Members of the U.S. Congress are calling for better protection of child farm workers. A proposed bill would ensure that children working in the agricultural industry, who are often as young as ten years old, would receive the same adequate pay, limited duties, and work restrictions afforded to child workers in other labor industries.

A Library of Congress report reveals that the U.S. has escalated sales of arms in spite of the recession. The U.S. entered into $37.8 billion worth of weapons contracts last year, approximately a 68 percent market share. Most contracts are negotiated with developing nations, where the majority of civilian armed conflicts occur.

A twenty-year-old Christian died in his jail cell in Sialkot, Pakistan, after being detained on blasphemy charges. The death appears to be a planned homicide rather than a suicide, as reported by local authorities. Prior to this incident, houses and churches belonging to Pakistan’s Christian minority had been torched throughout the region.
 

Three journalists for the Kyodo news agency of Japan were assaulted by Chinese authorities in their Beijing hotel room. The reporters were covering the National Day celebrations in Tiananmen Square at the time of the incident. The “authorities” reportedly threw two of the journalists’ computers into a corridor before physically assaulting them.

Amnesty International recently released a report calling on the Nicaraguan government to repeal its abortion ban, passed by the country’s legislature in July 2008. The law does not allow abortion even in cases of rape, incest, or where the life of the mother is in jeopardy. In addition to adversely affecting the physical and emotional health of women, the law imposes criminal sanctions against those who seek an abortion procedure, as well as the health professionals who provide the requisite services. Only three percent of world nations have such absolute bans, which have the strong and vocal support of the Catholic Church.

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South Africa is unlikely to meet a target of providing 80 percent of its HIV/AIDS population with life-saving anti-retroviral medications by 2011; only 40 percent of this population has received assistance thus far. The country’s health minister attributes the shortfall to a drop in funding, as well as logistical and personnel problems.

The famine predicted by aid groups in Kenya is taking a deadly toll, and donor nations have provided only half of the $576 million aid package requested in a U.N. emergency appeal. Reporters remark that the effort may be suffering due to a lack of donor confidence in the corrupt Kenyan government.

The U.N High Commissioner on Refugees, Antonio Guterres, has implored French Immigration Minister Eric Besson to protect asylum seekers in France. The Calais region, known as “The Jungle,” is currently filled with refugees seeking asylum in Britain and France. The U.N. is pushing France to ensure all refugees are afforded full and fair asylum procedures.

Recent proposals to reform French criminal procedure laws, if enacted, will not make many changes to the current, heavily-criticized body of laws. The Léger Committee, assigned the task of reforming the country’s criminal procedure, has requested only narrow amendments, leaving some of the most debatable procedures available for use in police investigations.

The Yemeni human rights organization Siyaj reports that a twelve-year-old Yemeni girl, married at age eleven to a twenty-four-year-old, has died from childbirth complications. While a bill is pending in the Yemeni parliament to raise the minimum marriage age, the status quo remains that one-fourth of Yemeni females are married before their fifteenth birthdays.

Shia Discrimination in Saudi Arabia
Source: Human Rights Watch

A new report by Human Rights Watch highlights widespread prejudice and hostility toward Shia citizens in Saudi Arabia. The report indicates that Shia Muslims, who are a minority population in Saudi Arabia, face discrimination in the religious, educational, judicial, and employment sectors. The report further describes how Shia religious leaders have faced arbitrary arrests.