World Legal News

The US State Department on Monday designated four more Chinese news organizations as foreign missions. The move signals a downturn in the US-Chinese relationship and raises the total to nine organizations that have received that label from the State Department this year. In a press release from the State Department’s spokesperson Morgan Ortagus, the department [...]

The Chinese and Indian militaries have reportedly agreed to “lower the temperature” along their disputed border region and may even begin withdrawing troops. Tensions had been rising sharply since a violent clash in the

A separatist group in Yemen on Saturday led a coup on the island of Socotra, deposing the government forces previously stationed there. The move represents growing fractures within the broader Saudi-led Coalition to Support Legitimacy in Yemen, which supports the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi in the ongoing conflict against the radical [...]

The French Constitutional Court on Thursday reversed most of an online hate speech law, known as the ‘Avia Law,’ which was passed by the French National Assembly on May 13. “The requesting senators argue that these provisions would have been in violation of Article 45 of the Constitution,” says the ruling. “These provisions would impose [...]

According to a report released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday, French police stop and search Black and Arab youths even without any indication of wrongdoing. These ‘identity checks’, which can involve invasive bag searches and body pat-downs, are done on children as young as ten. In France, the police have the authority to [...]

The European Court of Justice ruled on Thursday that Hungary’s Law on the Transparency of Organisations Supported from Abroad (Transparency Law) infringed upon European Union (EU) law. In 2017, Hungary adopted a rule that organizations had to register with the Hungarian courts as “an organization in receipt of support from abroad” when donations sent to [...]

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced on Thursday that more than one percent of the worlds population, nearly 80 million people, had been forcibly displaced by the end of last year according to the UNHCR’s global trend report. The UNHCR’s global trend report is an annual study whose goal is to track the [...]

The US Departments of Treasury and State announced Wednesday that the Trump administration was imposing new sanctions on individuals and entities supporting the Assad regime in Syria. These actions were taken both under the Caesar Act and Executive Orders 13894, 13582 and 13573. According to the press release, the sanctions are intended to “hold the murderous [...]

Rifaat al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad’s uncle, on Wednesday was sentenced to four years in prison by a Paris court for embezzling Syrian state funds to buy millions of dollars worth of property throughout France and the United Kingdom. Rifaat has lived in exile, primarily in France and Spain, since being accused of trying to seize power [...]

During a UN Human Rights Council debate on Wednesday, Philonise Floyd joined by video to request that the UN establish an independent commission to review the police killings of black people in the US as well as the recent violence against protesters. Philonise Floyd is the brother of George Floyd, a black man who was [...]