Claims of human rights abuse against Sahrawi refugees living in camps in the Sahara desert administered by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el Hamra and Rio de Oro (Polisario) have been exaggerated, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported Saturday. The refugee camps in the Algerian region of Tindouf are home to approximately 90,000 [...]
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) expressed concern over the Maldives’s Supreme Court’s prosecution of five members of Maldives’s Human Rights Commission, following the commission’s written submission for OHCHR’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the country’s human rights records. The UPR permits each UN member state to assess its own [...]
As of Friday same-sex marriage has become legal in Arizona, Wyoming and Alaska. US District Courts for the Districts of Arizona and Wyoming struck down same-sex marriage bans in Wyoming and Arizona , respectively, on Friday. Additionally the US Supreme Court rejected a petition by Alaska to stay the ruling of the US District Court [...]
The European Commission filed a lawsuit against Sweden on Thursday for failing to change its laws on online betting and poker games that breach EU law on the free movement of services. The EU referred Sweden to the Court of Justice (ECJ) in two separate cases related to its restriction of gambling license to domestic [...]
The first trial judging charges of genocide against Cambodia’s 1970s Khmer Rouge regime opened on Friday with the prosecutor saying it will show that Cambodians were enslaved in inhumane conditions that led to the deaths of 1.7 million people from starvation, disease and execution. Khieu Samphan, the regime’s head of state and Nuon Chea, the [...]
Pakistan’s Lahore High Court on Thursday upheld the death sentence for Aasiya Noreen (better known as Asia Bibi), who was convicted of blasphemy in 2010. Bibi, a Christian woman, was alleged to have insulted the Prophet Mohammed while working in a field with several Muslim women. Bibi maintains that she never blasphemed against the Prophet, [...]
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a motion in the US District Court for the District of Columbia seeking to stay an order issued by the court earlier this month requiring the public release of 28 videos showing the forcible removal and forced feeding of Guantanamo Bay detainee Wa’el Dhiab. Dhiab, a Syrian [...]
The United States Commission on Civil Rights invited Professor David A. Harris of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law to testify at the Commission’s hearing on October 17, 2014. The subject of the hearing is Stand Your Ground laws. The state of Florida passed the first such law in 2005, and many states have [...]
Shiite muslim cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr was convicted Wednesday of sedition and other charges in Saudi Arabia’s Specialized Criminal Court and sentenced to death, raising fears of unrest from his supporters in neighboring Bahrain. Al-Nimr has been a vocal critic of the majority Sunni government in Saudi Arabia and was a key leader in the [...]
More than 100 Colombian farmers on Wednesday filed a lawsuit with the UK high court against British company Equion Energia , previously known as BP Exploration Colombia (BPXC), for alleged negligence when it built the Ocensa oil pipeline. The farmers are seeking around USD $29 million in compensation for environmental damage caused by the pipeline, [...]
