May, 20 2016, 11:45am EDT
UN: Press Turkey to Open Border
Summit Should Tackle Responsibility for Refugees
ISTANBUL
United Nations member states and UN agencies attending the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul on May 23-24, 2016, should press the Turkish authorities to reopen Turkey's border to Syrian asylum seekers, Human Rights Watch said today. Partners should make clear that any border guards who shoot at or beat asylum seekers should be held accountable.
Since Turkey closed its border to all but seriously injured Syrian asylum seekers in early 2015, Turkish border guards have pushed back thousands of Syrians and - according to victims and witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch have killed at least five and seriously injured at least 14 Syrians who tried to cross the border into Turkey. The closure is trapping tens of thousands of people fleeing conflict, including those previously pushed back at the border, in dangerous Syrian border displacement camps where recent shelling and airstrikes have killed and injured dozens of civilians.
"Turkey casts a dark shadow over the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul as its border guards have killed Syrian asylum seekers and pushed others back into the world's worst war zone," said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher at Human Rights Watch. "Governments and UN agencies should end their deafening silence on Turkey's abuse of Syrian asylum seekers and press Turkey to reopen its border to civilians fleeing the horrors in Syria."
Turkey's president and other officials deny the border is closed to refugees. Neither the European Commission nor any European Union member state - or any other country - has called on Turkey to reopen its border to Syrian asylum seekers and to end border guard violence, while UN agencies have remained publicly silent.
The world's - and in particular the EU's - silence over Turkey's breach of the cornerstone of international refugee law condones Turkey's border abuses, Human Rights Watch said.
Governments, UN agencies, and nongovernmental organizations will meet at the first World Humanitarian Summit to discuss how to halt the global erosion of international human rights and humanitarian law and to improve protection for people in need. Human Rights Watch is participating in events on including people with disabilities in humanitarian response and protecting schools in conflict, but has also questioned whether the governments that are frequently the cause of serious abuses will alter their conduct as a result of the summit.
Turkey hosts more Syrian refugees - 2.75 million - than the whole of the EU and rest of the world combined, but Human Rights Watch has documented that, since at least mid-August 2015, Turkish border guards enforcing the country's March 2015 border closure have pushed back Syrians trying to reach Turkey.
In early May 2016, Human Rights Watch also documented that Turkish border guards killed three asylum seekers and two smugglers and seriously injured 14, including three children and a woman. In April, Human Rights Watch reported that Turkish border guards at the country's new border wall with Syria shot at Syrians escaping advances by the extremist group Islamic State (also known as ISIS), northeast of Aleppo.
Human Rights Watch has also revealed that Turkish border guards blocked thousands of fleeing displaced people from entering Turkey after their camps near the border were hit by artillery fire on April 13 and 15. Most had previously tried to flee to Turkey but were pushed back by Turkish border guards. On May 5, airstrikes hit the Kamuna camp, five kilometers from Turkey's closed border, which had been sheltering 4,500 displaced Syrians. The attack killed at least 20 people, including two children, and injured at least 37, including 10 who lost limbs and who were transferred to Turkey for medical care.
Turkey has long promoted the concept of a "safe zone" inside Syria where people fleeing the fighting could go instead of entering Turkey. As part of its controversial migration deal with Ankara to curb refugee and migration flows to Europe, the EU has pledged to work with Turkey to create in Syria "areas which will be more safe" where "the local population and refugees [will be able] to live."
"The attack on Syria's Kamuna camp underscores that 'safe zones' are often little more than wishful thinking," Simpson said. "Wasting time discussing 'safe zones' is a dangerous distraction from developing workable systems to protect Syrian refugees in Turkey and the EU."
Turkish military sources have denied turning Syrian asylum seekers back at the border and using violence against them. On May 17, Human Rights Watch wrote to the Turkish Interior Ministry asking for clarification of the Turkish military's position.
Turkey is entitled to secure its border with Syria, but is obliged to respect the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits rejecting asylum seekers at borders when that would expose them to the threat of persecution, torture, and threats to life and freedom. Turkey is also obliged to respect international norms on use of lethal force as well as the rights to life and bodily integrity, including the absolute prohibition on subjecting anyone to inhuman and degrading treatment.
Although no other country has called on Turkey to reopen its border, on May 12, Germany's foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said that the Human Rights Watch May 10 reporting on Turkish border guard killing and injuring Syrian asylum seekers was "alarming" and that it was in Turkey's "own interest" to explain what was happening at the border.
The EU's failure to take in more Syrian asylum seekers and refugees also contributes to the pressure on Turkey to deal with greater numbers. The EU should swiftly fulfill commitments to relocate Syrian and other asylum seekers from Greece and, together with other countries, should expand safe and legal channels for people to reach safety from Turkey, including through increased refugee resettlement, humanitarian admissions, humanitarian and other visas, and facilitated family reunification.
"As host of the World Humanitarian Summit, Turkey should be setting a positive example on the treatment of people at its borders and not trapping them in a war zone," Simpson said. "It has been a year since Turkey shut down its border to the world's most war-ravaged people, and it is well past time for the world's leaders to speak up."
Human Rights Watch is one of the world's leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. By focusing international attention where human rights are violated, we give voice to the oppressed and hold oppressors accountable for their crimes. Our rigorous, objective investigations and strategic, targeted advocacy build intense pressure for action and raise the cost of human rights abuse. For 30 years, Human Rights Watch has worked tenaciously to lay the legal and moral groundwork for deep-rooted change and has fought to bring greater justice and security to people around the world.
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Backed by Our Children's Trust—a legal group behind various youth climate suits, including Juliana v. United States and Held v. State of Montana—the plaintiffs are suing the Utah Board of Oil, Gas, and Mining; the Division of Oil, Gas, and Mining; and the director of the latter, Mick Thomas, in state court.
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When the Utah Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of the earlier lawsuit in March, Our Children's Trust called it a "partial win" because, as lead attorney Andrew Welle explained at the time, "the decision opens a clear path forward for continuing our challenge to the state's actions in promoting fossil fuel development."
🚨Ten Utah youth filed a constitutional climate lawsuit against their state for issuing fossil fuel permits that endanger their health, lives, and safety. Learn more: bit.ly/49LVqA0
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— Our Children’s Trust (@youthvgov.bsky.social) December 1, 2025 at 4:07 PM
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Roberts, in a Monday statement, shared her experiences with her city's polluted air and increasingly hot temperatures.
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The complaint details similar experiences by other plaintiffs. When 21-year-old Park City resident Sedona Murdock "is exposed to dangerous air quality, she experiences pain in her chest and lungs, difficulty breathing, and coughing, and it can trigger life-threatening asthma attacks," it says. "Sedona experiences stress and anxiety because of the harms to her health that she has already suffered."
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White House Claims Trump 'Has the Authority to Kill' Survivors of Boat Strikes
One legal expert called the press secretary's remarks "painful" to watch and warned of "how the reported patently illegal orders will affect US service members."
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While continuing to deny that the Pentagon chief ordered those carrying out the first known US military strike on an alleged drug-running boat to "kill everybody" on board, the top White House spokesperson on Monday reiterated the administration's position that President Donald Trump has the authority to take out anyone he deems a "narco-terrorist."
Rights advocates, legal scholars, American lawmakers, and leaders from other countries have condemned the boat bombings in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean, which began on September 2, as murders, and rejected the Trump administration's argument to Congress that the strikes are justified because the United States is in an "armed conflict" with drug cartels.
A week after the first bombing, the Intercept reported that people on board survived but were killed in a follow-up attack. The Washington Post provided more details on Friday, including that Adm. Frank M. "Mitch" Bradley ordered a second strike on two survivors to fulfill US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's alleged directive to kill everyone.
CNN also spoke with an unnamed source who confirmed Hegseth's supposed edict—which the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, denied on Monday.
During Monday's press briefing, NBC News White House correspondent Gabe Gutierrez noted Trump's "confidence" in Hegseth's claim that he did not give an explicit order to kill everyone on the first vessel, and asked Leavitt, "Does the administration deny that that second strike happened, or did it happen and the administration denies that Secretary Hegseth gave the order?"
"The latter is true," Leavitt said. She then read a statement that she often referred back to throughout the briefing:
President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have made it clear that presidentially designated narco-terrorist groups are subject to lethal targeting in accordance with the laws of war. With respect to the strikes in question on September 2, Secretary Hegseth authorized Adm. Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. Adm. Bradley worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated.
"And I would just add one more point," Leavitt continued, "to remind the American public why these lethal strikes are taking place: Because this administration has designated these narco-terrorists as a foreign terrorist organizations, the president has a right to take them out if they are threatening the United States of America, and if they are bringing illegal narcotics that are killing our citizens at a record rate—which is what they are doing."
Asked by Gutierrez to confirm Bradley ordered the second strike, Leavitt did so, saying that "he was well within his right to do so."
Multiple other reporters also inquired about the recent reporting, including Fox News senior White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, who said: "You said that the follow-up strike was lawful. What law is it that allows no survivors?"
Leavitt responded: "The strike conducted on September 2 was conducted in self-defense to protect Americans and vital United States interests. The strike was conducted in international waters and in accordance with the law of armed conflict."
Noting that exchange on social media, former Congressman Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican, said: "This is not how self-defense works. Everyone understands that self-defense requires an immediate physical threat and proportionality. Repelling a missile attack with a missile is self-defense. Blowing up boats hundreds of miles from US shores is not. This isn't complicated."
"This is not how self-defense works... Repelling a missile attack with a missile is self-defense. Blowing up boats hundreds of miles from US shores is not.
Ryan Goodman, a former Pentagon special counsel who's now a New York University law professor and Just Security coeditor-in-chief, also weighed in. "This has got to be one of [the] most painful responses to watch," he said, also pointing out that "the 'law' Leavitt cites is utterly irrelevant (self-defense is non sequitur, it's not armed conflict, and 'no survivors' is a crime)."
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Notably, Trump suggested last month that Democratic members of Congress who previously served in the US military and intelligence service and recently warned service members of their duty not to comply with illegal orders should be hanged. The Pentagon has since threatened to court-martial one of them: Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a retired US Navy captain.
c by CBS News senior White House correspondent Weijia Jiang about Hegseth's reported spoken directive to kill everybody on the boat. Using Trump's preferred term for the Defense Department's leader, she said: "I saw that quoted in a Washington Post story. I would reject that the secretary of war ever said that. However, the president has made it quite clear that if narco-terrorists... are trafficking illegal drugs toward the United States, he has the authority to kill them, and that's what this administration is doing."
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So far, Congress has failed to advance war powers resolutions intended to stop Trump's boat-bombing spree. However, since the Post reporting, top Democrats on both the US House and Senate Armed Services Committees have promised vigorous oversight.
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Over 150 Religious Orgs Endorse Salvadoran Mining Ban Reversed by Bukele
A joint letter expresses "steadfast support for the people of El Salvador and their religious institutions and leaders who are struggling to maintain their country’s historic ban on metal mining... so all Salvadorans can enjoy their God-given right to clean water."
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More than 150 faith-based organizations from 25 countries launched an open letter on Monday supporting an El Salvadoran ban on metals mining that was overturned by right-wing President Nayib Bukele in 2024.
The original ban was passed by the country’s legislature in 2017 following years of study and the advocacy of El Salvador’s religious communities. The letter signatories, which include 153 global and regional groups from a wide range of traditions, stood with faith groups in El Salvador in calling both for no new mining and for an end to the political persecution of land and water defenders.
"We, the undersigned, from a diversity of church structures (representing local, regional, and national expressions of churches and related agencies), express our steadfast support for the people of El Salvador and their religious institutions and leaders who are struggling to maintain their country’s historic ban on metal mining—in place from 2017 to 2024—so all Salvadorans can enjoy their God-given right to clean water," the letter begins. "We stand in solidarity with civic and religious leaders who are being persecuted and imprisoned for working against injustices, including the devastation that metals mining would cause their communities."
The faith leaders also released a video reading sections of the letter aloud.
“This letter is a hope-filled expression of solidarity and humanism."
“Through this declaration, faith communities from around the world have affirmed their solidarity with faith leaders in El Salvador as they carry out their duty to protect water as a sacred inherited trust, a human right meant to be shared by all,” Rev. Dr. Japhet Ndhlovu, executive minister for the Church in the Mission Unit of The United Church of Canada, said in a statement.
El Salvadorans already struggle to gain access to clean and plentiful water. The water of 90% of Salvadorans is contaminated, half of all Salvadorans have "intermittent access to water,” and one-half of those with water access report it is poor quality, said Gordon Whitman, managing director for international organizing at letter-signatory Faith in Action, at a Monday press briefing anouncing the letter.
"Restarting mining would be catastrophic," Whitman said.
The mining ban was already hard won.
A 2012 study commissioned by the government affirmed that mining would endanger the nation’s rivers and watersheds with cyanide, arsenic, and other toxins and found widespread public opposition to mining. Before the ban was passed in March of 2017, the archbishop of San Salvador mobilized support for it by leading a march to deliver a draft of the ban to the National Assembly. After it passed unanimously, he called it a "miracle," according to John Cavanagh, a senior adviser at the Institute for Policy Studies.
The law made El Salvador "the first nation on Earth to ban mining to save its rivers," Cavanagh said at the press briefing.
“The Salvadoran precautionary approach banning metal mining is essential to protect drinking water and aquatic ecosystems, given the irreparable damage that has been done by irresponsible mining around the world,” Willamette University professor emeritus Susan Lea Smith of the Ecumenical Water Network of the World Council of Churches said in a statement. “El Salvador had made a difficult but wise choice in banning metal mining. Clean water is a gift from God, and so, for the sake of clean water and the rest of Creation, we work together for the common good."
"It is a sin to render water undrinkable.”
However, in December 2024, Bukele's government passed a new law that allows mining once again without environmental oversight or community consultation.
“It’s a law that has become one of the main threats for the Salvadorans' right to clean water," Pedro Cabezas of International Allies Against Mining in El Salvador said in the press conference.
Cabezas also said the new law was a "symptom of what El Salvador has been going through over the last five years” as Bukele concentrates all power within the executive and his own party.
While the Salvadoran public and civil society groups remain opposed to mining—a December 2024 poll found that 3 in 5 are against the practice in the country—the Bukele government has ramped up its criminalization of dissent.
In this context, the Catholic, protestant, and evangelical churches in El Salvador are among the remaining institutions "with space to speak out" against mining, Christie Neufeldt of the United Church of Canada explained at the briefing.
For example, in March, Mons. José Luis Escobar Alas, the archbishop of San Salvador, presented an anti-mining petition signed by 150,000 people.
International faith groups wanted to stand in solidarity with their Salvadoran counterparts.
“This letter is a hope-filled expression of solidarity and humanism in the face of forces that would degrade” the Earth, human rights, and democracy, Neufeldt said.
Salvadoran faith groups "remind us that access to water is a fundamental human right and that clean water is not a commodity, but a shared inheritance entrusted to all people by God. And they remind us that ending the mining ban is fueling egregious rights violations against those organizing to protect their water and land from destruction," the letter says.
Whitman spoke about the importance of water to several religious traditions.
“All of our faith traditions teach that water is a sacred gift of God,” Whitman said, adding, "It is a sin to render water undrinkable.”
In the press briefing, speakers acknowledged the link between rising authoritarianism and environmental deregulation, in El Salvador and beyond.
Cavanagh noted that, as the energy transition increases demand for rare earth minerals and global instability makes gold more attractive, "oligarchs linked to extractivism" have begun "pumping money into elections” to boost candidates who will allow them to exploit resources.
“It’s not at all surprising that the opposition to mining comes from the people, and so it’s absolutely natural that the oligarchs, that the transnational corporations are going to want to crack down on public dissent," Smith said, adding there was an "intimate connection between authoritarianism and any extractive industry, including mining."
In the end, however, the letter signatories expressed faith for a greener, freer future.
"We pray for the Salvadoran people and their government, that they protect the sacred gift of creation, uphold human rights, and ensure every family clean water—now and for generations to come," they concluded.
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