The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported Tuesday that over 2,000 migrants have died this year in an attempt to enter Europe through the Mediterranean Sea. According to IOM, the death toll this year, up from 1,607 at the same point in the year last year, confirms that migrants’ attempt to enter Europe through the [...]

Harald Range , Germany’s top prosecutor, was dismissed from his duties on Tuesday by Justice Minister Heiko Maas after Range accused the German government of obstructing his investigation against two German journalists. Range was interested in an investigation against the two journalists from the website Netzpolitik.org, which had reported on the expansion of surveillance of [...]

The Indian government ordered internet service providers (ISPs) on Tuesday to allow access to the 857 previously banned pornography and humor websites, provided they did not include child pornography. The news comes in response to international criticism that came as a result of the bans issued a few days earlier by the Department of Telecommunications [...]

A Guatemalan court on Tuesday ordered former dictator Efrain Rios Montt to undergo competency tests to determine whether he is fit to stand trial for his alleged role in the torture, rape and murder of 1,771 indigenous people between 1982 and 1983 during Guatemala’s civil war . Rios Montt was convicted on these charges in [...]

Kosovo’s Parliament approved the creation of a war crimes court on Monday which will investigate alleged war crimes committed by ethnic Albanians during the 1998-99 guerrilla war. Members of parliament also passed laws to create the office of the prosecution and to finance defense counsel for those accused. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a rebel [...]

Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday announced they have submitted a revised bid claiming over 350 nautical miles of Arctic sea shelf to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) . The country’s previous bids in 2001 were rejected for lack of evidence. Under Article 76 of the UN Convention [...]

JURIST Guest Columnists Anneke Meerkotter of the Southern Africa Litigation Centre and Graeme Reid of Human Rights Watch discuss how recent court rulings in Botswana, Kenya and Zambia illustrate significant progress in human rights in general and in LGBT rights in particular… In the past eight months, three African court decisions—in Botswana, Kenya and Zambia—have [...]

Interim Baltimore City Police Commissioner Kevin Davis on Monday met with officials from five federal law enforcement agencies to begin a program to address the recent increase of homicides in the city. The so-called B-FED partnership will involve the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), US Marshals Service, US Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, [...]

Shafqat Hussain, a man convicted of kidnapping and killing a seven-year-old child in 2004, was hanged on Tuesday in Karachi, Pakistan. This case has attracted ongoing international attention, as his execution was postponed four times for legal challenges and further investigation. Hussain’s lawyers and family have asserted that he was a minor at the time [...]

A Burundi human rights activist, Pierre Claver Mbonimpa, was shot and severely wounded by motorcyclists while in his vehicle on Monday. Pierre Claver Mbonimpa is the head of the Association for the Protection of Human Rights and Detained Persons (APRODH) and he was a very vocal opponent of President Pierre Nkurunziza’s bid for a third [...]