Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro has been charged with allegedly masterminding and leading a far-right conspiracy to cling to power through a military coup. 

The Netherlands agreed to return a collection of 119 artifacts to Nigeria, the latest objects to be sent back to their homelands as museums grapple with their colonial-era holdings. 

The Israeli army has continued with its large-scale military raid in the northern occupied West Bank city of Jenin and its refugee camp, forcing thousands to flee their homes. 

Wednesday, February 19 marks 30 days since Israeli forces began their assault on Jenin which then spread to other parts of the northern West Bank, including Tulkarem and its Nur Shams refugee camp. At least 26 Palestinians have been killed in Jenin since January 21. 

As a tool of foreign policy, sanctions have historically been deployed by one or more states to coerce a change of behavior or policy. In recent years, however, states have increasingly imposed sanctions on actors responsible for human rights violations, which has expanded their potential to advance transitional justice goals. Now, ICTJ is releasing a new report that considers this potential as well as the obstacles to justice sanctions may engender.

This report provides an analysis of international economic sanctions from a transitional justice perspective. It considers the role that sanctions may play in advancing or hindering accountability, redress, and prevention in response to massive and serious human rights violations. The report also examines the challenges that sanctions pose to justice, related to both legitimacy and impact, and identifies opportunities for increased engagement between justice practitioners and sanctions authorities. 

A top Hamas leader says the militant group will release six living Israeli hostages on Saturday and the bodies of four others on Thursday, a surprise increase that apparently comes in return for Israel allowing mobile homes and construction equipment into the devastated Gaza Strip. 

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk accused Rwanda-backed rebels, who seized a second major city in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), of killing children and attacking hospitals and warehouses storing humanitarian aid. 

Attacks by Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have killed hundreds of civilians, including infants, in White Nile state, Sudanese officials and rights groups. 

Sudan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the paramilitary group targeted civilians in the past few days in villages in the al-Gitaina area after they were “overwhelmed by its devastating defeat” by the Sudanese army.  

Nearly two years of conflict have fueled a catastrophic protection crisis and displaced a staggering 12 million people in Sudan and across borders.  

Security forces in Syria said on Monday that they arrested three people involved in the execution of hundreds of civilians by government forces in Damascus in 2013, two years after the country’s 13-year civil war began.