UN OHCHR Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights [to 30 January 2016]
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/media.aspx?IsMediaPage=true
Selected Press Releases

.
More allegations of sexual abuse of children by foreign soldiers in the Central African Republic
29 January 2016

.
UN expert group urges the US to address legacies of the past, police impunity and racial injustice crisis
WASHINGTON D.C. (29 January 2016) – The legacy of enslavement in the United States of America remains a serious challenge as there has been no real commitment to recognition and reparations for people of African descent, a United Nations expert panel has said today at the end of its second official visit* to the country.
From 9 to 29 January, a delegation of the UN Working Group of experts on people of African descent visited Washington D.C., Baltimore, Jackson- Mississippi, Chicago, and New York City to address current concerns, and assess progress made in the fight agains racial discrimination, Afrophobia, xenophobia, and protecting and promoting the human rights of African- Americans.

“Despite substantial changes since the end of the enforcement of Jim Crow and the fight for civil rights, ideology ensuring the domination of one group over another continues to negatively impact the civil, political, economic, social, cultural and environmental rights of African Americans today,” said human rights expert Mireille Fanon Mendes France, who currently heads the group of experts…

.
South Korea’s democracy project threatened by regression on assembly and association rights – UN expert
SEOUL (29 January 2016) – United Nations Special Rapporteur Maina Kiai today commended the Republic of Korea’s “impressive achievements,” but underlined that its journey to democracy is not yet over. At the end of his first official visit* to the country, Mr. Kiai warned that the democracy project is still being threatened by a decline on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association.

“The project of building democracy and human rights in South Korea is not over; indeed it never truly is, in any nation,” said the independent expert mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to monitor and promote the realization of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association worldwide. “What we have is a structure, and our solemn task as governments and citizens is to continually build upon that structure, strengthening the foundation and cultivating its resilience.”

While the Special Rapporteur applauded the Government’s many human rights achievements, he also highlighted “a trend of gradual regression on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association – not a dramatic shutdown of these rights, but a slow, creeping inclination to degrade them.”

.
UN and African experts urge Sierra Leone’s President to save millions of women’s lives by signing the 2015 Safe Abortion Bill
GENEVA (28 January 2016) – A group of United Nations and African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights Commission human rights experts* today urge the President of Sierra Leone, Ernest Bai Koroma, to sign the 2015 Safe Abortion Bill for it to enter into force without further delay. They warned that reluctance towards the decriminalization of abortion by some parties, including religious organizations, has resulted in delays in signing the Bill, as the President sent it back to Parliament for reconsideration.

The 2015 Safe Abortion Bill, passed by Parliament last December, is aimed at ensuring women’s and adolescents’ access to safe services regarding abortion and authorizes the termination of a pregnancy under any circumstances up to 12 weeks and in cases of incest, rape, fetal impairment as well as when the woman’s health is at risk, up to 24 weeks.