human rights chief

A boat carrying dozens of migrants bound for Europe capsized Tuesday in the Mediterranean Sea off Libya, with at least 40 people missing and presumed drowned, U.N. officials said, as a support group reported it had gotten a call from someone on the vessel “crying and shouting” that passengers had died already. At least 65 migrants, mostly from Sudan, were...

Venezuela’s government registered nearly 5,300 killings during security operations last year linked to cases of “resistance to authority,” the U.N. human rights chief reported Thursday, denouncing a “shockingly high” number of extrajudicial killings. Michelle Bachelet’s report focusing on the last 18 months follows her trip to the troubled South American country last month and draws upon over 550 interviews conducted...

A boat from Libya carrying 86 migrants sank in the Mediterranean and left only three survivors, authorities said Thursday, after an airstrike on a detention center near the Libyan capital killed dozens of others. The twin tragedies illustrate the almost unthinkable choice facing those who have reached the North Africa coast while seeking a better life in Europe: Risk a...

Botswana became the latest country to decriminalize gay sex on Tuesday, a landmark case for Africa, as the High Court rejected laws punishing it with up to seven years in prison. Jubilant activists in the packed courtroom cheered the unanimous decision in the southern African nation that is seen as one of the continent’s most stable and democratic. The ruling...

Defying fierce opposition from the United States and a few other nations, nearly 85 percent of the countries at the U.N. agreed Monday on a sweeping yet non-binding accord to ensure safe, orderly and humane migration. The debate over the Global Compact for Migration, the first of its kind, has proven to be a pivotal test of the U.N.-led effort...

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi rebuffed criticism from U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and other leaders Wednesday over her government’s treatment of its ethnic Rohingya Muslims. In a meeting on the sidelines of a regional summit in Singapore, Pence told Suu Kyi that he was anxious to hear about progress in resolving the crisis, which stems from a violent...

In a jarring contrast, Israeli forces shot and killed at least 58 Palestinians and wounded more than 2,700 during mass protests Monday along the Gaza border, while just a few miles away Israel and the U.S. held a festive inauguration ceremony for the new American Embassy in contested Jerusalem. It was by far the deadliest day of cross-border violence since...

Syrian forces launched a ground offensive Monday on a rebel-held eastern Damascus suburb despite a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding a 30-day cease-fire across Syria. The U.N. chief denounced the violence in the embattled region, describing it as “hell on Earth.” The offensive was accompanied by airstrikes that killed at least 14 people, according to opposition activists, and the new...

Refugees driven out of Myanmar by what the U.S. has called “ethnic cleansing” now face a new threat: the looming monsoon and cyclone season, NBC News reported. Authorities have warned that more than 100,000 Rohingya Muslims who fled into neighboring Bangladesh are at risk of losing their makeshift homes to the deadly floods and landslides that accompany seasonal rains. Workers...

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley called Venezuela “an increasingly violent narco-state” that threatens the world, speaking Monday at an informal Security Council meeting on the South American nation that was boycotted by Russia, China, Egypt and Bolivia.

U.S. officials are preparing a recommendation for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to declare that “ethnic cleansing” is occurring against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims. That assessment would raise pressure on the Trump administration and U.S. lawmakers to consider new sanctions on a country that had been lauded for its democratic transition. Tillerson could receive the recommendation as early as this week,...

Saudi Arabia has threatened other countries over a proposed resolution at the U.N.’s main human rights body, saying if they send international, independent investigators to war-torn Yemen that could “negatively affect” trade and diplomatic ties with the wealthy kingdom, a Saudi letter obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press shows. Two competing resolutions — one by Saudi Arabia and other Arab...

The U.N. human rights chief said Monday that the violence and injustice faced by the ethnic Rohingya minority in Myanmar, where U.N. rights investigators have been barred from entering, “seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” Speaking at the start of U.N. Human Rights Council session, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein first recognized the Sept. 11 attacks anniversary then chronicled human rights...

U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein has met a delegation of U.S. faith-based human rights activists to discuss voter suppression efforts targeting African-Americans and low-income voters in the United States. Zeid’s office said the delegation led by Rev. William Barber, national president of Repairers of the Breach, presented the rights chief with a letter outlining their concerns, which...

The United Nations human rights chief says his office is “watching the United States very carefully” under President Donald Trump, even as it watches whether possible U.S. budgetary cuts could affect his agency’s ability to monitor crimes like torture, rape and killings worldwide. The comments Monday from U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein came in his first...