Three groups working on accountability for atrocity crimes have filed criminal complaints with prosecutors in Antwerp, Hamburg and Essen over shipments to Syria of restricted chemicals in 2014.

While member states fail to act, civil society groups are again backing an independent review of candidates for one of the world's most influential human rights bodies.

Three groups are questioning the failure of European Union sanctions to prevent the reported shipment to Syria in 2014 of chemicals that can be used to produce sarin and VX gas.

A German court has rejected the complaint of a Somali herdsman over the death of his father in a U.S. drone strike in 2012, in a case that highlighted the role of U.S. facilities in Germany in the drone program.

Cutting U.S. funding would imperil a key international tool for upholding human rights, a coalition of civil society groups claims.

The Justice Initiative has been working with the Commission for International Justice and Accountability to build a case dossier against one of the men arrested, who is a former senior Syrian intelligence official.

U.S. human rights and media freedom groups are calling on Washington for immediate concrete steps to pursue justice for Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist brutally murdered in Istanbul in October last year.

A lawsuit filed in federal court in the South District of New York seeks the immediate release of government records relating to the killing of U.S. resident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.