Security agencies and government officials in several countries in the Middle East and North Africa have been using social media platforms and mobile dating apps to crack down on LGBTQ people, a rights group said Tuesday.

President Kais Saied has alleged that undocumented immigration from sub-Saharan African countries is aimed at changing Tunisia’s demographic composition, drawing criticism from human rights activists.

Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska gave a video tour of human rights violations in the country following Russia’s invasion almost a year ago, telling a UN meeting Wednesday: “We have the right to live free, not to be killed or tortured.”

At a meeting on “Gross Human Rights Violations Due To The Aggression Against Ukraine” organized by the Kyiv government, Zelenska also pointed to ill-treated emaciated Ukrainian prisoners of war, and the thousands of children Russia has taken from Ukraine and the reported adoption of some of them by Russian families.

The highest court of the United Nations has ordered Azerbaijan to remove a roadblock from the only road between Armenia and the Armenian-majority Nagorno-Karabakh region in Azerbaijan that has further fueled tensions between the two countries.

The 11 female foreign ministers attending the Munich Security Council have issued a joint statement condemning the efforts of Afghanistan's Taliban to "exclude women from all public life." "Women are kept from strolling in parks, are not seen on TV screens anymore, are deprived from their right to attend schools and universities, and are now also kept from working in humanitarian assistance," the statement noted, calling on the Taliban to lift the restrictions on women immediately.

Uyghur advocacy groups called on United Nations bodies to take action against China on Thursday over its abuses against the mainly Muslim ethnic minority, after UN experts this week reviewed Beijing's rights record.

During a two-day UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights review in Geneva, participants asked China's delegation about the country's treatment of minorities, including Uyghurs in the western region of Xinjiang, and measures to end forced labor and arbitrary detentions, among other issues.

The 18 presidential candidates of Nigeria’s general election have signed a second peace accord in the capital, Abuja, in a bid to prevent unrest surrounding the February 25 polls. The pact is to ensure “the conduct of free, fair, credible, transparent and verifiable elections cognizant of the need to maintain a peaceful environment before, during and after the 2023 general elections” and “to place national interest above personal and partisan concerns.”

The UN Security Council unanimously approved a watered-down statement strongly opposing Israel’s continued construction and expansion of settlements Monday. The vote came after high-stakes negotiations by the Biden administration succeeded in derailing a legally binding resolution that would have demanded a halt to Israeli settlement activity.

A “people’s court” put Russian President Vladimir Putin on trial Monday for the crime of aggression over his invasion of Ukraine, in a symbolic move to close an “accountability gap” in the absence of an international tribunal with jurisdiction.

The court has no legal powers but prosecutors said they will present evidence that Putin committed the crime of aggression by ordering the invasion nearly a year ago, unleashing a devastating war that has killed thousands and left towns and cities in ruins.