Jail and prison staff throughout the United States have used unnecessary, excessive, and even malicious force against prisoners with mental disabilities, Human Rights Watch charged in a report released today.

On 12 May, an atheist blogger for Mukto-Mona has been hacked to death in Bangladesh. Ananta Bijoy Das was attacked by masked men with machetes, police say. It is the country’s third such deadly attack since the start of the year.

Refugees and migrants across Libya face rape, torture and abductions for ransom by traffickers and smugglers, as well as systematic exploitation by their employers, religious persecution and other abuses by armed groups and criminal gangs, according to a new Amnesty International briefing published today.

On 6 May, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), part of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), launched its Global Overview 2015: People internally displaced by conflict and violence at the United Nations in Geneva.

(Reuters) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered the execution of 15 senior officials this year as punishment for challenging his authority, South Korea’s spy agency told a  closed-door  parliament meeting on 29 April 2015.

On 23 April, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Nils Muižnieks has presented his annual activity report 2014 in Strasbourg.

17 April 2015 — United Nations Secretary-General  Ban  Ki-moon  has voiced serious concern over recent reports regarding the killing of prominent political and media figures in Ukraine. 

16 April 2015 — With over 10 million people in prisons worldwide, prison overcrowding has reached epidemic proportions in many countries, a senior official from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said today at the 13th UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice.

(Reuters) — Protesters in several U.S. cities blocked highways and swarmed police precincts, leading to at least two dozen arrests in demonstrations touched off by fresh cases of police violence against unarmed black men.

15 April 2015 — The latest maritime catastrophe to claim the lives of refugees crossing the Mediterranean Sea is yet another indication of the need for a «robust»  rescue-at-sea  mechanism aimed at preventing future tragedies, the head of the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) declared today.