Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Friday urged for imprisoned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan’s call for an end to the organization’s decades-long insurgency against Türkiye to serve as a catalyst to end the systematic misuse of terrorism charges against government critics in Türkiye.  Öcalan founded the PKK in 1978. The party waged an [...]

Amnesty International released a report on Friday shedding light on the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the education of Indigenous youth across multiple continents. Drawing on more than 80 interviews and surveys conducted between 2021 and 2023, the organization’s findings highlighted systemic inequities, a glaring lack of consultation with Indigenous communities, and a need [...]

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds on Friday signed into law a bill that removes gender identity as a protected class under Iowa civil rights law. Reynolds stated that the state’s “Civil Rights Code blurred the biological lines between the sexes” in an unacceptable manner, and that the new law will strengthen the state’s efforts to protect [...]

South Sudan’s political leaders are failing their people by enabling impunity, corruption, and systemic human rights violations, warns the latest report from the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan on Friday. The report highlights persistent patterns of violence, repression, and economic mismanagement, underscoring the urgent need for meaningful reform to prevent further deterioration [...]

Recent criminal law reforms in El Salvador that expand punitive measures against minors violate children’s rights, Amnesty International said Thursday. The amendment, approved February 12, permits adolescents convicted of organized criminal offenses to be transferred to adult prisons, and further access to parole is eliminated, in contravention of juvenile justice standards. The reforms revised the [...]

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Thursday called on Russian authorities to halt legal action against a journalist who criticized the invasion of Ukraine and faces a possible prison sentence of up to 10 years. CPJ program director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said the case against journalist Ekaterina Barabash “demonstrate how Russian authorities [...]

US Congressman Andy Ogles (R-TN) sought to impeach US District Judge Amir Ali on Thursday after the judge ordered the Trump administration to lift the 90-day pause on all foreign aid. This action follows Ogles’s ongoing bid to remove US federal judge John Bates after he ordered the Trump administration to restore federal health websites [...]

Digital rights organization Eko filed complaints with data protection authorities in multiple European countries on Thursday, challenging US technology giant Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) over its targeted advertising practices. Five thousand members of the group filed complaints with the data protection watchdogs in Norway, Germany, and Spain after having collected evidence [...]

UN experts on Thursday denounced new legislation restricting freedom of religion or belief in Kyrgyzstan, urging authorities to ensure all legislation complies with domestic and international human rights standards. The experts found that the laws will “severely limit Kyrgyzstan’s space for freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, as well as freedoms of expression, assembly, and [...]

Chloe Miracle-Rutledge is a JURIST Supreme Court Correspondent and a 2L at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC. On Wednesday morning, I walked up to an unusually quiet Supreme Court building to attend oral arguments for Ames v. Department of Ohio Youth Services, a case in which the Court has been asked to clarify [...]