The New Zealand government introduced a bill in the country’s parliament Friday that criminalizes conversion practices targeted at LGBTQ+ people to deter the performance of such practices. The bill defines conversion practice as any action taken against a person because of that person’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, with the intention of changing [...]

The Council of the European Union Friday announced that it had adopted a framework for the imposition of sanctions against individuals and entities it determines have undermined the rule of law and democracy in Lebanon. In December of last year, the Council noted the “grave financial, economic, social and political crisis” in Lebanon and urged [...]

Germany’s Federal Court Thursday ruled that Facebook’s deletion of racist comments and the blocking of some user accounts was done improperly and ordered the comments reinstated. The ruling stems from incidents in 2018 in which two German Facebook users had certain posts deleted and their accounts temporarily suspended because the posts had violated Facebook’s community [...]

The top criminal court in Spain archived a case on Thursday involving genocide allegations against the leader of Western Sahara’s independence movement. The case involved a complaint filed in 2008 against thirteen Moroccan soldiers of the Polisario Front and their leader Brahim Ghali for genocide, murder, injuries, illegal detention, terrorism, torture, and abductions. These crimes [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Thursday granted an order authorizing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to issue summonses demanding couriers and financial institutions produce information about US taxpayers who may have used the services of Panama Offshore Legal Services (POLS) and its affiliates (POLS group) [...]

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of Treasury on Wednesday imposed sanctions on eight prisons run by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s intelligence unit for human rights abuses against political prisoners and other detainees. Additionally, OFAC also sanctioned Syrian armed group Ahrar al-Sharqiya and two of its leaders for abuses against civilians [...]

South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation on Wednesday condemned the African Union (AU) Commission’s decision to award Israel observer status. Israel obtained the observer status last week when Aleleign Admasu, Israel’s Ambassador to Ethiopia, presented his credentials as an observer to the AU. At the same time, HE Moussa Faki Mahamat, Chairperson of [...]

A Syrian doctor living in Germany was charged Wednesday with crimes against humanity after being accused of 18 counts of torturing people in military hospitals in the Syrian cities of Homs and Damascus. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office in Karlsruhe said that Alla Mousa, who came to Germany in 2015, is accused of 18 counts of [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to open an inquiry into alleged war crimes committed in Gaza in May by both the Israeli military and Palestinian armed groups, and urged the US government to condition its assistance to Israel on its commitment to improve its compliance with the [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged the military junta in Myanmar Tuesday to stop prosecuting journalists and added that punitive action against them is an assault on independent media. The group pointed out the arbitrary arrest of 98 journalists, out of which 46 are still in detention. It also outlined the usage of the newly enacted [...]