Sri Lanka’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission released a report Friday concluding that Sri Lanka’s military did not intentionally attack civilians following the country’s civil war. The LLRC was created by the Sri Lankan government in 2010 to investigate 2009 events in which civilians were killed. In compiling the report, the LLRC invited representatives of [...]

The International Criminal Court (ICC) ruled Friday that Callixte Mbarushimana should be released because there is not enough evidence to charge him. Mbarushimana was allegedly tied to the murder, rape and torture of Congolese villagers by Hutu militia in 2009. He was accused of being the Executive Secretary of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation [...]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) Thursday announced the findings of its three-year civil rights investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO). The investigation concluded that there is reasonable cause to believe that MCSO engages in a pattern or practice of violating the Constitution and laws of the US in three areas. First, the [...]

US President Barack Obama nominated three individuals to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) Thursday, which had been vacant since 2007. He named David Medine as his nominee for Chairman as well as Rachel Brand and Judge Patricia Wald as members of the board. The board serves to assist the president in ensuring [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor Michael Kelly of Creighton University School of Law says that the likely outcome of the withdrawal of coalition forces from Iraq is a backslide into sectarian violence resulting in the split into smaller states based on ethnoreligious geography…

The UN Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Thursday released the first ever UN report on the global human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. The report details LGBT people around the world being killed or enduring hate-motivated violence , torture, detention, criminalization and discrimination in jobs, health care [...]

A group of animal rights activists on Thursday challenged the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act which they claim violates their rights to peaceful protest. The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts by the Center for Constitutional Rights , claims that the law is overly broad and criminalizes activity that is [...]

Alabama and Georgia filed motions Thursday in the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit seeking to stay proceedings on challenges to their immigration laws pending a ruling by the US Supreme Court in Arizona v. United States . The Supreme Court agreed Monday to rule on a challenge to Arizona’s controversial immigration law [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Damian Ugwu, Executive Director of the Social Justice & Advocacy Initiative, says that the recent bill prohibiting same-sex marriage in Nigeria has ominous implications for a broad range of individual rights in the country…

International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo on Thursday urged international cooperation in executing arrest warrants for suspects accused in the Darfur conflict . Presenting his report to the UN Security Council , Ocampo emphasized that all states parties to the Rome Statute have an obligation to cooperate with the ICC. Following his report, [...]