The UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry on Syria (COI) announced on Friday that it has completed an in-country mission to Damascus as it prepares to brief the Council in Geneva on March 13. The Commission said it pressed Syria’s transitional authorities on accountability, institutional reform, and protections for civil society amid renewed regional [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Friday called on Kyrgyz authorities to deliver “tangible safety measures” and meaningful access to justice for women and girls with disabilities, citing new survey data showing pervasive psychological, physical, sexual and economic abuse as well as continued barriers to reporting and protection. HRW frames these accounts as consistent with its [...]

UN human rights chief Volker Türk on Saturday condemned Israeli and US strikes across Iran and Iran’s subsequent retaliatory attacks, warning that the escalation risks a wider regional conflict and reiterating that international law requires the protection of civilians and accountability for violations. In a statement delivered in Geneva, Türk said he “deplore the military [...]

New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed the “Medical Aid in Dying Act” on Friday, making New York the latest state to authorize physician-assisted dying for certain terminally ill patients. The law represents a major policy reversal in a state where the highest court had previously found that assisted suicide remained unlawful absent legislative change. The [...]

A US federal judge in Minnesota on Saturday refused to halt the Trump administration’s massive immigration enforcement operation in the Twin Cities, denying a request by the state of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul for preliminary injunctive relief.​​ District Judge Katherine Menendez held that plaintiffs had not shown a sufficient likelihood [...]

US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters on Friday that the Department of Justice has opened a federal civil rights investigation into the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, the intensive care nurse killed by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis last weekend. Blanche said the FBI will lead the investigation alongside lawyers from the Justice [...]

Joshua Villanueva is JURIST’s Washington, DC Correspondent and an LL.M. candidate in National Security and U.S. Foreign Relations Law at The George Washington University Law School.  The Supreme Court heard oral argument in Wolford v. Lopez on Tuesday, centering on whether Hawaii may effectively “flip the default” on public carry by licensed gun owners on [...]

The US District Court for the District of Minnesota on Friday granted in part and denied in part a motion for a preliminary injunction brought by six individuals who say federal immigration agents unlawfully arrested, stopped, threatened and/or used chemical irritants against them while they observed, recorded, and protested immigration enforcement activity in the Twin [...]

Joshua Villanueva is JURIST’s Washington, DC Correspondent and an LL.M. candidate in National Security and U.S. Foreign Relations Law at The George Washington University Law School.  Two groups, two slogans, and one Court. On one side of the plaza, opponents of Idaho’s and West Virginia’s transgender bans rallied behind a speaker who shouted into a [...]

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation launched a class-wide discrimination challenge on Thursday to a new Office of Personnel Management (OPM) policy that eliminates health-insurance coverage for most gender-affirming medical care in the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) and Postal Service Health Benefits (PSHB) programs, alleging that the change violates Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination [...]