According to Human Rights Watch, 2023 was a “terrible” year for human rights

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According to a new report from human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW), 2023 was a “terrible” year for human rights. In its more than 700-page report published Thursday, HRW highlighted the “enormous suffering” caused by the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas, as well as conflicts in Ukraine, Myanmar, Ethiopia and Africa’s Sahel region.

The war in the Middle East is also discussed in the report. On October 7, Hamas launched a major attack on Israel. “The Israeli government responded by cutting off water and electricity supplies to Gaza’s 2.3 million citizens and blocking all but a fraction of imports of fuel, food and humanitarian aid – a form of collective punishment that constitutes a war crime constitutes,” the HRW report said.

“Several trends of erosion of human rights”

The organization also spoke of a double standard among mainly Western countries, which strongly condemned Hamas’ attack, but then withheld their criticism of Israel’s war against the Palestinian organization. “Many of the governments that have condemned Hamas’s war crimes have responded with restraint to the Israeli government’s war crimes,” the report said.

“2023 was an incredibly difficult year for human rights,” HRW head Tirana Hassan told the AFP news agency. “We have seen several trends of erosion of human rights.”

“Nothing but hypocrisy”

The report also compared responses to the human rights situation in Sudan and Ukraine. “Calls to prioritize accountability at the UN Human Rights Council following renewed violence in Sudan have been strongly resisted by Arab states and largely rejected by African governments,” the organization said. “Western governments were initially reluctant to push for an accountability mechanism in Sudan and were unwilling to devote the resources or efforts they had devoted to a similar body for Ukraine in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s large-scale invasion in 2022.”

In the document, the organization also points out the damage caused by climate change and economic inequality. “The year 2023 was the hottest year since global records began in 1880, and the wave of forest fires, droughts and storms caused widespread damage to communities from Bangladesh to Libya and Canada,” HRW said.

The report also criticizes the European Union for its controversial migration policy. If “Western states and EU members ignore human rights violations (…), it is nothing but hypocrisy,” HRW chief Hassan told AFP. (AFP)

Source: Blick