The United Nations Security Council should take immediate steps to ensure international monitoring in Southern Kordofan, where reports of massive human rights violations by Sudanese forces have emerged. Council members, who meet on July 28, 2011, should press all parties to end immediately the indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on civilians and should warn those responsible for these crimes that they will be held accountable.

The United Nations Security Council should take immediate steps to ensure international monitoring in Southern Kordofan, where reports of massive human rights violations by Sudanese forces have emerged. Council members, who meet on July 28, 2011, should press all parties to end immediately the indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on civilians and should warn those responsible for these crimes that they will be held accountable.

The International Criminal Court (ICC), by issuing an arrest warrant for Muammar Gaddafi, signaled that the law can reach even those long thought to be immune to accountability. The ICC judges granted warrants on June 27, 2011, for Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, his son Seif al-Islam, and Libya’s intelligence chief, Abdullah Sanussi. They are wanted on charges of crimes against humanity for their roles in attacks on civilians, including peaceful demonstrators, in Tripoli, Benghazi, Misrata, and other Libyan cities and towns.

After six months of violence, almost everyone in Côte d’Ivoire has a horrific story to tell: a loved one killed gruesomely, the memory of being raped, a house burned or pillaged of everything. I have listened to hundreds of these stories, amazed at people’s strength to recount the unthinkable to a stranger as armed conflict continued.

The United Nations Human Rights Council has taken a landmark step forward by addressing for the first time violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The council, in the session that ended on June 17, 2011, also sent a strong signal that human rights violations in Belarus should end, but mustered only a muted response to the crisis in Yemen and no mention at all of Bahrain’s continuing crackdown.

In a groundbreaking achievement for upholding the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the United Nations Human Rights Council has passed a resolution on human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity (L.9/Rev.1).

The UN Human Rights Council squandered an opportunity to take meaningful action to curtail business-related human rights abuses. The council, on June 16, 2011, endorsed a set of "Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights" and announced the formation of a working group and an annual meeting of business, government, and civil society representatives focused on disseminating and discussing those principles.

Italy should take concrete steps to improve its human rights record and carry out the pledges it made as a new member of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

The adoption by the International Labor Organization (ILO) on June 16, 2011, of a new, groundbreaking treaty to extend key labor protections to domestic workers will protect millions of people who have been without guarantees of their basic rights. Governments, trade unions, and employers’ organizations that make up the ILO overwhelmingly voted to adopt the ILO Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers, which establishes the first global standards for the estimated 50 to 100 million domestic workers worldwide, the vast majority of whom are women and girls.