UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on Monday made a statement in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, expressing regret for the UN’s silence during the 1994 Rwandan genocide that resulted in the deaths of 800,000 people. Ban urged the international community to prevent such atrocities from occurring again and noted that progress in this direction has been made, [...]
Sri Lanka’s foreign minister Gamini Lakshman Peiris announced on Monday that Sri Lanka would not cooperate with a UN investigation into alleged war crimes committed during the country’s civil war. Last month, the UN Human Rights Council voted to launch an investigation into alleged violations committed by Government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil [...]
The US Supreme Court on Monday denied early review of a constitutional challenge to the National Security Agency’s (NSA) PRISM telephony bulk data collection program. Last December, a judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the NSA’s program is likely unconstitutional after Larry Klayman, founder of the political advocacy [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Kristen Swift, Widener University School of Law Class of 2014, discusses Merck & Co.’s NuvaRing settlement and the company’s corporate governance policies…Recently, Merck & Co. made a major splash across headlines by offering NuvaRing plaintiff’s a $100 million dollar settlement proposal. Is this settlement offer reflective of Merck’s failed corporate governance policies? [...]
Special Rapporteur on Myanmar Tomas Ojea Quintana from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on Monday expressed concern about the deteriorating human rights situation in the country’s Rakhine State . Following recent attacks on international aid groups, aid workers have begun an evacuation of the area. The withdrawal of individuals [...]
An Egyptian court of appeals on Monday upheld the jailing of three men who co-founded the April 6 opposition movement which played a large role in the country’s 2011 revolution. The ruling has been described as part of a crackdown on those opposed to the military-backed government, and critics have called it an attempt to [...]
A civil lawsuit against the Dutch government filed by mothers and widows of men killed in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre opened in the Hague District Court on Monday. The Mothers of Srebrenica , a group representing 6,000 women who lost family members during the massacre, originally filed the lawsuit in 2007, seeking compensation and acknowledgement [...]
JURIST Guest Columnists Leonard M. Baynes and David L. Gregory, both of the St. John’s University School of Law, discuss the anniversary of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the interplay of racial and economic justice … This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the enactment of Title VII of the Civil Rights [...]
The Maryland state House of Representatives passed a bill on Saturday that would decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana. The House voted 78 to 55 to impose civil fines, rather than criminal sanctions, on those caught with less than 10 grams of marijuana. Those in favor of the bill pointed to racial disparities [...]
A UN expert on Friday urged the Kazakhstan government to end the mandatory registration of religious communities. Currently, all religious communities in Kazakhstan are required by law to obtain registration status to exercise collective religious functions. During a visit to Kazakhstan, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief Heiner Bielefeldt said in [...]
