world news

3 April 2010 – Three United Nations agencies are hailing what they described as a “ground-breaking” new act that legalizes the right to free and compulsory education for all children between the ages of 6 and 14 in India.
 
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates there are eight million children in this age group, mostly girls, who are out-of-school in India.
 

25 March 2010 - Amnesty International urges the Albanian authorities to take further measures to protect women from domestic violence by fully implementing a 2007 law.
 
The report, Ending domestic violence in Albania: The next steps, published today, welcomes the progress that has been made since the introduction of the law but also calls for full criminalization of the offence to ensure it is treated in the same way as other violent assaults.
 

(UK) Sunday, 4 April 2010 - The murder of white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche has sent shock waves across South Africa and prompted nervous calls for calm. In the town of Ventersdorp many are angry at what they say is a climate in which violence against Afrikaners is encouraged, as the BBC's Karen Allen reports.
 
This murder has the power to unleash the demons of deep-seated racial hatred that have bedevilled this country for three centuries.

(Kampala) March 28, 2010 -- The rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) killed at least 321 civilians and abducted 250 others, including at least 80 children, during a previously unreported four-day rampage in the Makombo area of northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo in December 2009, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
 

(Bujumbura) March 26, 2010 -- Mob attacks on suspected criminals in Burundi, often with official complicity, led to at least 75 killings in 2009, Human Rights Watch and the Association for the Protection of Human Rights and Detained Persons (APRODH) said in a report released today. The government of Burundi should end official involvement in "mob justice" and should hold perpetrators accountable, Human Rights Watch and APRODH said.
 

WARSAW, STRASBOURG, VIENNA, 19 March 2010 - In a joint statement ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), the Council of Europe's European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) and the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) strongly condemn manifestations of racism and xenophobia, with a particular focus on the Internet:
 

Strasbourg, 22.03.2010 – In ratifying the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse today, San Marino has cleared the way for the convention to come into force on 1 July this year.
 

12 March 2010 – Aid agencies in Zimbabwe are appealing to donors to support the $378 million appeal launched last December to support humanitarian and early recovery efforts in the country, the United Nations humanitarian wing reported today.
 
“Lack of funding at this crucial time could derail progress made between the latter part of 2009 and now,” warned the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which noted that the 2010 Consolidated Appeal is just over 2 per cent funded.
 

WARSAW, 17 March 2010 - The OSCE's Roma adviser, Andrzej Mirga, today welcomed a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights against segregation of Roma children in elementary schools.
 
In the case Orsus and Others v. Croatia, the Court's Grand Chamber yesterday said that the segregation of Roma children into separate classes based on language deficiencies violates the prohibition of discrimination set out in the European Convention on Human Rights.
 

Monday, 8 March 2010 - Almost four in five people around the world believe that access to the internet is a fundamental right, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests.