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STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT. Human Rights Watch hailed the support shown by governments for Ukraine in its annual human rights report. The group, however, also said the response “exposed the double standards” of some EU countries.
Hailing the international response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday urged governments to follow similar response strategies for other conflicts.
In its annual world report on human rights conditions, the US-based NGO said that a ”litany of human rights crises” emerged in 2022, but the year also presented new opportunities to improve protections against violations.
In this year’s 712-page report, HRW examined a slew of other rights crises affecting people around the world, as well as demonstrations that arose around the world in Iran, Sri Lanka, China, and elsewhere.
“Courageous people time and again still take extraordinary risks to take to the streets, even in places like Afghanistan and China, to stand up for their rights,” HRW’s Asia director Elaine Pearson told reporters at the report’s launch in Jakarta.
The report noted that the United Nations and other major international bodies stepped up their spotlight on China, particularly the treatment of the Muslim minority Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region. The increased scrutiny and protests in China against President Xi Jinping’s “zero-COVID” strategy have “put Beijing on the defensive” internationally, the HRW found.
The rights group said one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world concerns the situation in Myanmar, where a military coup ousted the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. HRW urged Myanmar’s southeastern Asian neighbors to up their pressure on the junta in Myanmar (https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023).
