Under President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s leadership, the Sri Lankan civil war reached a brutal conclusion on May 18, 2009, ending a 25-year-long conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a separatist rebel group. Rooted in longstanding grievances, including discriminatory policies against Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority, the conflict saw the [...]
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Book ban attempts in US libraries and schools hit record high in 2023: national library group
The American Library Association (ALA) announced on Thursday that censorship demands and book ban attempts in public libraries and schools hit a record high in 2023. The ALA documented 1,247 demands to ban 4,240 different books. This is a 65 percent increase from 2022, when 2,571 books faced censorship demands. In 17 states, book ban [...]
Breaking Barriers: A Global Review of Legislative Reform on Women's Rights
The plight of women’s rights in various countries reflects a complex interplay of legal, cultural and societal norms that significantly disenfranchise women and girls, threatening their human rights and dignity. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Pakistan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, and Nigeria present challenging environments where women’s rights [...]
As the world marks International Women’s Day, we have to address the elephant in the room. When it comes to honoring and protecting the rights of women, far too much of the global community is backsliding. As a legal scholar from Afghanistan, I know firsthand about these struggles as they pertain to the women of [...]
Vietnam seeks to curb fundamental civil society rights: watchdog report
The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) allegedly issued a secret directive to curb fundamental rights of civil society by banning trade unions, curtailing freedom of expression, and clamping on foreign influence, according to a report published Friday by human rights watchdog the 88 Project. The report found that the CPV allegedly issued a secret directive [...]
India Supreme Court upholds state public employment policy barring candidates with 2+ children
The India Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a Rajasthan state law that provides for a two-child eligibility criterion for seeking public employment. The court held that the the Rajasthan Various Service (Amendment) Rules, 2001, which bars candidates who have more than two children from seeking government jobs, is constitutional and non-discriminatory. With the court’s Thursday [...]
Texas federal judge finds 2022 spending bill passed unconstitutionally
A Texas federal judge ruled Tuesday that the US Congress passed a 2022 $1.7 trillion government spending bill unconstitutionally. Federal District Judge James Wesley Hendrix blocked the enforcement of a portion of the bill, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PFWA), based on a violation of the US Constitution’s “quorum clause.” The 2022 spending bill passed [...]
Report shows Australia employers are above target gender pay gap range
The Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) published its first gender pay gap report Tuesday, releasing data on nearly 5,000 private sector employers in Australia. WGEA, an Australian government agency responsible for improving gender equality in the workplace, published the base salary and total renumeration median gender pay gaps for employers with at least 100 employees. According [...]
US Supreme Court declines to hear Missouri case excluding jurors based on religious beliefs
The US Supreme Court denied a petition to hear an appeal Tuesday concerning the exclusion of potential jurors based on the jurors’ religious beliefs in a Missouri sex discrimination case. Jean Finney, a worker for Missouri’s Department of Corrections who is also lesbian, sued her employer alleging sexual discrimination and retaliation after Finney began dating [...]
In what proved to be a constitutionally fraught week, the Governor of the State of Texas, Greg Abbott, stated on January 26 he will oppose any measure to infringe on Texas’s placing of razor wire on the US-Mexico border, a move that has bolstered Texas nationalists and increased calls that Texas should secede from the [...]