Ghana dispatch: more street demonstrations reflect growing discontent with government
Lana Osei is a JURIST staff correspondent in Ghana and a recent graduate of the GIMPA (Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration) Faculty of Law. She files this dispatch from Accra. On Tuesday, October 3, Accra, Ghana’s capital and a city of well over two million people, bore witness to two impactful protests. The [...]
Lana Osei is a JURIST staff correspondent in Ghana and a recent graduate of the GIMPA (Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration) Faculty of Law. She files this dispatch from Accra. Over the weekend, hundreds of people thronged the streets of Ghana’s capital, Accra, to protest the poor socioeconomic conditions in the country. As [...]
Lana Osei is a JURIST staff correspondent in Ghana and a recent graduate of the GIMPA (Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration) Faculty of Law. She files this dispatch from Accra. Last Friday, September 15th, Ghana’s Armed Forces assured the country in an interview with the leadership of the Ghana Journalists Association that there [...]
French diplomat released amid rising political tensions in Niger
France announced Thursday the release of Stéphane Jullien, an advisor to French citizens living in Niger, who was detained by authorities last week. In a statement, the French Foreign Ministry confirmed that Jullien had been freed Wednesday. Jullien was arrested September 8th by Niger’s security forces. His role involves liaising between French diplomatic services and [...]
Ghana parliament passes bill to outlaw witchcraft accusations
The Parliament of Ghana passed a bill on Friday that prohibits the practice of accusing others of witchcraft and criminalizes the declaration, accusation, naming or labelling of another person as a witch. The goal of the bill is address the persecution of people accused of witchcraft. The bill was put forward as an amendment to [...]
Ghana’s Parliament voted Tuesday to amend the country’s Criminal Offences Act to replace the death penalty with life imprisonment. The vote came after Minister of Parliament (MP) Francis-Xavier Sosu introduced the amended bill with the backing of rights groups. The bill will see 170 inmates currently on death row have their sentences commuted to life [...]
Anti-LGBTQ+ protest held in Botswana capital after decriminalization bill introduced
Hundreds of people protested on Saturday in Botswana’s capital Gaborone against a bill seeking to make same-sex relations legal. Botswana’s parliament was forced to introduce the bill legalizing same-sex relations pursuant to a 2019 ruling of the High Court of Botswana, which held that laws criminalizing same-sex relations are unconstitutional. The case was brought by [...]
Natasha Kahungi is JURIST’s Africa Bureau Chief. She files this from Nairobi. Many voices are being raised as Kenya braces for the anticipated introduction of an anti-LGBT bill in parliament, creating a cacophony of both support and opposition to the planned legislation. This vibrant outpouring of viewpoints highlights the complexity of this pressing social issue [...]
Thalia Clerveau is a 3L at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. She files this dispatch from Accra. This is one in a seasonal series of columns by JURIST law student staff and correspondents discussing their summer work in support of justice, human rights and the rule of law, in their own countries and [...]
Russian lawmakers unanimously passed a bill on Friday to ban gender-affirming surgeries for transgender people in the country. The Chairman of the Russian State Duma Viacheslav Volodin announced the bill’s passage on his Telegram channel, claiming the bill will protect Russian citizens and children. The bill prohibits surgery and hormone therapy for transgender individuals as [...]
