The UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan on Thursday called on its regional and international partners for “urgent, coordinated action to protect civilians and preserve the Revitalized Peace Agreement. The call comes in response to escalating violence and political instability in the region, where increasing military clashes, reports of indiscriminate attacks on civilian [...]

Amnesty International reported Thursday that the Serbian authorities employed Pegasus spyware against two investigative journalists in February 2025. Both journalists, from Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), have a research focus on state-sponsored corruption. Both Serbian journalists received a Viber text on February 14 from an unknown number. The message contained a link, which Amnesty Security Lab [...]

US President Donald Trump issued Thursday an executive order targeting big law firm WilmerHale for their employment of individuals involved in the Mueller special counsel investigation, employment practices, and the nature of the firm’s pro-bono work. The order criticized the firm’s employment of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller and top aides to the Russian election [...]

US District Judge Robert Pitman on Wednesday held Wednesday that the extreme heat in Texas prisons is “plainly unconstitutional” while denying a temporary injunction request to install air conditioning in the prisons. According to the court, “Texas has more than 130,000 people serving time in prisons, more than any state in the US. Only about a [...]

More than 30,000 petition signatories have demanded the immediate release of 27‐year‐old Egyptian student Oqba Hashad, Amnesty International reported Thursday. According to the group, Oqba Hashad was detained for nearly six years, solely because of his brother’s human rights activism. The group stated that Oqba Hashad was arrested on May 20, 2019 during a raid [...]

There’s much talk these days about democracy being under threat at home and around the world. Most of this discussion tends to be focused on efforts by autocrats and their supporters to erode the rule of law and the right to vote; their adoption of policies that discriminate against minorities and women; and their use [...]

In August 2021, the world watched as the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, sweeping away two decades of progress toward democracy, human rights and gender equality. While international headlines have since moved on to other crises, millions of Afghan women and girls continue to live under increasingly restrictive policies that have systematically stripped away their [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) condemned the sentencing of Moroccan political activist and human rights defender Fouad Abdelmoumni to six months in prison for his social media posts criticizing the government. The rights organizations urged the authorities to overturn the conviction and cease restrictive actions targeting journalists and [...]

On Sunday, I attended a training by the Diaspora Alliance about the worrying rise of instrumentalized antisemitism. The Diaspora Alliance describes instrumentalized antisemitism as the use by political actors of Jewish peoples’ legitimate fears in an antisemitic environment. The idea is, these actors will manipulate those fears to compel organized action ultimately aimed at shoring [...]

President Donald Trump’s administration asked the US Supreme Court on Wednesday to vacate an order by a district court that reinstated federal grants to address teacher shortages. The Trump administration argued that the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts lacked jurisdiction unless Congress “unequivocally” waives the government’s sovereign immunity. They further argued that [...]