Human Rights Activists Honored‏

The Week In Rights

THE WEEK IN RIGHTS September 01, 2016 Follow us on:

Human Rights Activists Honored » Photo © 2014 Teddy Mazina, Byloom, Ilan, 2016 Shariful Islam Sourav, Photo courtesy of Yonous Muhammadi Four courageous and tireless advocates for human rights are the 2016 recipients of the prestigious Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism. They will be honored at the Voices for Justice Human Rights Watch Annual Dinners, held in more than 20 cities worldwide. They will be joined by Nicholas Opiyo from Uganda, a past international recipient of the award.  The winners this year are leading voices for justice in their countries. Kalpona Akter is a former child worker in Bangladesh garment factories who organized fellow garment workers to demand fair labor rights. Pierre Claver Mbonimpa has dedicated his life to denouncing rights violations against prisoners, activists, and people from all social, ethnic, and economic backgrounds in Burundi. Yonous Muhammadi fled the Taliban in Afghanistan and was granted asylum in Greece, where he has since become a leading defender of refugee rights there. Ratnaboli Ray is fighting to move India toward a rights-based system of care for people with mental health conditions. The award is named for Dr. Alison Des Forges, senior adviser at Human Rights Watch for almost two decades, and leading expert on the 1994 Rwanda genocide and its aftermath, who was killed in a plane crash in 2009. It honors her outstanding commitment to, and defense of, human rights. Read more » share on:

Kenya’s 'Disappeared' Deserve Justice A few months ago, I listened to a Kenyan man talk about his brother who has been missing since April 2015. “To see the dead body of your family member is painful, but you at least know he is dead,” he told me...  Read more »   share on:

UN Security Council Should Ensure Justice for Syria Atrocities  “Now that a UN investigation has officially identified responsibility for several chemical weapon attacks in Syria, the focus should turn to bringing those responsible to account. The chemical weapons issue will only be closed when those who ordered and executed these atrocities are convicted and behind bars, and their victims compensated...”  Read more »   share on:

Bush Administration Gave US Supreme Court Inaccurate Immigration Data The US Department of Justice has said that it made “several significant errors” when providing data in a 2003 immigration case. There is no telling what impact the real figures might have had on the court’s ruling, which has allowed the prolonged, mandatory detention of hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the years since then...  Read more >>   share on:

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