Human Rights Watch

Burundi’s state-controlled awards illustrate the paradoxical media landscape in the country, as police scoop the top award while the print media category is awarded to a journalist in hiding as a way to flush him out.

A cartoonist, journalists, and activists face charges under the Digital Security Act for criticizing the government’s COVID-19 response.

Hungarian lawmakers rejected ratification of the Istanbul Convention on violence against women, claiming that it promotes “gender ideology” – a term used to argue that gender equality undermines “traditional family values” and encourages homosexuality.

Human Rights Watch highlights Lebanon’s LGBT community as they take their struggle for rights to the streets amidst the country’s ongoing anti-government protests.

99 civil society organizations have urged the IMF to consistently and formally include anti-corruption measures in its COVID-19 pandemic-related emergency funding and take concrete steps to help protect and empower civil society groups to monitor these funds.

Governments have also used restrictions put in place in response to the crisis to target journalists, healthcare providers, and activists, and have carried out quarantine measures in ways that have at times proven arbitrary and disproportionate.

Police arrested 15 prominent pro-democracy leaders for “organizing and participating in unlawful assemblies” during the widespread protests in 2019. All 15 were released on bail and their trials are scheduled to begin on 18 May.

The draft law requires all platforms accessed by over one million users daily to appoint a legal representative in Turkey on whom courts can serve orders to take down content or block access to accounts. Any platform that refuses would see its bandwidth reduced by 50 and then 95 percent.