US Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday that the federal government will recognize the marriages that took place while same-sex marriage was briefly allowed in the state of Utah. In the 18 days that same-sex marriage was legal in Utah, approximately 1,300 couples were wed. Holder confirmed that these couples will be entitled to federal [...]

The Philippines and Vietnam on Friday issued statements condemning a new Chinese law that will require foreign fisherman to obtain approval from China before fishing in large portions of the South China Sea. Both nations expressed anger over the law, claiming that it unnecessarily complicates relations between the countries and creates new tensions over territorial [...]

The Justice and Human Rights Commission of Morocco’s parliament on Thursday announced a proposal to amend Article 475 of the penal code , which allows rapists to avoid charges if they marry their victims. This practice is currently encouraged in countries such as Morocco and India, where the loss of a woman’s virginity out of [...]

The European Court for Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on Thursday that Russia must pay 1.9 million euros, or $2.6 million, to the families of 36 Chechen men who disappeared between 2000 and 2006. The court found that Russia was in violation of Articles 2, 3, 5 and 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights [...]

A spokesperson for Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday said that the administration would be releasing seventy-two prisoners the United States considers dangerous militants from Bagram prison, stating that there was not enough evidence to continue to hold them. The government said that there was no evidence against forty-five of the detainees and that there [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Thursday asked a federal judge in Kansas to return a challenge requiring voters to provide proof-of-citizenship to state court. The challenge focuses on Kansas’s two-tiered voter registration system, which requires voters to show proof of citizenship to register to vote in local and state elections, but not federal [...]

The Obama Administration’s panel charged with reviewing the cases of detainees at Guantanamo Bay concluded its review of detainee Mahmud Abd Al Aziz Al Mujahid on Thursday, unanimously finding him eligible for transfer to Yemen. The periodic review board (PRB) was established by Executive Order 13567 . Mujahid was never charged by the military commission, [...]

Human rights activists from various international organizations in late December called on Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to end the country’s persecution of LGBT Iranians in a letter citing various attacks and rights violations. The signatories of the letter, from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and the Iranian [...]

Bytes for All (B4A) , a Pakistani human rights organization focusing on information and communication technologies, has filed suit with the UK Investigatory Powers Tribunal (ITP) against the British government for its cable-tapping program, Tempora. B4A is partnered with Privacy International , which filed a similar suit last July. B4A’s claim states that the UK’s [...]