Civil Rights

• The year 2020 will be a milestone: the year that brought us a global pandemic, a global recession, and a chance at the progress toward racial justice that has been long overdue and desperately needed.
• Freedom of movement for EU citizens will come to a stop by the end of 2020 in the UK.
• The DA calls for Ramaphosa and SADC leaders to prevent, on a major scale, the erosion of human rights in Zimbabwe and any further decline in reputation and investment risk to the entire region.
• The education emergency would jeopardise global goals to end poverty and inequality by 2030 and could set back progress on gender equity by years.
• The year 2020 marks the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, and represents an unprecedented opportunity to mobilize global action to achieve gender equality and rights of all women and girls.
• The German Federal Government plans to pass a supply chain act by the beginning of 2021 that will create binding regulations requiring companies to adhere to human rights and environmental protections.
• The Democratic Alliance calls for President Cyril Ramaphosa and Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders to prevent, on a major scale, the erosion of human rights in Zimbabwe and any further decline in reputation and investment risk to the entire region.
• Health concerns about the coronavirus outbreak are much higher among Black and Hispanic US adults than among white adults, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that people from racial and ethnic minority groups are at increased risk of getting sick and dying from COVID-19.
• A new UN drive to increase global protected areas could lead to severe human rights violations and cause irreversible social harm if not backed by much stronger guarantees of the rights of indigenous people and other local communities.
• The UN remains committed to the existing timeline of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end global poverty in all its forms and to reduce inequality within every country by 2030.
• Protesters are pleased that Hong Kong will no longer be treated differently to other Chinese cities under the new US Hong Kong Autonomy Act, and that the US can now impose economic sanctions on Hong Kong and Chinese officials for human rights violations.
• Global poverty can be brought down to about 3% of the world's population by 2030 if an average annual global economic growth rate of nearly 10% in GDP per capita is achieved, and if income inequality is reduced by half.
• Reducing income inequality in society must become a key strategy to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030.
• If the 2.5% GDP per capita growth rate in the least-developed countries in the past ten years is maintained during the decade of action, income inequality would need to be reduced by 75% to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030.
• US government departments are issuing an advisory to caution businesses about the risks of supply chain links to entities that engage in human rights abuses, including forced labor in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China.
• The risk is especially serious for companies like American semiconductor manufacturer Nvidia, which provides products used in facial recognition technology that could be used by the Chinese government to enable human rights violations.
• As concerns grow about how the coronavirus crisis might threaten human rights around the world, the United Nations is calling on countries to adopt a more cooperative, global and human rights-based approach to the pandemic.
• At the end of this year, UK financial services firms will lose their passporting rights to deliver services into the EU.
• The racial wealth gap is growing: By 2020, median white American households are projected to own 86 times more wealth than African-American households and 68 times more than Latino households.
• Clumsy information sharing has taxed U.S. healthcare for decades, but new rules against information blocking establish patients' rights to access their medical data via API.
• Washington's sanctions against Tehran have drastically constrained its ability to pay for humanitarian imports and are threatening the health rights of Iranians.
• LeBron James and several other athletes and entertainers are forming an advocacy group that will encourage African Americans to vote in the 2020 presidential election, as well as work to protect their voting rights.

Last updated: 04 October 2020