The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos on Monday urged all parties involved in the Syrian conflict to take measures to avoid killing civilians. She stressed that failure to take precautions to distinguish between civilians and combatants amounts to a war crime. She also noted that since the situation in Syria is considered an [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Kevin Govern of the Ave Maria School of Law says that the recent confrontation between a US warship and a foreign vessel in the Strait of Hormuz is the most recent in a history of incidents where time-tested tactics have shaped the economic and political security of the Gulf region…
Planned Parenthood Arizona (PPA) filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Arizona Monday against Arizona state officials to enjoin enforcement of a new state law that would block funding for PPA’s health clinics because PPA also performs abortions. The new law, signed in May by Governor Jan Brewer, would bar [...]
The US District Court for the District of Columbia heard arguments Monday on whether US courts could hear foreign nationals’ challenges to their detention by the US military at Bagram Air Force Base (Bagram) in Afghanistan. District Judge John Bates asked petitioners what conditions had changed since his ruling three years ago that three Bagram [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Chris Schlag, University of Pittsburgh School of Law Class of 2014, is the president of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law’s chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and vice president of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law’s American Constitutional Society for Law and Policy. She discusses the current “deferred action [...]
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Tuesday urged the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to respect international standards of due process during the appeal in the case of Floribert Chebeya, a Congolese human rights defender who was murdered in 2010. She noted that the original trial included numerous due process issues [...]
An elderly New York woman petitioned the US Supreme Court on Monday to hear her challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) . Edith Schlain Windsor, 83, successfully sued the US government in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) , which in June ruled on summary judgment that [...]
An anti-terrorism court judge in Pakistan ruled Tuesday that a report compiled by a nine-member judiciary committee, which includes statements of the witnesses in India, could not be used in cases related to the 2008 Mumai terror attacks because defendants were denied their right to cross-examination. The anti-terrorist court held that the denial of cross-examination [...]
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported Monday that turnover from transnational organized criminal networks is estimated to be around $870 billion a year . With the statement, the UNODC launched its global awareness-raising campaign with the purpose of informing the public about the economic costs and human impact associated with the threat [...]
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Monday urged member states to consider proposals to strengthen the world’s human rights treaty body system. At an informal meeting at UN Headquarters in New York, Pillay said that the treaty body system represents “one of the greatest achievements in the history of the global struggle [...]
