Refugees International (RI) stated Wednesday that it welcomes US President Donald Trump’s decision to lift US sanctions on Syria, calling it a crucial step toward recovery after years of devastating conflict. Sanctions originally intended to prevent war profiteering backfired, RI noted, hurting civilians by blocking humanitarian aid. Their removal, following interim leader Ahmed al-Sharaa’s rise [...]

Last Tuesday, May 6, the Supreme Court of Ghana in a 3-2 majority dismissed an application by Vincent Ekow Assafuah, a member of parliament who invited the court to halt the suspension of Ghana’s Chief Justice as effected by the president of the republic, His Excellency John Dramani Mahama. The decision followed the unanimous ruling [...]

Women’s rights organizations around the world are reaching “a breaking point” due to foreign aid cuts, according to a report published Tuesday by UN Women. The report says that a survey conducted in March found that 47 percent of the surveyed organizations are expecting to shut down over the next six months if current conditions [...]

The correspondent filing this dispatch is a law student in Mumbai who must remain anonymous. The past weeks have witnessed an unprecedented escalation of the conflict between India and Pakistan in the aftermath of the terrorist killings of tourists on Indian soil in the town of Pahalgam in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). While the near-fratricidal [...]

Shofa Umrotul H. is a student in the Faculty of Law, Universitas Brawijaya, Indonesia. She filed this dispatch from Malang.  At the end of April, Governor Dedi Mulyadi of Indonesia’s West Java province sparked national controversy after proposing a policy that would require men to undergo vasectomy to qualify for government-provided social aid. The proposal [...]

Michigan Judge Sima Patel struck down three of Michigan’s abortion restrictions, including its 24-hour waiting period, on Tuesday. The court ruled that the restrictions served to “deny, burden, or infringe” upon the reproductive freedom of individuals seeking abortion care. Moreover, the three restrictions were found to neither serve a state interest nor protect patient health. [...]

UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders Mary Lawlor expressed concern Wednesday over the conviction of journalist Rukhshona Khakimova, calling on the government of Tajikistan to release her and grant a fair retrial. Lawlor said: “Rukhshona Khakimova’s trial appears to have fallen short of international fair trial standards.” The special rapporteur argued [...]

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on Tuesday condemned judicial decisions in Brazil that could exclude criminal responsibility in cases of sexual violence against girls and adolescents. The statement follows an alarming two-year trend in which protections for children under the age of 14 have reportedly weakened. This is highlighted by four controversial rulings [...]

A panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit struck down one of the key remaining ways to enforce the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA) on Wednesday. In a 2-1 decision, Judges Raymond Gruender and Jonathan Kobes held that §2 of the VRA does not confer a “private right of action for [...]

Hungarian lawmakers on Tuesday proposed a bill that would impose sweeping restrictions on organizations seen as threats to national sovereignty. The bill expands the powers of the controversial Sovereignty Protection Office (SPO) and tightens government control over civil society, including nonprofits, advocacy groups, independent media, and other community actors that operate independently from the government. [...]