Twenty-three people were killed in India last year for defending their land and environment, with only the Philippines and Colombia recording more deaths, human rights group Global Witness said in a report.

Climate change will have the greatest impact on those living in poverty, but also threatens democracy and human rights, according to a UN expert.

World Report 2019 is Human Rights Watch’s 29th annual review of human rights practices around the globe. It summarizes key human rights issues in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide, drawing on events from late 2017 through November 2018.

Rural communities in South Africa, which make up 40% of the population, face immense difficulties in accessing adequate healthcare, according to a report titled Protecting Rural Healthcare in Times of Economic Crisis. Health expenditure per person in real terms has been shrinking since 2012, according to the report.

More than 2 lakh people were forcibly evicted and over 40,000 houses demolished across India last year, according to a report released by the Housing and Land Rights Network.

About half of the people of Sub-Saharan Africa live below the poverty line, and 80 per cent of them are women. Their access to justice is guaranteed by international and domestic laws. But these laws mean little or nothing without government support and adequate funding.

As measured by various indexes and indicators, Bhutan has made steady progress in human development since democracy was introduced in 2008; implying that democracy provides an environment for people to flourish. This is according to the National Human Development Report (NHDR) titled 'Ten Years of Democracy in Bhutan’.