Two UN Special Rapporteurs have called for greater protection for media professionals, referring to the unacceptably high number of attacks against those disseminating news, including torture, arrests, killings and sexual violence against female journalists.
Serbia has announced that they will investigate 13 persons accused of aiding genocide fugitives from evading justice, after criticism from a UN tribunal last month.
Following condemnation from the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Serbia announced that 13 people, including a high ranking military official, would be amongst those investigated for aiding genocide suspects Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic before their eventual capture.
More than one million people around the world took part in marking World Refugee Day on 20th June, remembering the 42 million people who are currently displaced from their homes.
In his keynote speech, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said that many more millions had been displaced in the past 18 months from Cote d’lvoire, Libya, Mali, Somalia, Sudan and Syria.
A Syrian air force pilot, Colonel Hassan Hamada, defected to Jordan on Thursday, flying his MiG-21 fighter plane over the border to the King Hussein military air base in Jordan.
According to Jordanian officials the defecting pilot was seeking aslyum.
Jordan's Minister of State for Information, Samih al-Maaytah, said to the Reuters news agency:
The head of the observer mission to Syria, General Robert Mood, has told the Security Council that the UN team was targeted by gun fire and hostile crowds, ahead of his decision to suspend the mission.
Diplomats say Gen Mood described how his 300 unarmed monitors were targeted at least 10 times by direct fire and nine UN vehicles were struck in the past week alone.
The UK government ministers have decided to boycott England’s Euro 2012 quarter-final on Sunday due to concerns over human rights in Ukraine.
The sports minister, Hugh Robertson, will not travel to the game on Sunday. The Foreign office have defended the decision given the questionable justice and human rights record in Ukraine.
A Russian arms vessel carrying weapons to be delivered to the Syrian government has turned back towards Russia, after having its insurance withdrawn.
The MV Alaed, currently off the coast of Scotland, is believed to be carrying Mi-25 attack helicopters and anti-ship missiles for Syria, a move that drew the ire of the United States.
The Sudanese government's security wing, the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) ordered three independent newspapers not to distribute their Sunday edition this weekend, despite having printed them.
The daily newspapers, Al-Ahdath, Al-Watan and Al-Jarida, were also ordered not to publish Monday's editions until further approval by the NISS agent.