Perpetrators of war crimes in the Central African Republic (CAR) have not been prosecuted or investigated for their crimes, according to an Amnesty International (AI) report on Wednesday. According to AI, the country’s justice system needs to be reconstructed and a Special Criminal Court, tasked with trying suspected war criminals, and a witness protection program [...]

German Federal Minister of the Interior, Thomas de Maiziere , released a plan Tuesday to overhaul the country’s antiterror enforcement following the December lorry attack on a Berlin Christmas market . Police have been seeking to improve antiterror enforcement since Anis Amri killed 12 people and exposed holes in the country’s security architecture. The overhaul [...]

Tthe North Dakota Senate on Tuesday rejected a bill to update the definition of marriage and recognize same-sex marital relationships. The bill woud have updated the language in several state laws to change “husband and wife” to “two individuals married to each other” and other similar changes. The bill failed to pass with a vote [...]

UN Special Rapporteur Michel Frost will visit Mexico for the first time to assess the safety of human rights defenders, according to a statement Wednesday. Frost’s visit will take place from January 16 to 24, during which he will visit Mexico City, Chihuahua, Guerrero, Oaxaca and the state of Mexico. “My goal is to take [...]

A court in Pakistan issued a death warrant for a schizophrenic prisoner, Khizar Hayat, sentenced to death in 2003 for shooting a police officer. The execution date was set just months after Pakistan’s Supreme Court blocked the execution of another prisoner who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2012. Hayat, who is 55 years [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Hawaii has filed a complaint with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) , stating that overcrowding in the state correctional facilities is resulting in violations of the prisoners’ Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The complaint, filed Friday, shows that there is overcrowding in seven out of the nine [...]

A bipartisan group of 10 US Senators on Tuesday introduced legislation aimed at implementing mandatory sanctions against Russia for its involvement in cyber hacking during the 2016 presidential election. The US government has alleged that Russia intentionally tried to interfere with the US election in favor of one of the candidates by releasing a string [...]

The US Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked a trial court’s ruling ordering special elections in North Carolina. The court granted a stay of the order of the US District court for the Middle District of North Carolina, which ruled that North Carolina must redraw congressional districts by March 15, 2017, and hold special primary and [...]

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres delivered his first formal briefing to the Security Council on Tuesday. In the briefing , Guterres “underlined the need for new, strengthened efforts to build and sustain peace.” Guterres stressed that a new approach is needed to start preventing crises instead of responding to them. He advocated stronger emphasis on prevention, [...]

Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s brother, Ban Ki Sang, and nephew, Joo Hyun Bahn, were indicted Tuesday by the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York on bribery charges in an elaborate international case. The defendants in the case, who include American Malcolm Harris, allegedly bribed a foreign official in a Middle East [...]