Washington Post: "Washington's new law allowing tough interrogation techniques and military trials for terrorism suspects risks setting a dangerous standard for other countries to follow, a United Nations rights expert said on Friday.
UN News: States are still showing a "lack of awareness" over the seriousness of torture, despite the fact they are obligated to criminalize the practice, an independent United Nations expert said today, warning that few cases are ever brought to justice and where they are, the perpetrators generally get away with minor sentences.
Reuters: "Some 2.6 billion people in the world, mainly in Africa and Asia, lack access to basic sanitation, increasing the risk of diarrhea and other diseases fatal to children, said a U.N. report released on Thursday.
UNICEF, the U.N. children's fund, in a study on water and sanitation in developing nations, concluded that U.N. goals could be met on clean water, especially in urban areas, but the same was not true for access to the crudest of toilets."
In May, the Security Council authorized the deployment of peacekeepers to Darfur. Three months later, blue helmets are nowhere in sight. Meanwhile, the UN's top humanitarian official recently warned that a peace accord signed in Abuja, Nigeria between some of the rebel factions and Khartoum is "doomed to failure" and that the situation was going from "really bad to catastrophic."
So who or what is to blame for this appalling inaction in Darfur?
Martin Peretz of The New Republic views the continuing violence in Darfur as a failure of the United Nations to enforce its own resolutions. In a sense, he is correct: The Security Council resolution passed in conjunction with May's peace accords called for the paltry African Union monitoring force in Darfur to be replaced with a robust United Nations peacekeeping force.
"With a quarter of Lebanon's population forced to flee their homes and violence claiming lives daily in the conflict between Hizbollah and Israel, the United Nations Human Rights Council will hold a special session on Friday to discuss the worsening situation in the war-ravaged country." [More]
"The United States must better protect poor people and African-Americans in natural disasters to avoid problems like those after Hurricane Katrina, a U.N. human rights panel said Friday.
Reuters: "The U.N. Human Rights Committee on Friday told Washington it should immediately shut all "secret detention" facilities and give the International Committee of the Red Cross access to anybody held in armed conflict.
"The UN's top human rights official issued a strong warning yesterday that killings of innocent civilians in Lebanon and Israel could amount to war crimes.
"International humanitarian law is clear on the supreme obligation to protect civilians during hostilities," said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour. "This obligation is also expressed in international criminal law, which defines war crimes and crimes against humanity." [More]