Health workers wearing protective gear check on a patient isolated in a plastic cube at an Ebola treatment centre in Beni, Congo. Four days before the World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak an international emergency after it spread to eastern Congo's biggest city, Goma, 13 July 2019. (Keystone/AP/Jerome Delay)

🔎Reading between the lines as WHO, UN attempt crackdown on sexual misconduct. After years of inadequate response to sexual abuse scandals, UN institutions are tackling the issue by hiring new managers and setting up investigative bodies and websites to track reports. But will it be enough?

🕊️Geneva peace talks on Syria sputter as Assad looks east. The UN is attempting to revive its moribund peace talks for Syria, but President Bashar al-Assad has his sights set on Arab-led initiatives.

🪄UN torture body’s disappearing act for women. Female representation in the Committee Against Torture is sorely missing, and upcoming elections are not expected to reverse the trend, to the regret of human rights campaigners.

💸Inside the identity and financial rises eating away at the world’s argest humanitarian network. Plagued by financial hardships, layoffs and unsustainable costs, the world’s largest humanitarian network is going through a rough patch – and a major operational rethink.

🔮The uncertain prospects of the UN’s future summit. A summit intended to set a future modus operandi for the United Nations amid new global challenges has high aspirations as well as important hurdles to overcome.

Sara Ibrahim Abdelgalil, a Sudanese UK-based doctor and democracy activist, was in Geneva this week to speak about human rights abuses being committed as two rival generals fight for power in Sudan. (Geneva Solutions/Michelle Langrand)

Sudanese activist: ‘We told them this will not work, but they did not listen to the people’. As states throw their diplomatic weight behind different initiatives to try to end the fighting in Sudan, a Sudanese rights campaigner warns that the international community is repeating past mistakes that led to this mess in the first place.

Can the tech industry hit the human rights refresh button? On 4 July, the Human Rights Council will hear a report providing recommendations for protocol and standard settings in new technologies. We speak to the head of the team engaging with business and pushing for greater awareness of human rights implications from the fast-evolving sector.

Protesters support the Rohingya outside the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands, 10 December 2019. (Keystone/EPA/Sem Van Der Val)

⚖️War crimes round-up. “In Buenos Aires, Argentina, victims are seeking justice against the perpetrators of the atrocities that forced 750,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee Myanmar in 2017. Argentina's constitution provides for universal jurisdiction for international crimes, through which the judiciary was able to open its investigations in 2021. This case is a prime example of how vital this legal principle is: These atrocities are not being prosecuted in Myanmar, so victims of international crimes are turning to South America – confirming once again that Argentina is a pioneer of international justice, and reminding us that the exercise of universal jurisdiction is not solely a European-led practice.” – Alain Werner, director of Civitas Maxima