The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) announced Monday that the trial of two Cambodian leaders accused of committing genocide will be postponed to January 2015. Lawyers for Khieu Samphan have refused to participate in trial proceedings before the appeal from the decision at the first trial is filed. Khieu Samphan and Nuon [...]

An official for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) on Tuesday stated that human rights activists in Burundi have been the subjects of threats and defamation for their current role within the state. According to Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders Michel Forst, they are treated as [...]

Four UN human rights experts on Tuesday stressed a need for greater international and national efforts to eliminate violence against displaced women. Noting substantial levels of violence perpetrated against the world’s roughly 17 million conflict-displaced women, the UN’s release came during the worldwide International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women . The experts, [...]

The Israeli government’s use of house demolition as a punitive measure in response to alleged acts of violence by Palestinians must end immediately, two UN human rights experts urged Tuesday , adding that the practice, which targets Palestinian homes in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, is a violation of human rights law. The [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Nathaniel R. Helms, author of No Time for Truth: The Marines, Justice, and the Haditha Incident, discusses the Haditha Incident and the military justice system … Kenneth Englade recently offered his interpretation of the so-called Haditha Massacre, an unfortunate label applied to a far more reprehensible event that ultimately left eight US [...]

Amnesty International (AI) revealed new evidence Monday indicating a Belgian mining company, Groupe Forest International, lied about bulldozing homes in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) . The homes were destroyed during a 2009 police operation to clear the area of small-scale miners who were allegedly stealing from the company’s Luiswishi mine in the Kawama [...]

Amnesty International (AI) on Monday urged the Irish government to petition the European Court of Human Rights to reopen the 1978 UK v. Ireland case following claims that the UK sanctioned torture. These allegations follow the airing of the RTE documentary “The Torture Files” , which asserts that the UK government withheld evidence that could [...]

The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled Monday that private companies may continue to monitor probationers in that state but that it is illegal to elongate a probationer’s sentence from the original sentence. Thirteen plaintiffs filed suit against Sentinel Offender Services challenging the constitutionality of the state’s probation law and alleging that the company violated their [...]

China’s highest court, the Supreme People’s Court will investigate ways of reducing the number of crimes punishable by death according to remarks by Hu Yunteng, a senior researcher at the Supreme People’s Court, published Monday. Hu told a group of academics Saturday that the government must reduce the use of the death penalty and use [...]

The Cabinet of Israel on Sunday approved draft legislation that would official define Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. The controversial law, titled “Israel, the Nation-State of the Jewish People,” passed the Cabinet 14 votes to 6, and will now proceed to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset for a first reading next Monday. The [...]