Members of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances said Friday that Mexico’s investigation of the forty-three missing Guerrero students and the deaths of six other students in the state is a test of the country’s willingness and capacity to respond to allegations of human rights violations. The students disappeared after local police [...]
Saudi Arabia is persecuting rights activists and silencing government critics, according to a report issued Friday by Amnesty International (AI) . According to AI, members of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA) have been persecuted since the Arab Spring in 2011. The Saudi Arabian government has reportedly targeted 11 of the founding members [...]
An independent UN human rights expert on Thursday urged South Korea to adopt an anti-discrimination law . UN Special Rapporteur on racism Mutuma Ruteere said an anti-discrimination law is particularly important because of increasing globalization, with many foreign workers coming to Korea for employment opportunities: “As Korean society becomes more exposed to foreigners and migrant [...]
The US Supreme Court on Thursday temporarily blocked Wisconsin from enforcing its voter ID law . The order vacates a September 12 ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which stayed an injunction on the law’s enforcement. Thursday’s decision, issued without comment, came as the result of an emergency request filed [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas on Thursday ruled that a Texas voter ID law violates the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the US Constitution because it is racially discriminatory and places a substantial burden on the right to vote. The law requires voters to obtain one of [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on Thursday overturned the US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin’s decision that upheld a state statute prohibiting night hunting outside of Native American tribal reservations. Although state jurisdiction over Native Americans is limited, the district court’s decision was based on “the right to [...]
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Friday that citizens cannot sue foreign governments for torture. Under the State Immunity Act , a foreign state is immune from the jurisdiction of any court in Canada, unless that state has waived such immunity. In the case at hand, a Canadian citizen visited Iran in 2003 as a [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Thursday revived a whistleblower’s lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase & Co. . In a unanimous decision, the court vacated and remanded a lower court’s grant of summary judgment to JPMorgan, which had effectively tossed a suit filed by former vice president Jennifer Sharkey. Sharkey filed a [...]
The Netherlands Ministry of Defense has announced plans to appeal a July ruling finding Netherlands liable for the deaths of 300 of the men and boys killed in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre . The court found that the UN-backed Dutch troops failed to adequately protect the Bosniaks at the UN compound in Potocari, which was [...]
Speaking at the Geneva presentation of a report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Moving Away from the Death Penalty , UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic urged the international abolition of the death penalty. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon released a statement in support of the sentiment, [...]
