RightsBase

human rights news & views

Nexus between environmental degradation & human rights

I write to you from Australia, where an area bigger than Germany and France combined is under water. Filthy, noxious water and mud. Three-quarters of Queensland has been declared a disaster zone – that’s a disaster twice the size of Texas. In a small town called Grantham, west of Brisbane, buildings were not so much filled […]

New trial over Munir murder

"Human rights in the sense of human solidarity has created a new universal and equal language going beyond racial, gender, ethnic or religious boundaries.  That is why we consider it a doorway to dialogue for people of all socio-economic groups and all ideologies." — Munir Said Thalib (1965-2004) Leading human rights defender Munir Said Thalib […]

Ronald Ryan dead 40 years: A call to action

It’s 40 years since Australia executed anyone. Forty years ago today a flock of pigeons took flight from the roof of Pentridge Gaol in Melbourne when the gallows trap crashed open under Ronald Ryan’s feet. He was, and may he remain, the last person executed in Australia. On this bleak anniversary Lex Lasry QC reminds […]

‘The most violent place in Asia’

Extra-judicial killings are a major source of human rights violation in Asia, according to the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), and, of eleven countries reviewed in the Commission’s 2006 Report on human rights in the region, Sri Lanka is the worst. On this second anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami, reconstruction in the north-east of […]