A US appeals court on Wednesday rejected an initiative proposed by the Trump administration that would have cut millions of dollars from permanent housing funds for the homeless and shifted them to transitional programs requiring sobriety checks and mental health treatment. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has not announced whether it will [...]

Migrant workers in Gulf countries face heightened political, social and economic risks from violence caused by the ongoing Middle East conflict, Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned Wednesday. Michael Page, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at HRW, warned about the gravity of the situation, stating: Millions of migrant workers employed across the Gulf countries [...]

UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk warned on Wednesday that repression of freedom of expression across the Middle East has deepened significantly since the US-Israeli attacks on Iran commenced at the end of February. In Iran, approximately 2,345 people have been arrested on charges related to “national security.” Many of these,  as well as more [...]

Idaho’s governor signed a bill into law on Tuesday that prohibits transgender individuals from using bathrooms and changing rooms that align with their gender identity. The bill applies to those who enter such spaces “knowingly and willfully.” First offenses carry a misdemeanor penalty of up to one year in prison. Repeat violations, including those that [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) Tuesday urged Russia to fulfill its obligations under international law and restore access to internet and communication networks in light of continuing censorship and protestor arrests. Russian authorities continue to impose broad mobile internet and cellular access shutdowns under apparently pretextual public safety justifications, with some of the closure orders lasting up [...]

Australia’s online safety regulator on Tuesday raised concerns over compliance by major social media platforms with the country’s social media ban for minors, warning that it is currently investigating the matter. The regulatory body, eSafety, released a compliance report showing “a number of poor practices that give rise to compliance concerns,” including “enabling” minors to [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a statement on Tuesday condemning the “unlawful use of lethal force outside any context of armed conflict” by the US military over the past months. The statement said that the deadly US strikes on vessels thought to be carrying illegal drugs in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific amount to “extrajudicial [...]

President Droupadi Murmu on Tuesday assented to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026, a measure that Amnesty International says restricts the ability of transgender and gender-diverse individuals to self-identify. Aakar Patel, chair of Amnesty International India’s board, criticized the law, stating: “This regressive law dilutes safeguards and deepens state intrusion into the [...]

A coalition of United Nations experts on Tuesday issued a press release calling for Taliban authorities to immediately lift their ban on Afghan women entering UN premises, calling the policy a clear violation of international law with life-threatening humanitarian consequences. Since returning to power in 2021, the Taliban has imposed sweeping restrictions on women’s participation [...]

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 US Supreme Court on Wednesday heard oral argument in Trump v. Barbara, testing whether President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship can survive the Constitution’s Citizenship Clause [...]