11 Facts About Human Rights Violations

1. During the Holocaust of World War II Hitler’s Final Solution resulted in the death of 6 million or 78% of European Jews. The Final Solution was Nazi Germany’s plan of systematic execution against European Jews. 
2. During the Japanese occupation of the Chinese region of Nanking from 1937 to 1938, the Japanese army committed countless atrocities including rape, looting and civilian execution. To this day the Japanese government will not reveal the civilian death toll but it’s estimated that in the first six weeks of Japanese occupation 200,000 people were killed. In total between 20,000 to 80,000 people were raped.
3. Under the system of apartheid, legalized segregation of black people and white people existed in South Africa until 1990. Apartheid allowed the ruling white minority to segregate and exploit the majority of black South Africans, who were stripped of their status as citizens.
4. In 1994, up to 800,000 Tutsis, a minority ethnic group, were killed by the Hutus militia using clubs and matches. Around 10,000 people were killed in the streets each day (the Hutus are the ethnic group that accounts for 90% of the Rwandan population).
5. From February to September in 1988, estimated total of 182,000 people were killed in Saddam Hussein’s “ethnic cleansing” campaign against the Kurds. Hundreds of Kurdish villages were destroyed and in August, Iraqi forces bombed the Kurdish town of Halabja with nerve gas bombs, killing 5,000 civilians.
6. In the 1990s more than 200,000 civilians were killed in Bosnia and Croatia in a series of violent conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. The motivation behind the conflict was to establish “ethnically clean” Serbian areas to create a state of ethnic Serbs. This required the extermination of Croats, an ethnic group living in the same regions as Serbs.
7. Around three million people have been forced from their homes in the African country of Sudan after attacks by Sudanese troops and the Arab Janjaweed militia. More than 400,000 have died in the violence that originated between the Janjaweed and rebel groups. The Janjaweed launch raids, bombings and attacks on villages to kill civilians based on their ethnicity, rape women, steal land and herds of livestock. In 2004, former United States Secretary of State Colin Powell declared the situation in Sudan as the worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century.
8. Under the military dictatorship or junta ruling the Asian nation of Burma, there have been 173 attacks on 625 girls and women. 83% of these incidents were either committed by the army or in front of the troops and many victims said they were incidents of gang-rape.
9. Since 2007, thousands of Somalian civilians have been killed by Ethiopian “area bombardment,” being crushed in their homes or executed by armed militias. Up to 700,000 have been displaced by the violence in Mogadishu.  The African country has been without an organized government for 17 years and is overrun with warlords and their militias.
10. An estimated 100 to 140 million girls and women around the world are currently living with the consequences of female genital mutilation (FGM). FGM is a procedure that intentionally alters or injures genital organs for non-medical reasons. In many cultures, especially in Africa, FGM is often considered a part of preparing a girl for womanhood.
11. The United States has used waterboarding as a tactic on three suspected terrorists to gain information. Waterboarding is a technique, considered to be torture by international human rights organizations, that involves immobilizing a person on their back and inclining their heads downward, and then pouring water over their face and into their breathing passages.  Through suffocation and inhalation of water, the victim experiences the process of drowning.

Sources:

United Human Rights Council
Human Rights Watch
Amnesty International
Model United Nations Far West
BBC News
World Health Organization