Following Natalya Estemirova's murder in Grozny last July, the human rights group Memorial accused Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov of involvement in her death. Kadyrov subsequently sued Memorial Director Oleg Orlov for libel.

This week, a district court in Moscow awarded the suit to President Kadyrov and ordered Orlov to pay damages, as well as retract his statements. The court rejected arguments that Orlov's accusations were justified "based on Mr. Kadyrov's record of human rights violations and his well-known hostile relationship with Ms. Estemirova." Orlov has promised to appeal the decision, applying to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary.

Reinforcing Kadyrov's stronghold grip on the region, the court's decision has also emboldened the leader to make additional moves against his enemies. He now plans to file a libel suit against the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which had employed Anna Politkovskaya, a human rights activist who was murdered in 2006.

Early this week, Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband, Alik Djabrailov, were abducted from their office in Grozny and killed. Sadulayeva was the head of a charity called Save the Generation that helped children who had been physically and emotionally scarred by the conflict. Coming on the heels of Natalya Estemirova's murder in July, this latest tragedy sends a clear message that the struggle to protect human rights in Chechnya comes at a deadly price. Violence in Chechnya today is no longer as widespread or systematic as it was during the war, but it is much more targeted and deadly. Fewer people are at risk, but the risk for them is much greater.

Appearing just days before Estemirova's murder, a video aired on Grozny TV and obtained by The American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus shows Adam Delimkhanov, the de facto commander of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov's militia and a representative to the Russian Duma, threatening human rights workers. "Each one of them," he announced, "be they Chechen or Ingush or whom have you, should know, that they will pay for their words..."

View a new gallery of photographs taken in Grozny, depicting a society changed by conflict, and read in World is Witness about the contradictions of life in Chechnya today.

In an unprecedented visit by an American secretary of state, Hillary Clinton visited Goma in eastern Congo this week, in order to call attention to the region's ongoing conflict, which is marked by extreme brutality and widespread sexual violence. Secretary Clinton's visit comes admit increased concern for the region, as hope vanishes that the combined Rwandan-Congolese operation launched last January against rebel groups would finally bring an end to the violence.

Instead, the joint military operation provoked revenge attacks and drove more than 500,000 people from their homes. The number of internally displaced persons in the Congo now stands at two million, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). A spike in rape cases since January is being blamed on the overstretched and unpaid Congolese army, with the number of rapes doubled or tripled in the areas government soldiers are deployed.

Just days before Secretary Clinton's arrival, Congo's President Joseph Kabila and Rwandan President Paul Kagame held a rare meeting on the border. Former rivals, the two leaders agreed to plan joint economic initiatives and to revive the Joint Permanent Commission for cooperation between the two countries that has not been in operation for 21 years.

View a new gallery of photographs recently taken by Museum staff traveling in the Congo and read in World is Witness about the young survivors of rebel attacks.