The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to education has called on the United States to consider reforming its gun laws in the wake of last week’s shooting rampage at a university campus where a man killed 32 others and then himself.
An independent United Nations human rights expert has called on Algeria to take concrete measures against the gender inequality underlying violence against women, which she called a largely hidden problem because of the North African country’s social taboos around violence.
Expressing concern that around 150 Hmong tribes-people, over half of whom are children, may be subjected to “serious human rights violations” if forced to return home to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, the top United Nations rights official today urged Thailand to halt their imminent deportation.
A new United Nations convention to protect the rights of persons with disabilities is within reach and could be adopted later this year, the chairman of the negotiations said today as he opened what may be the final round of talks.
Pledging to complete a full draft of a first-ever international treaty on the rights of persons with disabilities, the General Assembly committee charged with that task opened a marathon three-week meeting at United Nations headquarters today.
In time for negotiations for an international agreement on the rights of persons with disabilities, the United Nations will be able for the first time to produce materials directly in Braille thanks to the donation today of a state-of-the-art printer by a US-based non-governmental organization (NGO) for the blind.
Momentum generated by the United Nations World Conference against Racism four years ago is fuelling a trend towards reporting and monitoring, often using statistics, of racist crimes and incidents, Secretary-General Kofi Annan says in his latest report on the issue to the General Assembly.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan today welcomed the humane treatment extended by the Lao Government to the ethnic minorities who emerged from remote areas over the weekend, and he stressed the readiness of the United Nations to provide humanitarian assistance to such groups at the Government's request.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) today welcomed the release of two long-time Laotian political prisoners whose freedom the agency has sought for many years.
