Angola’s parliament approved a new penal code Wednesday that drops provisions widely interpreted to criminalize homosexuality. The new penal code is Angola’s first since it gained its independence from Portugal in 1975. The prior code contained many holdover provisions from the colonial era, including a ban of “vices against nature,” which was understood to criminalize [...]

A spokesperson for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said Friday that they are concerned over Montenegro’s sentencing of investigative journalist Jovo Martinović. Martinović was sentenced to 18 months in prison on charges of drug smuggling and membership in a criminal organization, what the OHCHR believes were likely “politically motivated as credible [...]

Ethiopia’s House of Peoples’ Representatives passed a law on Thursday that will grant expansive rights to the nation’s refugee population.  These rights include the right to “obtain work permits, access primary education, obtain drivers’ licenses, legally register life events such as births and marriages and open up access to national financial services, such as banking.”  Ethiopia [...]

The Russian Constitutional Court ruled Thursday that the restriction of foreign ownership of media is legal. The court upheld a law restricting foreign ownership of media to twenty percent. The case came to the court “after arbitration courts declared a dual Russian-Dutch citizen’s 49-percent stake in a radio station illegal.” The court stated that the reason [...]

The Rwandan government released a statement Monday that French Magistrates Jean-Marc Herbaut and Nathalie Poux closed an ongoing investigation last Friday, into the 1994 downing of former Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana’s plane. Habyarimana, a member of the Hutu ethnic majority, died in April 1994 when his plane was shot down near the Rwandan capital. The assassination [...]

A Dutch district court on Monday denied Emile Ratelband’s request to change his date of birth to reflect the age that he says he feels, 49, rather than his actual age, 69. The court stated that its main reason in denying the request was that “unlike the situation with respect to a change in registered [...]

A UN human rights expert on Thursday called on the government of Ecuador to “protect the rights of indigenous peoples as a surge in demand for extractive resources and new development projects puts additional pressure on the indigenous population.” The expert “urged the Government to take action to build the plurinational and multicultural society that [...]

The UN Working Group on enforced or involuntary disappearances said on Monday that “a new law against enforced disappearances in Lebanon can be a major breakthrough” and urged that the law be implemented effectively in order “to give victims and their families access to truth and justice.” The law was passed on November 13, 2018, [...]

Voters in Taiwan voted against same-sex marriage in a referendum that took place during local elections Saturday. The referendum asked voters whether they thought that marriage in their civil code should be defined as between one man and one woman, and a majority voted that it should. Voters also voted to have a different process [...]

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled Thursday that a UK backup power scheme was illegal. The scheme involved “remunerating electricity capacity providers in exchange for their commitment to provide electricity or reduce or delay their electricity consumption during times of system stress.” In its ruling, the ECJ found that the power scheme constituted illegal [...]