Amnesty International on July 2 warned that the recent move by Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso to submit formal notifications of withdrawal from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) paints a bleak future for thousands of conflict survivors, threatening their right to truth, justice and reparations.

Digital technology continues to colonize every sphere of human activity with terrifying rapidity, and Artificial Intelligence portends the actual abolition of humanity. Even the United Nations' belated and insufficient efforts to put a regulatory regime in place for AI acknowledge that humans face imminent "loss of control" over the technology. There are glimmers of hope, however: teachers engaged in practical resistance to the rollout of AI in school classrooms, and the nationwide protests against the proliferation of data centers. In New York City, the local Luddite Club just held a Summer of Ludd festival—aimed at getting people to disconnect from the digital pseudo-reality that recuperates our very alienation from itself, and to reclaim real life in the public parks and streets. In Episode 335 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg offers a report from Manhattan's Lower East Side. 

Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported June 30 that authorities in the Philippines continue to conduct extrajudicial killings, with no accountability, as part of the government's anti-drug campaign. Ten years after then-President Rodrigo Duterte launched his brutal "war on drugs," serious human rights violations remain ongoing.

A UN expert panel on July 1 condemned the latest murder of a Mexican human rights activist, and called for a thorough, impartial and transparent investigation by state authorities.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) stated on June 29 that over the past years Beijing has restructured Hong Kong's governance in a way that reduces accountability and tightens social control. A "draconian" national security regime is in place, which answers to the Chinese Communist Party leadership rather than Hong Kong's people.

Human Rights Watch on June 29 criticized insurgent armed groups, the Malian armed forces and allied militias, and Russian mercenaries, which have all committed "serious abuses of human rights against civilians" amid an internal conflict that has further fueled long-standing ethnic tensions in the country.

The trial of Syria's former grand mufti, Ahmed Bareddin Hassoun, opened at the Palace of Justice in Damascus on June 26. Hassoun led Syria's official religious establishment under the Bashar Assad dictatorship. He is accused of incitement to murder and abusing his position as a mufti to provide religious cover for the crimes of the regime, as well as participation in war crimes and crimes against humanity. He famously issued fatwas justifying the bombing of civilians and called the regime's use of indiscriminate barrel bombs "liberation," winning him the epithet "Barrel Bomb Mufti." He also issued a fatwa in 2017 authorizing the execution of detainees held at the notorious Sednaya Prison, where the Assad regime killed thousands, many through torture and starvation.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on June 26 filed an application to bring proceedings against Rwanda over decades of war crimes and violence perpetrated in the DRC's east. The Congolese government filed the case with the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations' principal court for disputes between states.