at International Criminal Court
Mahamat Said Abdel Kani – a top-ranking leader of the mostly-Muslim Séléka militia – pleaded not guilty to all charges, which relate to atrocities carried out in 2013, in the Central African Republic capital, Bangui. Much of the violence stemmed for clashes between Séléka and the mostly-Christian Anti-balaka faction. Occupation Before the crimes were committed, from late 2012 to early…
Russia asks for UNSC meeting to discuss strikes on Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant
Russia claims that Ukrainian forces have repeatedly launched targeted attacks hitting the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, a sensitive area known as the largest nuclear power plant in Europe with at least six operating reactors. On August 7, the military-civilian administration of Energodar city, located in the north-western part of Zaporizhzhia Oblast in Ukraine, accused Ukrainian forces of launching a 220…
Hong Kong: Arrests under Security Law, a serious concern
The human rights lawyer, who was arrested on 8 September, was a member of the Hong Kong Alliance, an advocacy group which organized an annual candlelight vigil marking the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square.
Several other activists have been similarly arrested and charged under the National Security Law.
The law came into force at the end of June last year, giving Chinese central authorities greater power and control over all aspects of life in Hong Kong.
“Terrorism and sedition charges are being improperly used to stifle the exercise of fundamental rights, which are protected under international law, including freedom of expression and opinion, freedom of peaceful assembly and the right to participate in public affairs”, the Special Rapporteurs said, urging authorities to refrain from the using the National Security Law and to reconsider its application.