Australia’s proposed cybersecurity bill is “fatally flawed” and should be dropped, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy said Thursday. The expert stated that it was “a poorly conceived national security measure equally as likely to endanger security as not.” The proposed legislation would force tech companies “to help spy on citizens in [...]

Civilians in the Western Equatoria region of South Sudan are facing extreme human rights abuses, according to a UN report released Thursday. Between April and August, there were reported attacks against villages and civilians, causing 24,000 people to leave their homes. The UN alleges that these attacks were perpetrated by the pro-Riek Machar Sudan People’s [...]

The Court of Appeal of Quebec decided on Wednesday that religious dress is to be allowed in the courtroom. The appeal arises out of a case where a judge refused to hear an Islamic woman in court “because she refused to remove her head scarf (hijab) in the courtroom and was therefore contravening the dress [...]

The UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers on Thursday urged  Guatemala to “adopt all necessary measures to fully ensure that judges and magistrates perform their duties with full independence and guarantees.” The UN Special Rapporteur specifically referenced the government’s refusal to allow the head of the International Commission against Impunity in [...]

Guatemala’s Constitutional Court on Sunday ordered  that Iván Velásquez, the head of the UN’s International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) , be allowed back into the country. Velásquez had been banned  from entering the country because of a “recommendation of the National Security Council, which accused the CICIG’s head of attacking Guatemala’s governability, public [...]

South Sudan President Salva Kiir Mayardit signed a peace deal with rebel groups on Wednesday to bring an end to a seven-year-long civil war in the country which killed at least 50,000 people and made 2 million more homeless. Mediated by neighboring Sudan, the deal includes power-sharing structures, a reformed banking and military structure, and [...]

Lise Grande , head UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, said Thursday that the “situation has deteriorated dramatically in the past few days,” and “hundreds of thousands of lives hang in the balance,” in the port city of Hodeida. Hodeida is Yemen’s principal port on the Red Sea and the chief entry point for food imports. [...]

Lawmakers in Chile on Wednesday passed  a gender identity law that allows transgender people over 14 to legally change their name and sex markers on official documents. The law passed in a 95-46 vote after five years of discussion. As a result, transgender people in Chile who are over the age of 14 can change [...]

The Chinese government has been engaging in a systematic campaign of human rights violations against Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang province, Human Rights Watch (HRW) alleged in a report  Monday. The report presents evidence  of these violations, and is “primarily based on interviews with 58 former residents of Xinjiang, including 5 former detainees and 38 relatives of [...]

Amnesty International called Thursday for an investigation into possible war crimes in Yemen. The group published a report  detailing the stories of men in southern Yemen detention facilities. The report documents “how scores of men have been subjected to enforced disappearance after being arbitrarily arrested and detained by United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Yemeni forces [...]