“It has been such a nightmare. You just feel powerless; you can’t comprehend any way to survive it … I long for the return of my calm and tranquil country — a country where children can live in peace.” “Air strikes have been indiscriminately killing people — all kinds of people: children, babies, doctors, journalists; [...]

Mehmet Hasan Yacı is a Staff Correspondent for JURIST and a senior law student at Türkiye’ s Galatasaray University. He files this dispatch from Istanbul.  Today, Tuesday, the Turkish National Assembly accepted Sweden’s bid to join the NATO alliance by a vote of 287 in favor, 55 against, and 4 abstaining. During the final negotiations [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) called for Meta to improve their protection of LGBTQ+ people on Facebook and Instagram on Tuesday. This new campaign follows an HRW report from 2023, which found that security forces in the Middle East and North Africa use social media platforms to gather evidence to prosecute them. A new campaign, titled [...]

Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled Tuesday that one of the country’s most extreme political parties, Die Heimat, or The Homeland, will be excluded from state funding, furthering the heated debate over the legal restriction of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Die Heimat, previously known as Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD), is a neo-nazi, ultranationalist party [...]

Amnesty International reiterated its calls to stop the execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith in Alabama by nitrogen hypoxia. The date for execution has been set for January 25, 2024. In urging Alabama to cancel the execution, Justin Mazzola, a researcher at Amnesty International, stated: The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment, [...]

The UK Government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda suffered a setback Monday, when the House of Lords voted to require the government to substantiate its claims that Rwanda is a safe country before ratifying the new treaty between the UK and the African nation. The vote came after the House of Lords International [...]

United Nations human rights experts Monday hailed lawyers in Iran for their unwavering and courageous commitment to the rule of law ahead of the International Day of the Endangered Lawyer, which is observed January 24. The Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Margaret Satterthwaite, and the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human [...]

US District Judge Thomas Schroeder issued an opinion on Sunday finding unconstitutional and blocking a new North Carolina provision designed to tighten restrictions on same-day voter registration. The decision pertains to Senate Bill (SB) 747, a collection of election provisions that became law on October 10, 2023, when the state legislature overrode a veto from [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report on Monday on the “pre-election crackdown” in Senegal, denouncing it for repressing the opposition, media, critics and other civil society members. Presidential elections are scheduled to be held in Senegal in February. The report accuses the authorities, led by President Macky Sall, of arresting political opponents, stifling freedom [...]

The Hong Kong Eastern Magistrates’ Courts imposed a two-month prison sentence, with a suspension of two years, on Monday on a defendant who earlier pleaded guilty to engaging in illegal conduct to incite another person to cast an invalid vote by activity in public, violating section 27A of the Elections (Corrupt and Illegal Conduct) Ordinance. [...]