Palestine asserted in an application submitted to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Friday that the recent relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem constitutes a breach of international diplomatic law. In support of its claim, Palestine directed the ICJ to multiple UN General Assembly and Security Council Resolutions affirming the [...]
The UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution Friday that calls for an independent mechanism to collect evidence of the serious international crimes committed in Myanmar. The resolution reflects a council decision to “establish an ongoing independent mechanism to collect, consolidate, preserve and analyze evidence of the most serious international crimes and violations of international [...]
The United Nations Human Rights Council on Friday adopted a resolution calling on Venezuela to accept humanitarian assistance and requesting a comprehensive report on the country’s human rights situation. The Council called on the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to accept assistance “in order to address the scarcity of food, medicine and medical [...]
Judge Theodor Meron of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals withdrew Thursday from appellate proceedings in the case of former Serbian president Radovan Karadzic. The decision came two days after lawyers for Karadzic filed a motion seeking Judge Meron’s recusal based on what they argued was an appearance of bias. In the motion filed [...]
The Supreme Court of India on Thursday struck down Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code, ending the 158-year-old colonial statute that made adultery illegal. The section allowed for the wife of an adulterer to be charged as an abettor and receive the same punishment, and did not allow for a wife to seek charges [...]
Yemen war crime investigators on Tuesday asked the UN Human Rights Council to renew their mandate and allow the continued inquiry into Yemen’s “extremely alarming” conflict. The Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen , in their initial report published in August, found evidence “that members of the Saudi-led coalition, the Yemeni government, and the Houthi armed [...]
Ion Ficior, a former Romanian prison chief who was sentenced to 20 years for crimes against humanity, died in jail on Wednesday at the age of 90. Ficior was charged with the deaths of 103 political prisoners during his time as commander of the Periprava work camp during the communist ruling. Charges were filed in [...]
The German Bishops Conference released a study on Tuesday, which found allegations of sexual abuse of minors by 1,670 clerics of the Catholic Church in Germany between 1946 and 2014. The number of clerics represents 4.4 percent of all of the clerics in Germany in that time frame. The reports specifies that the number is [...]
The Supreme Court of India on Wednesday upheld in-part the constitutionality of the world’s largest biometric database system, which contains personal information of more than a billion Indians, saying the benefits of the system outweigh the costs to individual freedoms. The system is called the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIAI). The court explained the [...]
Egypt’s highest court, the Court of Cassation , on Monday upheld death sentences for 20 individuals previously convicted of a fatal attack on a local police station in August 2013. The incident stemmed from a pro-Muslim Brotherhood demonstration outside the capital, in which armed forces killed hundreds. Earlier this month another Egyptian court sentenced 75 people to [...]
