It's a true shame. Such a lost opportunity. Sorry to see Sir Keir Starmer quit his post as Prime Minister. But his prime ministership will go down as a lost opportunity.

The world's strongest regional human rights system is being tested from inside ⚖️ This week, we at @faultlinenotes.bsky.social stay with the Council of Europe📍 Can @coe.int and does it still want to answer democratic backsliding by its own members and protect the human rights defenders? ⤵️

“Oman will behave like everybody else or we’ll have to blow them up.”

This!

⚠️ This ⤵️

En route to Chișinău 🇲🇩 Three days with civil society from across the region. The architecture that protected our work for thirty years is being dismantled. Time to redesign the system, together.

Russia's event is about to end in Kazan. 22000 participants, dozens of countries, 130 agreements 🧐 Gender balance? Barely a woman visible 🙋‍♀️ Independent media? Nowhere to be found 🤐 Russia's intent? Courting Africa 🌍 ➡️ It signals how Putin is winning from Trump's foreign policies.

This week Trump lands in Beijing with 16 CEOs in tow, Cook, Fink, Musk, Powell McCormick, Schwarzman, Solomon amongst them. Agenda: a board of investment, a board of trade, silence on human rights, Uyghur camps, Hong Kong, jailed activists and lawyers. The world's richest are going shopping ⚡️

It's a few years old 🎶 Wonderful for a Sunday evening 🎤🎻 Shelley Segal singing Leonard Cohen: www.youtube.com/watch?v=10XC...
 ➡️ As you listen to the song, take a sec' to sign the Free Betty petition secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/...

A stronger country writes @keirstarmerbot.bsky.social in @theguardian.com, “where family finances are not at the whim of tyrants such as Vladimir Putin”. Yet, his government is running after oil and gas from Azerbaijan 🛢️🇦🇿 The answer is energy transition, not looking towards another autocrat.

As @civicusalliance.bsky.social writes, reform of the UN NGO Committee is long overdue. Over a decade ago, @florianirminger.ch called this a “club of censors” in @indexoncensorship.org. That piece remains highly actual: www.indexoncensorship.org/2014/05/club...

Whilst Trump announces changes to his war plans on social media every other minute, Putin continues to kill in Ukraine. At least 12 people were killed in Zaporizhzhia this night. Dnipro and Kramatorsk were also attacked. #StandWithUkraine🇺🇦

The EU-Azerbaijan March 2026 joint statement contains no mention of political prisoners, civil society, media freedom, or the @droi.europarl.europa.eu own December 2025 resolution ⚠️ ➡️ Our briefing note maps the gap between what the EU says and what it does: www.endrepression-az.org/partnership-...

Thanks to @sarahsackman.bsky.social for saying the truth about what has developed over the past years on the left: the response to antisemitic violence from parts of the “moderate majority”, including some anti-racist organisations, had been “muted”. www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ma...

The EU's energy transition cannot mean trading Russian authoritarianism for Azerbaijani repression 🛢️⚖️ Without human rights conditionality, energy partnerships simply relocate the moral problem. 📺 www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpRi...

Hunting for anyone “visibly Jewish.” The stabbings of two jewish men, which happened yesterday in Golders Green, follow a series of arson attacks on Jewish targets in London, in the context of a global rise of acts of antisemitism since 7 October. Nobody should ignore this.

Two years ago today, Azerbaijan grabbed Anar Mammadli off the streets of Baku as he went to pick up his child at nursery. He’s still in prison on fabricated charges ⚠️ ➡️ Sign the petition for his release secure.avaaz.org/community_pe...

There are people whose example stays with you. For me Anar Mammadli is one of them 🫶 Over two years into his detention, I try to contribute through campaigning for his freedom and for the values he embodies ⚖️🌍🇪🇺

Today, the G7 Environment opens in Paris with climate off the agenda, to preserve unity with Washington. This is a faultline: the appeasement that failed on the rules-based order is now extended to ecology 🌍⚡️ 🔗 www.linkedin.com/pulse/today-...

New from Human Rights Compass ⚠️ Global Rupture documents a year of rupture and the responses to it. Seven recommendations for governments and civil society on moving from analysis to action, inspired by Victor Orbán electoral defeat in Hungary. The window of opportunity is now.

Orbán's defeat carried weight beyond the Hungarian borders. We need to learn from that defeat and hope it inspires us. Some thoughts to that effect ⤵️

Viktor Orbán’s 16-year grip on power has ended in Hungary. The new government should act fast: end rule by decree, suspend Sovereignty Protection Office, drop politically motivated cases, guarantee peaceful protest, restore judicial independence, & meet EU rule of law milestones. Rights can’t wait.

Was für ein Unsinn: Was die Welt über Orbáns historische Niederlage berichtet, spiegelt sich in der Überschrift des @blick.ch überhaupt nicht wider! Im Gegenteil: Die Welt ist sich einig, dass die EU durch den Machtwechsel in Ungarn gestärkt und Trump und Putin geschwächt wurden.

Today. Hungary freed itself from 16 years of a despotic illiberal regime 🇭🇺 It’s Day 500 of the protests in Georgia against a despotic illiberal regime 🇬🇪 Europe can make a difference 🇪🇺 Now.

Goodbye Mr Orbán ⚡️ Now Europe needs to stand up. Now.

Orbán built an “illiberal” country. He also built the EU's poorest one. By real household consumption, Hungary ranks last of 27 EU members. Trump endorsed him & Vance flew to Budapest to campaign. Orbán still trails. Not even the MAGA seal of approval can rescue a failing authoritarian.

Today, Hungarians vote. 16 years of Orbán's illiberalism face a genuine threat: Tisza's Péter Magyar leads every independent poll. But the field is rigged: gerrymandered districts, captured media, a captive judiciary. Magyar must win big to win at all 🇭🇺⚡️🗳️

Twenty photographs from the past week selected by @theguardian.com. The planet, seen from afar, is breathtaking. The moment, lived on it, is not. Worth a few minutes of your day 🌍 🔗 www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Bravo à @franceinter.fr qui ce matin présente deux voix féminines pour parler géopolitique — un domaine souvent réservé aux hommes dans les médias.

Morocco's authorities are still holding Ibtissame Betty Lachgar in prison ⚡️ She is denied urgent medical care 🏥 In this context, no royal grace is just disgraceful. UN Special Rapporteur @marylawlorhrds.bsky.social now calling for her humanitarian release ⤵️

💡 Just dropping something here that was said at the ongoing Human Rights Compass Convening, as it’s worth to be shared: *Human rights is security infrastructure:* because they reduce volatility, prevent conflict, and build trust in institutions.

As the US gets mired in Iran, Putin is preparing his next move: the Narva People’s Republic.

It feels great to be starting Human Rights Compass's 3rd season. A year in, with a great group of colleagues from across the globe, as the global realignment accelerates and the stakes for human rights keep rising. Proud of what we've built & energised for what comes next.

Iran's 1979 constitution: intact. Supreme Leader post: intact. Mojtaba Khamenei—viewed as more extreme than his father—now holds it. Switzerland's mandate to maintain minimal contact is mooted. Nuclear oversight is gone since Trump tore up the 2015 deal. Trump calls this "new, more reasonable" 🇺🇸⚡️🇮🇷

Looks more and more like Trump trapped himself (and the whole world) into an impossible situation… He now has every reason to try to “finish the job,” writes Nouriel Roubini @projectsyndicate.bsky.social www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/u...

Absolutel 💯 Yesterday, Liechtenstein with 13 States shared a draft resolution on Article 27.3 of the Charter, which essentially forbids a state from voting when party to a dispute.

🕊️ 10 years ago today, Intigam Aliyev was released from prison: Azerbaijan’s leading human rights lawyer, teacher of a generation, jailed for doing his job. His release came in a decade of repression that has never stopped.

Just read “Mr Men Little Miss: I Am Angry” putting my 4yo to bed. Trump’s last State of the Union scores at fourth grade on the same readability scale. Hargreaves had the excuse: he was writing for 3–4 year-olds 📖

The honour is ours, @mainakiai.bsky.social — welcome to Progress & Change's Thought Circle 🙏

The Epic Risk: self-preservation vs international law ⚡️ Why self-preservation is a structural principle within international law, not a freestanding right that can justify violating other rules, via @justsecurity.org. www.justsecurity.org/134361/self-...

„Die Frage ist nur, wann die direkte Demokratie sich ihres nationalen Egoismus entledigen kann.“ Lesenswertes Interview mit Daniel Cohn-Bendit (Ja, er ist ein Boomer). www.tagesanzeiger.ch/daniel-cohn-...

“Special military operation." "Large-scale combat operations." Same logic writes @calummackenzie.bsky.social in Swiss public Radio TV: frame aggression as defence, ignore international law, underestimate resistance. The authoritarian playbook, right there in the words ⚡️ www.srf.ch/news/interna...

“No plans for what comes next.” 🇮🇷 The Trump administration doesn't have an actual, real rationale, endgame, or plan for the aftermath of its attacks on Iran, an official told @theintercept.com ⚡️ A must read! theintercept.com/2026/03/05/t...

A few days in Toronto on the future of civic space 🇨🇦 A meeting with Canadian civil society and lawmakers, and ICNL's board meeting. The work of protecting human rights is built on exactly this kind of sustained, committed coalition-building ⚖️

61 years ago today, marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge were met with tear gas, batons and brutality ⚡️ The images shocked the world and changed it: rights are won in the streets before they are written into law. And we lost Jesse Jackson #RIP #BloodySunday #Selma

“If a government attacks its own people, silences journalists, and curtails freedom, there are consequences…” except if it happens in Azerbaijan 😵‍💫

Tonight, Barack Obama spoke to the American people. Don’t we all miss him?

This ⚠️⤵️

68 years old = the average age of the four first known candidates to become UN Secretary-General. ⚠️ 10 years older than the average age of when previous UNSGs took office. #NothingToAdd

To friends of human rights, pay attention ⚠️ Abandoning international law now will harm generations of Iranians to come writes @amandaghahremani.com in the Toronto Star: www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...