7 Things Afghanistan’s New President Must Do

April 21, 2014 at 3:18 PM

An Afghan voter shows her inked finger after she cast her ballot at a local polling station (Photo Credit: Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Images).

Earlier this month, voters in Afghanistan cast their ballots in what is arguably the most crucial election in the history of Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.The elections represent much more than the appointment of a president. For Afghanistan, which is nearing the end of a critical security transition, it signals the beginning of a new era.

The protection and promotion of human rights, especially those of women and girls, are critical to bringing security and stability to Afghanistan. Despite the challenging situation for women’s human rights in Afghanistan, women have worked hard to regain and advance their rights since the Taliban regime was ousted in late 2001.

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The Forgotten Victims of Haiti’s Earthquake

By Guest Writer

January 13, 2014 at 9:16 AM

A Brazilian soldier of the MINUSTAH force hugs an Haitian child orphaned by the 2010 earthquake (Photo Credit: Vanderlei Almeida/AFP/Getty Images).

By Chiara Liguori, Amnesty International Caribbean Researcher. This piece originally appeared on CNN World’s Global Public Square.

Four years ago, a devastating earthquake struck the Caribbean island of Haiti, leaving an estimated 200,000 people dead and more than 2 million homeless. It was a disaster on an almost unprecedented scale. And, for a country already wracked by poverty with so many institutional weaknesses, it was a complete catastrophe.

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Avoid Mass Slaughter: U.N. Peacekeepers Needed To Protect Civilians During #CARCrisis @AmbassadorPower @StateDept

By Christoph Koettl

December 3, 2013 at 8:00 AM

This week could be the tipping point for the human rights and humanitarian crisis in the Central African Republic, which continues to spin out of control. With the situation worsening on a daily basis, including extrajudicial killings and rape, the U.N. Security Council will meet Thursday to vote on a resolution related to the deployment of peacekeeping forces to the country.

This vote presents a unique opportunity to start pulling the country back from the brink. However, public pressure is needed over the following days to demand a robust peacekeeping force with a strong human rights mandate to protect civilians, including many Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and refugees. We are thus calling on the decision makers in France, the UK and the U.S. to support our demands. You can participate in this campaigning push through our global Twitter action that accompanies our media, lobby and field work.

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What If Your Home Was Turned into a Military Firing Zone?

By Sunjeev Bery

November 15, 2013 at 12:00 PM

The Israeli army wants to forcibly evict the roughly 1,000 residents of eight Palestinian villages southeast of Hebron in the occupied West Bank © Google Earth. Image © Landsat 2013.

This article originally appeared on The Hill’s Congress Blog. Edith Garwood, Amnesty International USA’s Country Specialist on Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and the Palestinian Authority contributed to this piece.

Despite talk of a peace process, the Israeli army has ordered the eviction of some 1,000 Palestinians – men, women and children – from their homes in the occupied West Bank. Why? Because the military wants to turn eight Palestinian villages into a “firing zone” for military training. Even as President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry speak in favor of a peace agreement, the U.S.-subsidized Israeli military is subjecting Palestinians to ongoing human rights abuses.

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‘I Wish I Could Invite You Into The Beautiful House We Had Back Home’: A Visit to the Za’atri Syrian Refugee Camp In Jordan

By Guest Writer

July 16, 2013 at 12:05 PM

A Syrian family walk amid tents at the Za’atari refugee camp (Photo Credit: Khalil Mazraawi/AFP/Getty Images).

By Neil Sammonds, Syria Researcher at Amnesty International

Seven-and-a-half miles south of the border with Syria lies the Za’atri refugee camp in Jordan. Over 130,000 refugees, who have fled the conflict in Syria, live here in a 4.3 mile-wide stretch on this otherwise lifeless desert plain, in a mix of makeshift emergency tents and mobile homes or “caravans.”

In the blinding sunlight, a young woman wearing a black abaya squeezes herself and a baby into a half-meter strip of shade beside a white wall. Dust clouds, kicked up by the wind or passing lorries, sweep across the barren landscape.

Most of the refugees have brought little more than what they could carry and the memories of the oppression and armed conflict in Syria. Some show us the battered and broken shoes and sandals in which they made the arduous trek to Jordan.

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Escalating Attacks on Religious Minorities in Indonesia

By Leila Chacko

May 16, 2013 at 10:20 AM

A man looks on at a temporary shelter after being driven from his village following a deadly clash with Sunnis (Photo Credit: Adek Berry/AFP/Getty Images).

Imagine a mob of 500 people with sickles and stones descending on your neighborhood, setting fire to houses, and driving you away from your jobs and community. This occurred in August 2012 in East Java, Indonesia, leaving one member of a Shi’a community dead and injuring dozens. At this time 168 people, including 51 children, are living in a temporary shelter. In the last two weeks, they have been denied clean drinking water and food supplies.

Some of the villagers had previously been harassed by local government officials who told them to convert to Sunni Islam if they wanted to return to their homes. Now, after eight months, the Sampang district administration has agreed to the demands from anti-Shi’a groups to forcibly evict the Shi’a community from their shelter in a sports complex and remove them from Madura Island in East Java.

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World Water Day: Celebrating Women’s Rights

By Lisa Schechtman

March 19, 2013 at 1:48 PM

A Malian girl carries a water can she just partially filled at a water pump in northern Mali’s city of Gao (Photo credit should read Pascal Guyot/AFP/Getty Images).

Water is a women’s issue. World Water Day, March 22, is Women’s Rights Day.

As basic economic, social and cultural rights, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) are a government’s responsibility. As a women’s rights issue, WASH is a concern for us all.

There is a great deal of evidence backing this up.

Every year, 40 billion working hours are lost to water collection worldwide, mostly by women and girls. This violates their rights to employment and education by taking up time and energy; and their rights to safety and dignity by exposing them to injury, animal attack, and physical and sexual violence. Since the water they collect is usually unsafe (if it were safe, chances are they wouldn’t have to walk far to get it, because a tap would be available near home), it violates their right to health, exposing them to Neglected Tropical Diseases, diarrhea, even uterine prolapse from carrying heavy loads.

Lack of sanitation and safe drinking water violates the right to safe and adequate housing. Combined with poor hygiene, it makes people sick because they ingest fecal matter without even knowing it, creates breeding grounds for insects carrying diseases like trachoma, and contaminates water sources; water-borne illnesses impact children most, keeping more kids from school and causing trauma for the many parents whose children don’t survive these diseases, up to 2,000 each day.

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Haiti: Three Years After Earthquake, Housing Situation Catastrophic

By The Editors

January 11, 2013 at 10:43 AM

Camp Grace Village, Carrefour municipality, Port-au-Prince.

Three years after the Haiti earthquake the housing situation in the country is nothing short of catastrophic. Hundreds of thousands of people are still living in fragile shelters.

Amnesty International is urging the authorities and the international community to make housing a priority for Haiti reconstruction efforts.

The January 12, 2010 earthquake left more than 200,000 people dead and some 2.3 million homeless. More than 350,000 people currently live in 496 camps across the country. Living conditions in the makeshift camps are worsening – with severe lack of access to water, sanitation and waste disposal – all of which have contributed to the spread of infectious diseases such as cholera.

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Dear Mandela, Dear Obama?

By Tanuka Loha

October 10, 2012 at 3:21 PM

When the South African government begins ‘eradicateing the slums’, Mnikelo, Mazwi, and Zama refuse to be moved. Dear Mandela follows their journey from their shacks to the highest court in the land as they become leaders in a growing social movement.

Within the first minute of Wednesday’s 2012 presidential debate, President Obama mentioned ‘housing’. It is indeed high time that we had a wide and deep discussion about the U.S. housing crisis, the true dimensions of this crisis in terms of human rights, and what realizing the human right to ‘adequate housing’ would look like in one of the world’s wealthiest countries.

But when we think about terrible housing crises, our minds often wander to somewhere outside the United States – the lack of safe housing in Haiti, the crisis facing Roma in Europe or forced evictions in the Occupied Territories.

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Rachel Corrie, Michael J. Fox and the Right to Housing

By Tanuka Loha

August 30, 2012 at 12:24 PM

The remains of a home in Gaza after it was demolished by Israeli authorities in 2002

A few weeks before she died, Rachel Corrie wrote to her mother from Rafah, Gaza. ‘I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar,’ she said, ‘and have boyfriends and make comics for my coworkers.’

As we know, she never had the chance to do any of those things again. Following this week’s verdict in the lawsuit filed by Rachel’s parents – accusing the Israeli military of unlawfully killing Rachel, either intentionally or through gross negligence – there has been much crucial discussion of the circumstances surrounding Rachel’s death. It is also imperative that we remember the human rights work of Rachel’s life.

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Human Rights Now Blog

Tag Archives: housing is a human right

Escalating Attacks on Religious Minorities in Indonesia

Haiti: Three Years After Earthquake, Housing Situation Catastrophic

Dear Mandela, Dear Obama?

Rachel Corrie, Michael J. Fox and the Right to Housing