Women's rights

In France, an experiment showed that a woman with a Senegalese sounding name had only 8.4 per cent chance of being called for a job interview, as compared to 22.6 per cent chance for women with a French-sounding name. According to research by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, attacks against women whose appearance suggested they are Muslim have been reported in a number of European countries, while the majority of islamophobic acts committed in 2015 - 74 per cent in France and 90 per cent in the Netherlands - targeted women. These were examples of discrimination against women around the world given by Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Kate Gilmore, at a panel discussion at the Human Rights Council that analysed the impact of intersectionality on women’s rights. Other figures can be found in a report published this year by the UN Human Rights Office. “The distortions of opportunity and personal progress that discrimination introduces is never down to jus...

More than 400,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar’s Rakhine State in recent weeks, pouring into neighbouring Bangladesh with reports that they were driven from their villages by military forces who attacked them in their homes and burned vast swathes of territory. Satellite images have shown that close to 200 Rohingya villages have been destroyed and emptied. An international fact-finding mission established by the UN Human Rights Council has dispatched a team to Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have arrived during the past month and taken refuge in makeshift camps. A Human Rights Council resolution in March 2017 called on the international fact-finding mission to establish the facts and circumstances of alleged human rights violations and abuses in Myanmar, particularly in Rakhine State. “It is important for us to see with our own eyes the sites of these alleged violations and abuses and to speak directly with the affected people and with the authorities,” Marzuki ...

After a tedious and fruitless battle to seek redress through the national legal system, a person with albinism brought an individual complaint against Tanzania before the Committee on the Rights of Person with Disabilities (CRPD), the UN body that oversees States’ compliance with the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. In 2010, the complainant, who wishes to remain anonymous, was fetching firewood from the bush in the Mbeka Kibaoni area of the Mvomero District, when two men attacked him. His attackers hit him with clubs and when he regained consciousness, Mr. X realised that they had hacked off half of his left arm. After he received care at the municipal hospital, Mr. X reported the attack to the police. They arrested a man who later was brought before the District Court of Morogoro. As Mr. X did not recognize the accused as one of his aggressors, the investigation into the case stopped. From there, Mr. X wanted to initiate a civil litigation before a High Co...