United Nations

UN Agents: Australia Must Provide Support to Deaf Jurors

April 29, 2016

The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has found that Australian authorities violated international human rights law by failing to provide deaf people sign-language interpretation or real-time captioning to permit them to participate on juries, concluding that the government's rationale of protecting the confidentiality of deliberations was insufficient.
UN Committee Links Migrant Deaths to EU Restrictions

April 29, 2016

A UN Committee on the protection of the rights of migrants has published a press release linking the recent deaths of approximately 500 migrants from African countries in the Mediterranean Sea to the lack of safe migratory routes and calling on EU countries to reverse measures that "restrict and criminalize" the ability of migrants to cross their borders.
UN Agent Fears Narrowing "Civil Society" Space in UK

April 28, 2016

UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association Maina Kiai has issued a report following his monitoring visit to the UK on his apprehension that the country, through laws ranging from those countering "extremist" groups to those decreasing government money in lobbying, is seeking to narrow the operational space for civil society.
UN Agent: Climate Commitments Fail to Uphold Human Rights

April 28, 2016

While praising the inclusion of language in the recent UN climate deal linking climate change and human rights, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment John Knox warns that current commitments to reduce greenhouse gases under the deal will fail to sufficiently reduce global warming and therefore do not uphold the human rights obligations of the states.
UN Observer: India Must Implement Right to Housing

April 28, 2016

The Times of India reports that, after a monitoring visit to India, UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing Leilani Farha called for the country to develop national housing legislation based on international human rights law, including by focusing on rights to "security of tenure" and "living in dignity."
Governments Sign UN Climate Agreement

April 28, 2016

At a signing ceremony at UN headquarters in New York last week, 175 governments signed an agreement to limit the greenhouse gas emissions in their countries by certain defined amounts and to report on a periodic basis to a UN body regarding their progress in reducing these emissions in an effort to counter global warming.
Experts: US Congress Must Halt UNFCCC Funding

April 27, 2016

Brett Schaefer and Steven Groves of the Heritage Foundation write that legislators must not allow the Obama Administration to "circumvent" US law by funding the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change ("UNFCCC") following the accession of the Palestinian Authority to the UNFCCC treaty.
UN Official: States Must Go Beyond Climate Commitments

April 27, 2016

Indicating that the current commitments of governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are insufficient, UN Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction Robert Glasser has called on countries to go beyond their UN climate deal commitments to save the world from "catastrophic future weather events."
UN Pushes for Ambitious Action to Achieve SDGs

April 27, 2016

At a debate in New York on achieving the UN's comprehensive Sustainable Development Goals ("SDGs") by the year 2030, UN officials called on participants to discuss how to fulfill and finance the SDGs, as well as the UN's climate change agenda, to "create pathways out of our current crises" and transform the world.
UN, Google Use Satellite Data to Monitor "Sustainability"

April 26, 2016

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization and technology company Google have announced their collaboration to use satellite data to monitor land use, climate change, and the progress of the world toward fulfillment of the UN's comprehensive Sustainable Development Goals.