Switzerland's parliament building, Bern. (Keystone/Christian Beutler)

⚖️ Is Switzerland dragging its feet in criminalising torture? Switzerland does not have a clause in its laws punishing torture as a specific criminal offence, an omission that has long vexed rights groups and United Nations experts, who have renewed their calls for the nation to update its laws.

☢️ UN human rights expert on toxics to go to South Africa. Marcos Orellana is due to visit South Africa from 31 July to 11 August. Africa’s third-largest economy has been taking steps to manage the 122 million tonnes of waste it produces yearly, most of which ends up in landfills. But it still has a long way to go. Mpumalanga, the country’s main coal mining spot, has been labelled a sacrifice zone for being one of the worst cases of air pollution in the world.

Moldova’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Tatiana Molcean, at a conference of the convention on biological weapons at the Palais des Nations on 28 November 2022. (UN Geneva/Violaine Martin)

Moldovan ambassador to take reins at UNECE. Tatiana Molcean, Moldova’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva as well as Switzerland, was appointed last week by UN secretary general Antonio Guterres as the next executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). Molcean, 41, has been rising up the ranks of Moldova’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the last 20 years. She will take over from Slovakian Olga Algayerova, who is coming to the end of her term end of August after five years at the helm of the UN regional body. We spoke to Algayerova in 2021.