Author: Injusticeto Team

A video released last week shows Ukrainian authorities interrogating two North Korean soldiers captured in the Kursk region of Russia. In the video, one of the soldiers expressed a desire to stay in Ukraine; a statement that could be deemed treasonous in North Korea and severely punished. If returned to North Korea, this soldier risks enforced disappearance, torture, wrongful imprisonment, forced labor, or execution for disobeying orders or attempting desertion. His family there is already at risk of retaliation.According to United States estimates, these soldiers are among at least 10,000 North Korean troops deployed to Russia by Pyongyang since October. Media reports say many of these soldiers,…

Twenty days have passed without news of Yérima Djoubaïrou Tchéboa, 52, a Cameroonian political activist and government critic who was snatched off the streets of N’Gaoundéré, in Cameroon’s northern Adamawa region, and is presumed to be forcibly disappeared by the authorities. According to a witness interviewed by Human Rights Watch, on December 24, 2024, at least two men picked up Djoubaïrou in the Bali neighborhood, along with two other men, and took away all three in a truck without license plates. The other two men were released shortly after, while Djoubaïrou remains missing.Djoubaïrou’s relatives said they have searched for him in…

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon slowed slightly last year, a year after a 15-year high, according to closely watched numbers published Wednesday. The data was released by the National Institute for Space Research. The agency’s Prodes monitoring system shows the rainforest lost an area roughly the size of Qatar, some 11,600 square kilometers (4,500 square miles) in the 12 months from August 2021 to July 2022. That is down 11% compared to the previous year, when over 13,000 square kilometers (5,000 square miles) were destroyed.For more than a decade it looked as though things were…

It has been almost 15 years since the European Court for Human Rights (ECtHR) found in the Sejdic-Finci case blatant racial and ethnic discrimination in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s constitution. And yet nothing has changed.In the landmark case brought by a Bosnian Roma, Dervo Sejdić, and a Bosnian Jew, Jakob Finci, the ECtHR ruled on 22 December 2009 that the Bosnian constitution — drafted by European states and the United States at the end of the war in 1995 — directly discriminates against minorities by not allowing them to become candidates for the presidency.The role is reserved exclusively for members of…

The Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI) and the Cameroon government have signed a $60 million agreement they say will fund the development of cacao and coffee production, as well as protect the country’s forests.The fund will support projects aimed at sustainably raising production from existing agricultural land, rather than expanding into forested areas.Cameroonian forestry expert Ghislain Fomou says it’s unclear if cacao and coffee production can be increased without causing more deforestation.See All Key Ideas Cameroon’s government says it plans to invest heavily in agriculture over the next decade and combine economic growth and sustainable development, while preserving…

The South Korean National Assembly’s December 14 vote to impeach President Yoon Suk-yeol, 204 to 85, in response to his rejected imposition of martial law on December 3, has reinforced democratic rule and checks and balances in South Korea. It is a fitting and proper response to Yoon’s shocking acts late on the night of December 3.Yoon’s December 3 martial law decree, banning all political activities and suspending freedoms of speech and assembly, was an extraordinary attack on human rights and the rule of law. Yoon’s claims that it was justified – due to opposition efforts to impeach members of…

Asheville, North Carolina, was once widely considered a climate haven thanks to its elevated, inland location and cooler temperatures than much of the Southeast. Then came the catastrophic floods of Hurricane Helene in September 2024. It was a stark reminder that nowhere is safe from climate-worsened extreme weather risks: Hurricanes arriving from the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic seaboard. Hail in the Midwest. Floods in the East. Sea level rise along the coasts. Wildfires in the West, most recently exemplified by the devastating and costly fires around Los Angeles. And worsening extreme weather translates into more expensive property damages, growing…

Liberia’s Prince Y. Johnson, who rose to prominence first as a warlord and then politician, was implicated in serious abuses during the country’s two civil wars between 1989 and 2003. His death on November 28, without ever being prosecuted, highlights the need to bring those responsible for international crimes to account and uphold the promise of justice.Johnson was a member of former Liberian President Charles Taylor’s rebel armed group, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), and a founding member of its breakaway group, the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL). In 2005, he was elected to the Liberian…

(Washington, DC, December 18, 2024) – Guatemala’s attorney general is carrying out politically motivated prosecutions against members of President Bernardo Arévalo’s administration, Human Rights Watch said today. Since President Arévalo took office in January 2024, the Attorney General’s Office has moved forward with criminal investigations against the Arévalo administration that appear to be based on dubious evidence. In November, a judge ordered the cancelation of the president’s political party’s legal registration, as part of a case brought by the Attorney General’s Office. These decisions follow Attorney General Consuelo Porras’ efforts to prevent President Arévalo from taking office through a range of…

Harmful chemicals in sewage sludge spread on pasture as fertilizer pose a risk to people who regularly consume milk, beef and other products from those farms, in some cases raising cancer risk “several orders of magnitude” above what the Environmental Protection Agency considers acceptable, federal officials announced Tuesday.When cities and towns treat sewage, they separate the liquids from the solids and treat the liquid. The solids need to be disposed of and can make a nutrient-rich sludge often spread on farm fields. The agency now says those solids often contain toxic, lasting PFAS that treatment plants cannot effectively remove. When…