The state of judicial independence in Romania has come into the spotlight following one of the biggest corruption scandals in the country’s history and two weeks of mass protests in Bucharest calling for judicial reform, with tens of thousands taking to the streets. Why are Romanians taking to the streets? The demonstrations were sparked by [...]

Cyclone Ditwah exposed Sri Lanka’s catastrophic lack of preparedness. After the first red alerts predicting very heavy rainfall were issued on the night of November 25, Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s public Facebook posts the following day focused on meetings with film producers and Road Development Authority engineers. It was only on the morning [...]

In Ghana’s ongoing battle against corruption, few institutions have attracted as much attention—and controversy—as the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP). The Office of the Special Prosecutor was established in 2017 under the Office of the Special Prosecutor Act, 2017 (Act 959). There are also subsidiary legislations governing the OSP such as the Office of [...]

“That ratio is tremendously positive,” said Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Jonathan Conricus when asked in December 2023 about Israel’s assessment that its military had killed two Palestinian civilians for every one Hamas fighter. With these words, Conricus confirmed Israel’s point of view that killing two civilians for every enemy combatant was “proportionate,” given combat [...]

The US Supreme Court on Tuesday, December 10, heard oral arguments in Hamm vs. Smith, a capital case that could reshape how courts evaluate intellectual disability under Atkins v. Virginia and its progeny for purposes of the Eighth Amendment. Atkins prohibited the execution of “intellectually disabled” individuals under the Eighth Amendment after the Court applied [...]

Ten years ago, world leaders in Paris committed to limiting global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. Since then, the average global temperature was recorded above 1.5°C for the first time in 2024, prompting questions about the relevance of this target. However, a new report [...]

Egypt’s rental market went from the back to the front of a national conversation overnight. The New Rental Law (Law No. 164 of 2025), which was signed by President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and entered into force in September, has led both landlords and tenants to use Google and social media in a competition to grasp [...]

The US Supreme Court will hear Hamm v. Smith on Wednesday, December 10, a death penalty case testing how courts should treat multiple IQ scores when deciding whether a death-row prisoner is intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for execution under the Eighth Amendment. Joseph Clifton Smith was sentenced to death in Alabama for a 1997 [...]

Violence against children and other persons in Nigeria has become one of the most pressing human rights concerns in West Africa. From the attacks by Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) in the North-East to clashes in the Middle Belt involving armed gangs, the toll on lives, livelihoods, and religious freedom [...]

This week, President Donald Trump pardoned a man federal prosecutors described as the architect of a “narco-state” who moved 400 tons of cocaine to United States shores. In September, the US military began killing people on Caribbean vessels based on unproven suspicions they were doing the same thing on a far smaller scale. The strikes [...]