Skip to main contentSkip to navigation
Print subscriptions
Sign in
Search jobs
Search
The Guardian - Back to homeThe Guardian
Rights and Freedom

A Guardian series reporting on human rights abuses around the world and elevating the voices of those fighting for justice.

Rights and freedom

Supported by

About this content
  • Voters in Iran put their votes into red ballot boxes.

    Iran
    ‘I feel betrayed by the west’: Iran’s freedom protesters react to their new president

    Many who took to the streets in 2022 boycotted the poll that elected ‘reformist’ Masoud Pezeshkian, while others feel he is their only hope
  • A wall mural on a street in Kabul shows protesting women. The foremost woman has her arms raised, but her open mouth has been spraypainted black. Writing in Arabic reads: 'Afghan women will not be silent anymore'

    Afghanistan
    Video appears to show gang-rape of Afghan woman in a Taliban jail

    Activist claims she was threatened with release of the footage in order to silence her, amid multiple reports of sexual violence inflicted upon imprisoned Afghan women
  • A mural showing a woman in a blue headscarf looking away and holding up her hands defensively.,

    Afghanistan
    Afghan girls accuse Taliban of sexual assault after arrests for ‘bad hijab’

  • Afghan women in Islamabad hold up posters and placards in a protest demanding to boycott meeting with Taliban in Doha.

    Let Afghan women join the UN talks next week. It’s what the Taliban fear most

    Fawzia Koofi
    The rights of women and girls will be off the table at next week’s UN summit on Afghanistan – it’s an inexplicable moral collapse, says Afghan politician and women’s rights activist Fawzia Koofi
    • Marchers at Kyiv Pride 2024 in central Kyiv, Ukraine

      LGBTQ rights
      First Pride march since Russian invasion takes place in Kyiv

    • A picture of a young girl being held by a woman and a man, who are both kissing her

      ‘Know how loved you were’
      Fathers write to their children from the frontline

    • westafrica trail

      A cycle of debt, sex work and cocaine
      The women in west Africa caught in Europe’s drugs trail

    • A girl in a hijab puts her hand over her face as she cries

      ‘Nobody is coming to help us’
      Afghan teenage girls on life without school

Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

Multimedia

  • New Rwandans, from left, Yvan Kambari, Esther Iranzi and

    ‘We do not call ourselves Tutsi or Hutu’: the new Rwandans, three decades after the genocide – in pictures

  • Motaz Azaiza standing among smoking rubble

    Motaz Azaiza: capturing Israel’s offensive on Gaza from the inside – in pictures

  • Hazar stands outside a collapsed apartment building where her family used to live in Antakya.

    A year in the aftermath of Turkey’s earthquake – a photo essay

  • People on the move in Democratic Republic of Congo, where conflict has brought reports of widespread human rights abuses, including murder, rape, looting and the burning of homes.

    The forgotten human rights stories of 2023 – in pictures

Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

Spotlight

  • An illustration featuring European landmarks such as Big Ben, the Colosseum, the Eiffel Tower and the Leaning Tower of Pisa

    How big is Europe’s cocaine problem – and what is the human cost?

  • Cécile Kohler appears on iran tv wearing a headscarf whilst delivering a forced confession

    ‘I saw my sister forced to say she was a spy on Iranian TV. It was the worst day of my life’

  • A composite image showing the three sisters.

    ‘They’ve destroyed us because of some tweets’: why has Saudi Arabia targeted these three sisters?

  • A Rohingya family reaches the Bangladesh border after crossing a creek of the Naf river

    Who are the Rohingya and what is happening in Myanmar?

Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

Explore

  • 'When there's a state trying to kill you, how do you report that news?" Fardad Farahzad, journalist, Iran International

    ‘I decided to not let anybody silence my voice’: the journalists in exile but still at risk

  • Women from Geneina in a refugee camp in Adré, Chad, in November.

    Sudan’s Hotel Rwanda: the man who saved scores of people during Darfur violence

  • A placard of the Ghanaian flag above its coat of arms saying "queer Ghanaian lives matter" attached to railings outside a building

    Men enthusiastically express their heterosexuality in Ghana, so why is being queer so unacceptable?

    Elliot Kwabena Akosa
  • A young woman in a headscarf sits on a park bench

    Married at 10, abused and forced to flee without her children: an Afghan woman on life under the Taliban

Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

Most viewed