The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Wednesday offered its services to aid the government of Ethiopia in a proposed review of its anti-terrorism and civil society legislation. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay proposed the review as she expressed serious concern over the intimidation of journalists and human rights [...]

International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said Wednesday that her office is opening a preliminary examination of the recent violence in Mali . Bensouda said that she had received a letter from Malian government officials requesting an ICC investigation. The letter also indicated that Malian national courts are unable to prosecute the perpetrators [...]

UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women Rashida Manjoo on Wednesday urged the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan to end violence against women and to initiate investigations into the recent killings of two women. Fareeda Afridi, a human rights defender in Pakistan, was recently shot dead by two men when she was walking to her [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Stephen Simon of the University of Richmond argues that the Supreme Court’s health care decision reflects a rights gap in current US constitutional discourse, where certain claims against federal action have the character of rights claims while receiving no protection from the Constitution as it is presently construed…

Bank of America (BOA) agreed Tuesday to pay $375 million in a settlement with bond insurer Syncora Guarantee over claims that Syncora was misled into insuring toxic mortgage-backed securities of BOA-owned Countrywide Financial Corporation . Syncora filed a lawsuit against BOA and Countrywide in 2009 claiming that Countrywide had misrepresented the quality of the mortgages [...]

The Russian Federal Council , the upper house of parliament, approved a bill on Wednesday that labels nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that accept international funding as “foreign agents.” Critics of President Vladimir Putin argue that this is another piece of legislation that is intended to curb free speech and the right to assembly. Also on Wednesday [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist John W. Whitehead president of the Rutherford Institute says that the ban on all non-governmental flags in Lexington, Virginia is motivated specifically by the city’s intent to eliminate the display of Confederate flags and thus breaches its citizens’ freedom of speech …

Hungarian authorities on Wednesday took into custody a 97-year-old Hungarian man suspected of abusing and helping deport thousands of Jews during the Holocaust. The man alleged to be Laszlo Csatary was arrested in Budapest after the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) , a Jewish human rights organization committed to finding and prosecuting Holocaust war criminals, submitted [...]

Chile on Tuesday arrested and charged two retired air force colonels for their roles in the 1974 death of an air force brigadier general who was also the father of Chile’s first female president. Colonels Ramon Caceres and Edgar Ceballos were charged with orchestrating the torture that apparently killed Alberto Bachelet after he was arrested [...]

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging the US government’s targeted killing of three US citizens in drone strikes. Senior al Qaeda leader and US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by drone strike last September along with another American, Samir Khan. Two weeks later [...]