Newsletter
Human Rights Nexus Wire
Week 28 August - 8 September, 2010
Check out our selection of human rights news from the past week!
International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition
The International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition was first initiated in 1998 by UNESCO. It is intended to inscribe the tragedy of the slave trade in the memory of all peoples. The date is of particular importance: In the night of 22 to 23 August 1791, an uprising began in today's Haiti that played a crucial role in the abolition of transatlantic slave trade. Every year, cultural activities are organized around the globe to remember this event. UNESCO's "Slave Route" project helps to understand the history of slave trade and therewith fills the silence of the past.
HR Treaty Bodies Newsletter
Check out the latest Human Rights Treaty Bodies Newsletter!
The Newsletter features analysis, interviews, reports from the field and ways to engage with the Human Rights Treaty division of OHCHR.
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Arbitrary detention is the detention of an individual without the proper evidence, often leading to an unfair process, not regulated by international standards. OHCHR has a Working Group that can consider individual complaints. Disappearances An enforced disappearance occurs when force is used to cause a person to vanish from public view. Usually these disappearances are never acknowledged by the perpetrators, as these aim to conceal any trace of the whereabouts of the disappeared person.
In the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, of 1951, genocide means any act committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.
In 1997, the General Assembly decided to hold a World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. The Conference was expected to be a landmark in the struggle to eradicate all forms of racism.
Torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted by or at the instigation of a public official on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or confession, punishing him for an act he has committed, or intimidating him or other persons.
Human trafficking means acquiring people by improper and illegal means such as force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them. This often results in the use of these people in ways such as sex workers or as migrant workers, and involves nearly every country.
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