Director General of the UN Educations, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) , Irina Bokova , expressed concern Thursday over the abuse of journalists in Syria . She stated: “Torture and detention will never convince the people of Syria that might is right. It is essential for the future of the country and its people that [...]

A New Mexico judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked the “Residency Verification Program” , announced last month by Governor Susana Martinez . Judge Sarah Singleton stated that “irreparable injury will occur in the form of constitutional deprivations” if the “Residency Verification Program” is not halted. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) filed the [...]

The Council of Europe (COE) Commissioner for Human Rights Thomas Hammarberg on Thursday accused European governments of numerous human rights violations during counter-terrorism efforts over the past 10 years. Hammarberg said that many European countries began helping the US with secret counter-terrorism measures after the 9/11 attacks . Those measures allegedly included rendition of suspects [...]

A public employees union has filed a lawsuit in Indiana state court challenging a state law disallowing future recognition of public employee collective bargaining rights. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 62 , which represents Indiana state employees, announced that it has filed suit in Marion County Circuit Court against Governor [...]

Liberia’s National Election Commission (NEC) on Wednesday announced that all four proposed amendments to the Republic’s constitution were voted down in last week’s national referendum. One defeated proposal was to move back the national election date from the first Tuesday in October to the first Tuesday in November, pushing the election out of the rainy [...]

Lawyers for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on Wednesday urged the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Seattle to preserve two lawsuits over the warrantless surveillance of US citizens. EFF argued that the government should not be able block the suits under claims of state secrets. The EFF says that the National [...]

The Colombian Supreme Court on Wednesday reinstated the murder conviction against ex-politician Alberto Santofimio Botero for the 1989 killing of Luis Carlos Galan, a political opponent of the drug cartels. The court issued an arrest warrant for Santofimio, the former justice minister whose conviction and 24-year sentence were overturned by the High Court of Cundinamarca. [...]

Former Croatian prime minister Ivo Sanader was indicted on Wednesday for corruption. The country’s Bureau for Combating Corruption and Organized Crime (USKOK) alleges Sanader received a pay-off of more than 3.6 million kuna (nearly USD $695,000) from Austria’s Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank in exchange for the country entering into a loan agreement to receive 140 million Austrian [...]

An Idaho woman has filed suit seeking to prevent prosecution of other women under the state’s standing abortion laws. Mother of three Jennie Linn McCormack was prosecuted earlier this year under a 1972 state law that makes it a felony to end one’s own pregnancy, and is now challenging both that law and Idaho’s newly-enacted [...]

JURIST Special Guest Columnist Curtis Doebbler of Webster University and Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations, both in Geneva, Switzerland, says that the right to participate in government is a recognized aspiration in international law and that in the Middle East this has begun to be realized with the Arab Spring…