Two mayoral contenders have been found dead in a single day in Mexico, adding to the toll of slain candidates in what is shaping up to be the country’s most violent election on record. The deaths reported in different parts of the country on April 19 bring to 17 the number of candidates killed in the lead-up to the presidential, congressional, and local polls on June 2.

Burkina Faso’s military forces “summarily executed” 223 civilians, including at least 56 children, in two villages in February, Human Rights Watch has said in a new report.

The international rights group said the massacre appeared to be part of a widespread military campaign against civilians accused of collaborating with armed groups. Soldiers killed at least 44 people, including 20 children, in Nondin, and 179 people, including 36 children, in nearby Soro.

Volker Turk, the United Nations human rights chief, has said he is “horrified” by the destruction of Nasser Medical Complex and al-Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip and reports of mass graves found in and around the hospitals amid Israel’s war on Gaza.

In a statement released on April 23, Turk called for independent and transparent investigations after Palestinian authorities said this week they had recovered hundreds of bodies at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis following the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the southern city earlier this month.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he would fight against any sanctions being imposed on Israeli military units for alleged rights violations, after a United States media outlet reported that Washington was planning such a step.

The US-based Axios news site on April 20 reported that Washington was planning to impose sanctions on Israel’s Netzah Yehuda battalion, which has operated in the occupied West Bank, though the Israeli military said it was not aware of any such measures.

A controversial United Kingdom government bill to send asylum seekers to Rwanda has finally secured the approval of the upper house of parliament, which had demanded numerous amendments, as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised to start the first flights to Kigali within weeks.

Voters at a handful polling places in a northeastern Indian state went back to the polls amid tight security on April 22 after violence disrupted the vote last week.

Indian election authorities voided the results at 11 of Manipur state’s nearly 3,000 polling stations after armed men damaged election machines during the first day of voting in national elections on April 19.

State officials said that at at least six of the stations, armed men broke the electronic voting machines which citizens use to cast their ballots.

Haiti's capital is almost completely cut off by air, sea, and land blockades as gang violence intensifies, stopping aid from getting to 58,000 children with the most life-threatening form of malnutrition, the head of the UN children's agency warned on April 22.

UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said two-thirds of Haiti's children need aid, women and girls are being targeted with "extreme levels" of gender-based and sexual violence, and 30 to 50 percent of armed groups have children in their ranks.

The Malian Supreme Court should annul the ruling junta's order to suspend political activities, a group of Malian political parties and civil society organizations said in an appeal on April 22.

The West African country has been under military rule since a coup in 2020. Tensions have risen in recent weeks over the authorities' failure to organize promised elections and their subsequent decree that limits political life in the name of maintaining public order.

In the aftermath of armed conflict or repression, communities often struggle to rebuild social relations that have been damaged or destroyed by violence and abuse. Restorative justice can potentially play a valuable role in such societies, bringing together the people who have been harmed by crimes and the individuals responsible for those harms, often in the form of a dialogue, to address the offense and its consequences. A new ICTJ research report offers insight and guidance on the use of a restorative justice framework in responding to massive and grave human rights violations, drawing primarily from experiences in Colombia, Sierra Leone, Tunisia, and the Philippines’ Bangsamoro region.