Bahrain’s highest court on Monday upheld a life sentence for Shiite opposition leader Sheikh Ali Salman for spying for neighboring country Qatar. According to Amnesty International, the case is based on conversations that Salman had in 2011 with the former Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Qatar, SSheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber [...]

The Illinois Supreme Court upheld cause of action provisions of a 2008 state law on Friday that requires companies who collect a person’s biometric information such as fingerprints, retina scans or face matching, to obtain consent and inform a person how it will be stored, used and shared. The unanimous ruling stems from a mom, [...]

The Israeli Cabinet approved a law Sunday to allow for the export of medical marijuana. The law, which passed the Knesset last month, provides for Israeli companies to export medical marijuana with an appropriate license. The licenses will be issued by the Minister of Health with an appropriate recommendation from the police and a committee [...]

After a third and final review of House Bill 8858, the Philippines House of Representatives passed a bill lowering the minimum age of social responsibility to 12 years old. The original version of the bill, which proposed lowering the age to nine, faced criticism and backlash for detaining children who commit crimes related to government [...]

The Tianjin Municipal No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court of China on Monday found human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang guilty of “subversion of state power” and sentenced him to four-and-a-half years in prison. In addition, Wang was sentenced to five years of deprivation of political rights, meaning that he will be under heightened scrutiny, and he [...]

The US, the EU and the UK each issued statements Saturday voicing concern about the suspension of Nigerian Chief Justice Onnoghen. In their statements the governments questioned the constitutionality of the Nigerian executive suspending the chief justice, noting that this is a separation of powers issue and that the executive branch did not have the [...]

The ends should not justify the means when it comes to the protection of basic human rights in Yemen and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Severe challenges to the peace and stability of these regions along with overarching transnational terrorism threats have incentivized the erosion of human rights by the respective governments. These challenges are [...]

In January 2018, following the killing of Iranians in European countries, the EU imposed new sanctions on Iran. This came after the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Iran after withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in August 2018. The International Court of Justice then issued a decision ordering the United States to lift [...]

The Supreme Court of Nebraska upheld death sentences for eight death row inmates on Friday.  The plaintiffs, who had all been sentenced before 2015, claimed that when the Nebraska legislature repealed capital punishment in 2015, their sentences should have been commuted, even though capital punishment was reinstated by referendum in 2016. One of the eight plaintiffs had been [...]

Angola’s parliament approved a new penal code Wednesday that drops provisions widely interpreted to criminalize homosexuality. The new penal code is Angola’s first since it gained its independence from Portugal in 1975. The prior code contained many holdover provisions from the colonial era, including a ban of “vices against nature,” which was understood to criminalize [...]