Over 360 applications have been made to the Government’s symphysiotomy redress scheme, despite it being sharply criticised by national and international human rights bodies.

Proposals in the symphysiotomy redress scheme requiring victims accepting a payment to “indemnify and hold harmless” those responsible have been sharply criticised.

Human rights activist Paul Gordon Lauren says moral outrage alone is not enough, action is crucial, writes Dan Buckley

Justice minister Alan Shatter has backtracked on the question of State involvement in the Magdalene Laundries, despite saying in opposition there was “irrefutable evidence” of such collusion.

Syria yesterday flatly rejected UN charges of crimes against humanity, even as monitors said troops killed dozens of civilians in the heaviest shelling of the protest city of Homs for days.

THE three co-authors of a scathing United Nations report on Israel’s conduct during its 2008-2009 offensive in Gaza have said they stand by their work.

TEN people were killed and 86 wounded yesterday in a suicide bomb attack on a bus carrying riot police in the Sri Lankan capital Columbo.

The UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly yesterday to replace its discredited human rights body with a new Human Rights Council, ignoring US objections that not enough was done to prevent abusive countries from becoming members.

Torture by authorities remains widespread in China, although it appears to be becoming less prevalent in big cities, the United Nations said today after a groundbreaking visit by a special investigator.

China has agreed to allow a fact-finding mission by a top United Nations official who investigates allegations of torture.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says the world’s democracies must use the power of shared ideals “to accelerate democracy’s movement to ever more places across the globe”.

The UN Human Rights Commission today passed a resolution condemning Israel’s settlement of the Palestinian territories, saying that Israel should reverse the policy.

The UN needs a new, permanent human rights body if it is to prevent appalling suffering from occurring around the world, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today.

Six of the world’s most repressive regimes are on the UN panel that is supposed to uphold human rights, the US campaign group Freedom House said today.

North Korea should take immediate action to halt further human rights abuses, the UN said in a report today.

CHINA has hit back at US criticism of its human rights record, issuing a report that denounced the US for offences ranging from allowing crime and poverty at home to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

China has fired back at US criticism of its human rights record, issuing a report that denounced the United States for offences ranging from allowing crime and poverty at home to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

A UN human rights expert has called on North Korea to give its citizens more freedoms and overhaul its administration of justice.

A UN-appointed expert said yesterday that he has warned Caterpillar Inc. that Israel’s use of bulldozers to destroy West Bank orchards could make the company an accomplice in what he called the violation of basic human rights of the Palestinians.

Human rights groups are angry at a United Nations report that praised the US and its allies for ending years of brutality by Saddam Hussein’s regime, but did not “call coalition forces to account”.

A UN human rights report today credited the US-led coalition with ending years of violations by Saddam Hussein’s regime, but also cited concerns over prisoner abuse.

The top UN human rights official today urged the American and British military to bring to justice soldiers alleged to have abused prisoners in Iraq.

REFUGEES who fled Sudan's Darfur region have given accounts of attacks by Sudanese troops and government-backed militia on civilians that may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity, according to a UN draft report.

A total of 1,146 people were executed in 28 countries last year, with China, Iran and the United States topping the list of nations that use the death penalty, Amnesty International said.

IRAN has made an official complaint to the Irish embassy in Tehran following EU criticism of the country’s human rights record.

THE US has been harshly criticised for scuppering a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin, calling the measure “one-sided” and saying it ignored the group’s bloody record of terrorism.

EU foreign ministers will discuss the impact of last week’s Madrid bombings at a regular meeting on March 22, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said yesterday.

The US State Department criticised Israeli and Palestinian authorities for widespread abuses in their conflict, and denounced China for what it said was a long list of rights violations.

A UN human rights envoy will visit Burma this week to push for independent investigations into alleged human rights violations against ethnic minorities in the country, the world body said.

The UN Human Rights Commission today elected a Libyan diplomat as this year’s president, despite objections from the US and other Western countries.

The top United Nations human rights body today slammed Israel’s action in the Middle East, citing a long list of violations including mass killings, sieges and attacks on ambulances and hospitals.

United Nations' top human rights body has voted to send an urgent mission to investigate Israeli-Palestinian violence.

The Council of Europe parliamentary assembly has threatened to remove the US and Japan as observers at the organisation unless they stop all executions ‘‘without delay’’ and move to repeal the death penalty, officials said.

The United States has lost the seat it has held for more than half a century on the UN Human Rights Commission.

A group of Kurdish protesters have slipped into the United Nations European headquarters and held a noisy demonstration against the Turkish government.

Former President Mary Robinson today announced she is stepping down as United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, saying she thought she could do more outside the ‘‘restraints’’ of the UN.