Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin altered his not guilty plea to guilty Wednesday in a civil rights case tied to the death of George Floyd in Minnesota District Court.  On May 25, 2020, Chauvin and other officers responded to a 911 call by a store owner that Floyd, a Black male, tried using a counterfeit [...]

Seoul-based rights group Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG) released a report Wednesday on human rights abuses in North Korea. The report, titled “Mapping Killings under Kim Jong-un: North Korea’s Response to International Pressure” pulls information from six years of research and 683 escapee interviews to track killing sites, mass graves, and other locations which may contain [...]

The Court of Cassation, France’s highest court, ruled Wednesday to resolve procedural issues in favor of six nonprofit groups in their case against oil giant Total Uganda. Six French and Ugandan civil society organizations (CSOs) brought the case against Total in 2019: Friends of the Earth France, Survie, Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO), CRED, [...]

US President Joe Biden Wednesday signed two new executive orders targeting transnational criminal and drug trafficking networks. Between April 2020 and April 2021, over 100,000 Americans died from drug overdoses. This represents a 28 percent increase from the previous 12-month period. One of the executive orders imposes sanctions on foreign persons involved in the global [...]

UN Deputy High Commissioner for human rights Nada Al-Nashif delivered an oral update on the human rights situation in Afghanistan on Tuesday. She briefed the Human Rights Council in Geneva on how the humanitarian crisis has worsened in Afghanistan since the takeover of Kabul by the Taliban in August of this year. Al-Nashif reported the [...]

The District of Columbia (DC) filed a civil lawsuit Tuesday against Proud Boys International, LLC and The Oath Keepers, a non-profit organization. DC is seeking compensatory, statutory and punitive damages from the organizations for their involvement in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. The alleged aim of the attack was to prevent Congress [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Tuesday upheld the federal ban on bump stocks, a firearm accessory that allows semiautomatic guns to fire like automatic weapons. The Trump administration outlawed bump stocks after a 2017 shooting in Las Vegas where the rapid-fire accessory was used to kill 58 people. The Bureau of Alcohol, [...]

The European Court of Human Rights ruled Tuesday that Russia has failed to establish an effective legal framework to address domestic violence, which has resulted in de facto discrimination against women. The ruling came in response to a complaint filed by four Russian women whose partners were violent and threatening. One of the women was [...]

Law students and lawyers in Afghanistan are filing reports with JURIST on the situation there after the Taliban takeover. Here, a Staff Correspondent for JURIST in Kabul comments on Tuesday’s report on the human rights situation in Afghanistan by the UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, speaking to the UN Human Rights Council in [...]

The US District Court for the District of Columbia Tuesday sentenced a North Carolina man to 28 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to a federal felony charge regarding a threat he made against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The trial followed an FBI investigation and prosecution by the US Attorney’s Office for the District [...]