According to her son, Eleanor Roosevelt said the same prayer every night and closed with this wish: ‘save us from ourselves and show us a vision of a world made new.’ This prayer reminds me that in the midst of managing crisis we must also keep one eye on the better future we want to create. COVID-19 is both a …
miércoles 29 de abril de 2020, Bogotá En un reporte para el Consejo de Derechos Humanos tras su visita a Colombia en los últimos meses de 2018, el Relator Especial de la ONU sobre la situación de los defensores de derechos humanos Michel Forst, reconoce los esfuerzos del Gobierno de Colombia para crear un entorno seguro para la defensa de los …
Wednesday 29th April 2020, Bogota In a report to the Human Rights Council following his visit to Colombia at the tail-end of 2018, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Michel Forst, recognised the efforts of the Colombian Government to create a safe environment for the defence of human rights yet bemoaned the continuing risks faced by human …
In a significant move for women’s rights in Sudan and the wider region, the country’s transitional government has outlawed the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). The amendment to the criminal code that makes ‘whoever removed, mutilated the female genitalia by cutting, mutilating or modifying any natural part of it leading to the full or partial loss of its functions’ punishable …
The RightOn webinar earlier this week brought together experts to discuss the use of technologies to facilitate contact tracing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and asked whether such approaches represented a risk to the right to privacy. A diverse range of perspectives on human rights law – including those of civil society, computer science, academia and the telecommunications industry – informed …
Yesterday, beneath the radar of most diplomats at the UN, Facebook launched what is, in effect, a global first: a private sector-led human rights ‘Treaty Body’ designed to monitor its own compliance with international human rights standards. Specifically, the tech giant’s new ‘Oversight Board’ will review Facebook’s decisions about what content to ‘take down’ (because, for example, it constitutes ‘hate …
The COVID-19 pandemic will inflict cataclysmic suffering throughout the world, with sweeping implications for human rights in global health. As human rights analysis has begun to assess the wide-ranging infringements of human rights amidst this unprecedented pandemic response, it will also be necessary to consider the implications of this response for the realization of the human right to the enjoyment …
Even before the outbreak of the current COVID-19 pandemic, commentary on the worldwide human rights situation was characterised, to a large degree, by negative assertions of an unfolding human rights crisis. Powered by influential voices at the UN, as well as by civil society and the media, the general public narrative was often one of backsliding in the world’s major …
A finales de abril, el Secretario General de la ONU, Antonio Guterres, lanzó un nuevo y relevante informe en el que pedía que se coloquen los derechos humanos en primer lugar en la conducción de la respuesta de la comunidad internacional a y a la recuperación de la pandemia de COVID-19. El informe, titulado “Todos estamos juntos en eso: los derechos humanos y la …
At the end of April UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched an important new report calling for human rights to be placed upfront in guiding the international community’s response to and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The report, entitled ‘We are all in this together: human rights and COVID-19 response and recovery,’ pushes the key message that human rights are critical, not just …
