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We’ve talked a lot about the US elections and the results over the past few weeks. Some friends of the Daily Brief have been pinging us: “Hey, you know there’s more to the world than the US, right?”
Indeed. So, today, let’s remember what else is going on around the globe.
Here are twelve other human rights stories we’ve been covering recently. Rather than focusing on events that generally are getting international media attention – like atrocities in expanding conflicts in the Middle East and eastern Europe – these are stories you don’t hear about in the news very much.
In alphabetical order…
1) Afghanistan has slipped off some folks’ radar, but the Taliban’s repression of women continues regardless – “Brutal. Outrageous. Sadistic. Dystopian.” We recently looked at abuses and threats against former policewomen in particular.
2) Australia jails ten-year-old kids. If that sounds extreme, that’s because it is.
3) Azerbaijan is hosting the COP29 climate conference next week. What do you need to know about the country? It’s an authoritarian petrostate with a long list of political prisoners.
Speaking of climate change…
4) Brussels – that is, the European Union – was on the cusp of introducing a useful new regulation to combat deforestation, the second largest source of the greenhouse gas emissions causing the climate crisis, after the burning of fossil fuels. Then, the European Commission put the brakes on. Because global warming will wait for Brussels, right?
5) Burkina Faso’s civilians are caught between Islamist groups and junta forces. Both are slaughtering them.
6) Haiti’s children face a “hunger trap” amid rampant insecurity. They are forced to join violent gangs just to survive.
7) Hungary’s authoritarian government has been making Ukrainian refugees homeless.
8) Kyrgyzstan still has a problem with “bride kidnapping” – that is, abducting women for forced marriage. Some attempt to justify this as “tradition,” a word too often used to try to defend human rights abuses.
9) Myanmar’s armed conflict between the junta’s military forces and the ethnic armed group, Arakan Army, sees both sides committing atrocities. When people try to flee to safety in Bangladesh, they sometimes get pushed back by Bangladesh border guards.
10) Rwanda is a country where torture is commonplace, in official prisons and jails, as well as in unofficial facilities. A court case earlier this year offered some hope authorities might start facing the problem. We’re still waiting for that.
11) Sudan’s atrocity-ridden conflict rages on, mostly outside the international spotlight. We will keep reporting on it, drawing attention to it, and ringing alarm bells about it, as this Daily Brief has done again and again, since the beginning, last year.
12) The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva has shown that not all the news is awful. We recently reported some positive steps there, concerning situations in Sudan, Venezuela, and Russia.
So, yes, there have been other things going on in the world besides the US elections. And many get very little media attentional internationally.
We will continue to cover them all here, in the Daily Brief.
