One of Pakistan’s leading women’s rights campaigners saysMalala Yousafzai is a victim of the West. Humaira Awais Shahid, a former politician, Harvard fellow, and newspaper editor, said the schoolgirl has been badly damaged by Britain and America, who are taking advantage of her survival story. 

Iran has reacted angrily to a European parliament resolution calling on diplomats to shine a spotlight on human rights in their negotiations with Tehran as part of a new strategy towards the country.

An Ethiopian man is suing Britain's government alleging its aid money has funded human rights abuses. The man, known only as Mr O, accuses Britain's Department for International Development (DFID) of financially supporting a "villagisation" scheme in western Ethiopia, a government-led plan to settle pastoralists in sedentary communities, according to the AFP news agency.

Diplomats representing major western powers have strongly condemned human rights violations by South Sudan's government and rebel forces and protested the obstruction of U.N. operations and threats to U.N. personnel in the war-torn country.

A recent report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights carried the strongest criticism yet of Sri Lanka’s Human Rights record. The report, Promoting Reconciliation and Accountability in Sri Lanka points out that the Sri Lankan government has “failed to ensure independent and credible investigations into past violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.”

Michelle Obama has embarked on a weeklong trip to China, together with her mother, Marian Robinson, and daughters, Malia and Sasha. Critics of the trip point out that the Robinson-Obama visits to Beijing (Great Wall), Xi’an (terra-cotta army), and Chengdu (pandas), will do nothing to illuminate or alleviate tensions in U.S.-China relations.

Bogota’s public television station called on the Organization of American States (OAS) on Tuesday to intercede on its behalf amid threats to its executives, weeks after public appeals to Colombian national authorities. 

The United States is “deeply disturbed” by reports of the death of prominent Chinese human rights activist Cao Shunli, detained in September for staging sit-ins at the country’s foreign ministry, the State Department said on Saturday. The news of her death came on Friday, soon after the start of a session in Geneva of the U.N. Human Rights Council, a body to which China was elected amid controversy last November.