United Nations Special Rapporteurs

Her commitment to human rights then led her to Front Line Defenders, an organisation she herself founded in 2001 and played a key role in as executive director for 15 years.

In May this year Lawlor, now 68, continued her professional path in the field, becoming the UN's Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, HRDs.

Member of the UN Human Rights Committee's Advisory Council Jean Ziegler thinks that "the Third World War" is already in progress.

In an interview for the Vienna daily Kurier, he pointed out that 54 million people last year died as a consequence of wars, starvation, contaminated water, or "long vanquished epidemics."

Following a non-inspection decision of the Constitutional Court, the state of emergency has been functioning without "checks and balances." 

The other day, on Feb. 8, 4,464 people, of whom 330 are academics, were expelled from public work. 

A constitutional law professor, İbrahim Kaboğlu, has been expelled from university too. 

The U.N. Human Rights Council has started monitoring and reporting on violations of the right to freedom of opinion in Turkey, sending a special rapporteur to the country 20 years after the last such mission was conducted in 1996. 

The use of terrorism legislation by governments as a tool to suppress freedom of expression is not a discussion limited to Turkey or elsewhere, as the United Nations human rights body has become preoccupied with the same discussion with two separate draft resolutions favoring different stances on the issue.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on Thursday passed a resolution on the state of human rights in Kosovo.

It was tabled by Rapporteur Augustin Conde of Spain.

UN expects U.S. to investigate officials who ordered crimes

GENEVA -- A UN official has said that the Unites States has a legal obligation to prosecute U.S. officials who ordered crimes, including torture, against detainees.