Top UN officials with the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) decried post-election violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Thursday and called for restraint. Acknowledging reports from international observers, MONUSCO indicated Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Roger Meece, shares the concerns expressed by the observer missions, in particular [...]

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay stated on Thursday that the death toll in Syria during the eight-month uprising has surpassed 4,000 . Pillay recommended that the UN Security Council take action and refer Syria to the International Criminal Court for an investigation into alleged crimes against humanity committed by the Syrian government. [...]

Transparency International (TI) Thursday released its 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) , again showing some governments failing to protect citizens from corruption, be it abuse of public resources, bribery or secretive decision-making. The CPI scores 183 countries and territories from 0 (highly corrupt) to 10 (very clean) based on perceived levels of public sector corruption, [...]

Fatou Bensouda of the Gambia, Deputy Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) , will be formally recommended Thursday to succeed Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo when his nine-year term expires next year. Liechtenstein’s UN Ambassador Christian Wenaweser, current president of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) to the Rome Statute that set up the ICC, [...]

British American Tobacco (BAT) brought legal action in Australia’s High Court on Thursday in response to the country’s new tobacco packaging laws. Two weeks ago, Parliament enacted the Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill , which removes descriptive colors and logos from cigarette boxes and requires a depiction of the negative effects of smoking. The law will [...]

A Tunisian military court on Wednesday convicted former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in absentia on torture charges. Ben Ali and eight others were found guilty of the torture of 17 military generals in connection with a 1991 coup attempt. Ben Ali was sentenced to five years in prison. This week’s sentence adds to [...]

A team of investigators from the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrived in Libya on Wednesday to begin an inquiry into new allegations of sex crimes committed by loyalists of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi . Jane O’Toole is leading the ICC investigation into allegations that Gaddafi ordered mass rapes and provided troops with sexual stimulants [...]

Preliminary hearings for former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko began on Thursday in the appeal of Tymoshenko’s seven-year prison sentence . Tymoshenko was convicted of corruption and abuse of authority while negotiating a gas contract with Russia in 2009, and has been barred from serving public office for three years. Health issues kept Tymoshenko from [...]

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday filed notice that it intends to appeal an injunction that blocked new graphic warning labels on cigarette packages. In early November, a judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia temporarily blocked the implementation of graphic image and textual warning labels imposed by the [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Paul Johnson, Senior Lecturer of Sociology at the University of Surrey, says that the latest ban by Russian authorities on the promotion of homosexuality to minors is only the most recent violation of the European Court of Human Rights ruling on the subject…