The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders requested Monday the urgent intervention of Chinese authorities regarding the arbitrary detention and ill-treatment of citizen journalist Zhang Zhan. Zhang Zhan is accused of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble.” Currently, there is no information about Zhang Zhan’s situation at the Pudong Detention Center in Shanghai [...]

Amnesty International released a report on Friday shedding light on the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the education of Indigenous youth across multiple continents. Drawing on more than 80 interviews and surveys conducted between 2021 and 2023, the organization’s findings highlighted systemic inequities, a glaring lack of consultation with Indigenous communities, and a need [...]

The Hong Kong Court of Appeal (CA) on Thursday dismissed the government’s application for leave to appeal a case concerning a satire show that criticized police anti-epidemic efforts during the COVID-19 lockdown. In the application, the Communication Authority submitted three questions for the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal (CFA) to consider. First, the application [...]

An interim report from a commission led by retired state High Court judge Michael D’Cunha in India’s Karnataka on Sunday recommended the prosecution of former chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa and former health minister B. Sriramulu for alleged corruption during the COVID-19 pandemic. The report, submitted to the Karnataka government on August 31, details extensive financial irregularities [...]

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled Thursday in the case Central Unitaria de Traballadores/as v. Spain, upholding Spain’s decision to ban a May Day demonstration during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The court determined that the restriction on the trade union’s right to assembly was justified due to the extreme public health [...]

As the novel coronavirus flew globally in 2020, triggering widespread infections of the disease labeled COVID-19, a fresh challenge arose concerning how governments and legal experts could face this plague, predominantly in terms of law and rights in the Middle East and the Muslim world. In Islamic law, the Qur’an and the Sunnah (Prophet Mohammad’s [...]

The arguments made by the autonomous vehicle (AV) industry for limited regulation and rapid deployment of self-driving car technology bear a striking resemblance to the discussion about the US regulatory response to Covid-19 vaccines. Both appeal to exigent circumstances as a reason for rapid action to save lives, even if that means throwing some precautions [...]

In India, with the daily Covid-19 cases plummeting about 90 percent from the peak of the first wave last year, the pandemic appeared to be under control by March 2021.  In April 2021, however, India saw the world’s worst second wave, with new cases exceeding 400,000 a day, breaking the world record for the most [...]

The recent return of the military to the national political scene happens in a moment in which the democratic regimes, in Brazil and in the world, suffer the decline of trust in liberal-democratic institutions. The current militarization has been associated by some authors with a current global, systemic and structural conjecture with variations, from a [...]

The government of the state of Meghalaya introduced a policy that made it compulsory for individuals to get vaccinated before they resume work. The policy was declared unconstitutional by the High Court of Meghalaya in June 2021 on the basis that it violated a myriad of fundamental rights including the right to privacy, right to [...]