Only Iran and Afghanistan routinely carry out sentences in public, with Saudi Arabia appearing to have ended practice

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If the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, goes ahead with plans to livestream the execution of a soldier radicalised to extremist Islam who killed 13 people at a military base in Texas, his country will join a motley assembly of lesser powers and rogue actors who have conducted public executions in recent years.

Only two countries currently systematically carry out capital sentences in public: Iran and Afghanistan. In 2025, the Taliban authorities carried out six such killings and the regime in Tehran 11, according to Amnesty International.

The South African-born jurist and former UN human rights chief Navi Pillay has won a Nobel her efforts to promote peace and international law. The 85-year-old, who is an ad hoc judge at the international court of justice, received the news while attending the Nuremberg Forum. The forum is an annual gathering of legal scholars, practitioners, policymakers and civil society in Nuremberg, Germany, the location of the trials of Nazi war criminals that helped lay the foundations of international law.

The international criminal court said the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Pillay, a former ICC judge, was important recognition for the role of international justice as a cornerstone of peace

• ICJ judge Navi Pillay wins Nobel peace prize for promoting international law

Committee recognises work of South African who chaired UN commission that concluded Israel was guilty of genocide in Gaza

The Nobel peace prize has been awarded to Navi Pillay, the South African former UN human rights chief who chaired the UN commission that concluded Israel was guilty of genocide in Gaza.

The Norwegian Nobel committee said Pillay, who is serving as a judge at the international court of justice (ICJ), has “shown that legal measures can help prevent acts of war and violence”.

I was sentenced to three years in jail for insulting government institutions. Now I am free, I will carry on fighting for the women I met in prison

‘Why don’t you just drive your tuk-tuk and do your work?” the judge asked me after videos from my social media accounts were shown during my court hearing. I had spoken on TikTok and Facebook about issues in Somalia that concerned me: forced evictions in the capital, Mogadishu, high fuel prices and nepotism in government.

I had described how, when I applied for work in hospitals and government departments, I was told on three occasions that I’d have to give a sexual favour in return.

The human rights activist was severely beaten by security forces and denied medical care. In an interview with the Guardian, she discusses her shifting sense of identity and being a mother in jail

The human rights activist Narges Mohammadi has described being beaten so severely by Iranian security agents that she required two brain scans, before being held in solitary confinement for two months despite her grave injuries.

In an interview with the Guardian, the 54-year-old Nobel peace prize laureate said that during her arrest in December, security agents “inflicted extremely severe blows to my head and body.

Modi government, election body and its head issued notices after removal of millions from lists prompts mass protests

India’s supreme court has demanded accountability from the government and the election body over a controversial exercise that has led to the deletion of tens of millions of voters from the electoral roll and prompted mass protests.

Demonstrations have erupted across the country in recent days as opposition parties, student groups and the youth-led Cockroach movement have demanded the resignation of Gyanesh Kumar, the head of the Election Commission of India (ECI).

Amnesty International is calling for an end to the agency, whose record of violating human rights dates back decades

ICE must be abolished.

That’s the conclusion we at Amnesty International have reached after documenting the chilling pattern of human rights violations across the US during immigration enforcement operations.

Nearly a decade after the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya people by Myanmar forces, satellite images show the insurgent Arakan Army is now emulating the killings and land grabs

There are at least 10 camps like the one on the paddy fields at Hnget Thay, built after the insurgent Arakan Army (AA) took control of most of northern Rakhine state in 2024. These are where many Rohingya people in the state now have to live. Others hide in the mountains, or flee abroad to the refugee camps of Bangladesh or make deadly boat journeys to Malaysia.

The arrival of more than 155,000 Rohingya in Bangladesh since 2024, which amounts to 25% of the 600,000 estimated to still be in Myanmar, has raised concerns about the very survival of a people who now mostly live abroad as refugees.

Iranian court upholds sentence against 29-year-old star Parastoo Ahmadi and other musicians in crackdown on women flouting hijab law

An Iranian court’s decision to uphold a sentence of 74 lashes against the popular singer Parastoo Ahmadi for performing without a hijab has sparked outrage among rights groups, who described it as “a form of torture”.

In June, Ahmadi, 29, and eight members of her production team, including musicians, were sentenced by a court in the city of Qom over a concert that was streamed online in 2024, which went viral and racked up millions of views. The court said the group had violated the country’s “legal and cultural norms” and called the performance “obscene and vulgar”.

Kuala Lumpur plans to send a total of 5,000 Myanmar nationals back to the war-torn country despite persecution concerns

Malaysia began sending back about 1,500 Myanmar nationals on Tuesday, the government confirmed, as it launched a scheme that rights groups say may endanger migrants and asylum seekers by returning them to the war-torn country.

The group is the first of 5,000 Myanmar citizens that Kuala Lumpur says agreed to “voluntary” repatriation from detention centres amid a huge uptick in anti-migrant sentiment in Malaysia.

The country is struggling to address a rise in attacks, with a record 13 people – mostly children – killed this year for body parts, which some believe can bring good fortune

Not long after midnight in late May this year, three men barged through the door of the small room where Nicole Soalala lived with her family on the outskirts of Toliara, a coastal city in the south of Madagascar. Her husband got up to ask what they wanted, but they attacked him with a piece of wood and an axe.

Soalala, 32, grabbed her youngest child, Landricia – an 18-month-old girl with albinism – and hoisted her on to her back, holding her there with a piece of fabric she started to wrap around herself. Her eldest daughter, 15, hid under the table with her other two children, aged six and three.

Tran Hiep, a 50-year-old Vietnamese Australian anti-human trafficking campaigner, not heard from since 18 September

Vietnamese authorities have detained three activists, including an Australian, on what have been described as “fabricated” charges.

The Vietnamese government said the three confessed to being members of Viet Tan – a pro-democracy organisation – which it describes as a terrorist organisation.

Israel ‘categorically rejects’ publication and says businesses on database have committed no wrongdoing

The UN human rights office has added 61 more companies to a blacklist of firms that it says are involved in violating Palestinian human rights through business ties to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The vast majority of the total 214 companies, which are based in 11 countries, are Israeli. Five of the 158 companies listed last year were removed in the latest update.

Taraneh and Romina Rahimi were charged with ‘waging war against God’ after joining protests against Tehran regime

The family of 21-year-old twins who have been sentenced respectively to death and decades in jail for protesting against the Iranian regime have appealed to the United Nations for help.

A formal “submission of information” relating to the case of Taraneh and Romina Rahimi has been submitted by British human right lawyers on their family’s behalf.