US gay rights group gets UN accreditation (AP)

The United States will seek election to the U.N. Human Rights Council this year, the State Department said Tuesday, announcing the Obama administration's latest reversal of former President George W.

Human Rights Watch urged prospective Yemen donors on Sunday to address the "deteriorating" human rights situation in the impoverished country before offering economic aid.HRW called on donors at an Abu Dhabi conference which is to open on Monday to "emphasise improving justice and the rule of law to reverse the deteriorating human rights situation in Yemen."In a statement received by AFP on Sunday, the New York-based watchdog urged donors "not to offer economic support without regard for human rights concerns."

Egypt must revoke its "draconian emergency law" and Libya should free unjustly detained prisoners, Human Rights Watch said on Sunday."Both Egypt?s and Libya?s human rights records will come under intense scrutiny by the UN Human Rights Council in 2010," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.Whitson was in Cairo to present the world report review of countries in the Middle East, entitled "Egypt and Libya: A Year of Serious Abuses" which details the state of human rights in 2009.

Fourteen countries were expected to be elected unanimously Thursday to the UN Human Rights Council, to the dismay of non-governmental groups that argue five of them -- including Libya -- have records that should keep them out.In a joint statement, high-profile NGOs including Human Rights Watch which formed a "Coalition for an Effective Human Rights Council" said five candidates this year -- Angola, Libya, Malaysia, Uganda and Thailand -- should not be eligible to be members.

Respect for the rights of the people most vulnerable to the AIDS virus is vital in stopping the spread of the disease, Human Rights Watch said Saturday ahead of a world conference on AIDS.Joseph Amon, the US-based group's health and human rights director, called on governments of more than 160 countries to repeal laws criminalising sex workers, drug addicts and homosexuals."Only by protecting the human rights of marginalized and vulnerable populations can we succeed in ending HIV transmission and ensuring universal access to care," he said in a statement.

A ban on abortion in the Roman Catholic Philippines has caused a human rights crisis, with more than half a million women unsafely terminating their pregnancies each year, a rights group said.The New York-based Centre for Reproductive Rights issued a report this week saying about 1,000 women died annually in the Philippines after having backstreet abortions."The criminalisation of abortion in the Philippines... violates women?s human rights by denying them access to safe and legal abortion," the report said.

The global economic crisis is greatly exacerbating abuses of human rights, Amnesty International warns.

Activists Tuesday filed a petition with South Korea's human rights watchdog, seeking an end to mandatory HIV tests for some foreign workers.A group representing HIV carriers, a migrants' trade union and three other rights groups said in their petition that the policy breaches the rights of migrant workers, according to the National Human Rights Commission which received the document.