In a periodic report published on Friday, the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) expressed concern about the racist speech used by politicians and neo-Nazi groups in Russia. According to the report, such speech often targets Central Asians, the Roma, migrants and people of African descent. While the report found that racist [...]

A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Monday questioned the Justice Department lawyer representing the Trump administration in a hearing over the executive order restricting immigration from certain countries. Popularly known as the “travel ban,” the Trump administration policy restricts refugee and general travel from six predominantly-Muslim nations [...]

Kenya’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission allegedly failed to follow a Supreme Court order on Tuesday requiring the electoral commission to grant the opposition computer access to verify controversial election results. According to Raila Odinga, head of the National Super Alliance (NASA) , the recently re-elected President Uhuru Kenyatta falsely won 54 percent of the [...]

The US Supreme Court on Monday stayed a lower federal court order invalidating two congressional districts. The US District Court for the Western District of Texas had found Districts 27 and 35 invalid pursuant to the Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution , after finding that the two districts were drawn [...]

Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner signed into law on Monday a bill to limit detention of immigrants and another to simplify voter registration. The first, Senate Bill 31, also known as the TRUST Act , limits local local law enforcement’s authority in detaining immigrants based on citizenship status. Critics of the bills say this will make [...]

Since the Kenyan presidential election on August 8, more than 12 people have been killed and more than 100 have been badly injured due to serious human rights violations , Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported Monday. Following the announcement of Uhuru Kenyatta’s reelection, protests broke out in Nairobi, Coast, and the western counties of Kisumu, [...]

A Kenyan ban on plastic bags officially went into effect Monday, six months after it was announced in February. The ban applies to Kenyans producing, selling or using plastic bags and carries a punishment of up to USD $40,000 or imprisonment of up to four years. Although the ban has a wide target audience, it [...]

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday that will lift an Obama-era directive that restricted local police agencies’ access to military equipment. Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke Monday morning to the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) outlining the president’s new executive order. The FOP and other law enforcement groups have led the [...]

Kenya Supreme Court ordered the election commission on Monday to allow Raila Odinga’s National Super Alliance (NASA) and Uhuru Kenyatta’s Jubilee Party limited access to its computer servers and electronic devices to assess the vote-count for themselves to verify the election’s integrity. According to the election commission, Kenyatta won a second five-year term, which was [...]

Civil rights groups on Monday filed two separate lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the US military. Lambda Legal and OutServe-SLDN filed a complaint in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington on behalf of a current army Staff Sergeant, two transgender individuals who [...]