Last week UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay [official profile] insisted that the Syrian government take steps to protect civilians [JURIST report] during armed conflicts, noting that recent violence in the country has often led to the death of civilians who were not notified that the conflict was approaching their area. Also last week AI accused government forces and rebels in Syria of summarily capturing and killing [JURIST report] opposition forces in violation of international humanitarian law. Syria has recently been facing international criticism for human rights violations. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on Monday expressed his concern that Syria could potentially use chemical weapons [JURIST report] in its ongoing conflict, even though the Syrian government has stated it would not use such weapons against its own citizens. Last Friday the UN Security Council extended the UN monitoring mission in Syria [JURIST report] for an additional 30 days. The mandate for the UN Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS) [official website], deployed as part of the peace plan of UN Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan, received a unanimous vote for a 30-day extension in the Security Council.

Rights groups and political activists in Russia have expressed concern over other recently passed laws they say are aimed at restricting civil rights. On Monday Putin signed a bill into the law that re-criminalizes slander and libel [JURIST report] in the country. Last week, Putin signed [JURIST report] into law a bill that labels all non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that receive foreign funding as "foreign agents" and requires them to register with the Justice Ministry. Opponents of this new law say that its purpose is to curb free speech [RFE/RL report] and limit information available to the public. Earlier this month, Russian politicians asked [JURIST report] the country's constitutional court to review a recently passed law that increases penalties against protesters who violate regulations. The State Duma also recently approved a bill regulating Internet use that some fear the government will use to oppress speech. In May Russia also for the first time convicted a gay rights activist [JURIST report] under a law prohibiting the spread of "homosexual propaganda" to minors, which caused concern from human rights groups.

Myanmar has been unsuccessful in resolving the sectarian violence prevalent in the country despite attempts by its President Thein Sein [BBC profile; official website, in Burmese] to bring peace to the communities. Earlier this month, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) [official website] Melissa Fleming reported that 10 UN staff and aid workers had been arrested [JURIST report] in the northwestern Rakhine state and three of them are facing unknown criminal charges. In June, Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] had urged [JURIST report] the Chinese government to provide basic food and shelter needs to refugees from Myanmar after finding refugee abuse. Earlier in June, HRW also called on [JURIST report] Bangladesh to open its borders to Myanmar refugees a day after it demanded Myanmar ensure the safety of communities in the Arakan State subject to the violence between Arakan Buddhists and ethnic Rohingya Muslims. In March, HRW reported [JURIST report] that violence and rights abuses continue in Myanmar's northern state of Kachin due to the conflict between Myanmar's armed forces and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) [BBC backgrounder]. During the same month, Tomas Ojea Quintana [official profile], the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar urged [JURIST report] the country to ensure the protection of human rights. In November, Human rights group Partners Relief and Development [advocacy website] issued [JURIST report] a report [text, PDF, graphic content] which alleged that the army may be committing war crimes including torture and forced labor against ethnic communities in Kachin state.

The First Amendment places a premium on political speech, particularly speech about political change. The drafters fashioned the First Amendment "to ensure unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people." By imposing a state residency requirement on petition circulators, the board denies non-residents of means to engage in core political speech available and reduces the quantity of such speech available to its residents. This deprivation directly infringes upon the Constitutional rights of candidates, voters, petition-circulators, and political parties.

Minority parties in the US have mounted legal challenges to allegedly discriminatory legislation in the past. In 2009, a federal court ruled that a Connecticut campaign finance law discriminated against minor party candidates [JURIST report] in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2006 held [JURIST report]] that state rules on participation in Ohio's primary elections make it prohibitive for minority parties to be included on the ballot. The court ruled that the requirement that parties must file petitions with signatures 120 days before the election "have a negative impact on minor parties and on political activity as a whole in Ohio" by violating the First Amendment and imposing "a severe burden on the associational rights of the [Libertarian Party of Ohio], its members, and its potential vote-supporters."

The original sexual harassment law, in place since 1992, defined the crime as an abuse of authority. The law was revised in 2002. The council found the new definition, which defines the crime as "the act of harassing others with the goal of obtaining sexual favors," to be unconstitutionally vague. Last year, France signed a Council of Europe (COE) treaty vowing to end violence against women [JURIST report]. The treaty targets crimes including rape, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, sexual harassment, forced abortion and forced sterilization. In 2006, the COE released a report criticizing [JURIST report] France's human rights record and identifying impunity for domestic violence as a shortcoming in the French judicial system.

The dispute over who will try Saif al-Islam has soured relations between Libya and the ICC. Last month, four ICC staff members who traveled to Libya to speak with Saif al-Islam were detained [JURIST report] by Libyan security forces. They were in custody for nearly four weeks. Upon her release [JURIST report], ICC lawyer Melinda Taylor said she did not believe Saif al-Islam would receive a fair trial in the country. Three officials from the ICC and the Australian ambassador to Libya were able to visit [JURIST report] and assess the condition of the four detained ICC staff members after their detention. A judicial source in Libya told reporters shortly after their detention that the four could remain in "preventative" detention [JURIST report] for 45 days while an investigation is conducted. The four staff members were detained after Taylor was accused of attempting to give documents to Saif al-Islam that were from his former aid, Mohammed Ismail, who has been in hiding since the Libyan conflict [JURIST backgrounder] began.

[H]aving considered the purported rational bases proffered by both BLAG and Congress and concluded that such objectives bear no rational relationship to Section 3 of DOMA as a legislative scheme, the Court finds that no conceivable rational basis exists for the provision. The provision therefore violates the equal protection principles incorporated in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Earlier this month Bryant denied a BLAG motion to stay the lawsuit [JURIST reports] pending the Second Circuit appeal of Windsor v. United States. Edith Schlain Windsor, 83, successfully sued the US government [complaint, PDF] in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) [official website], which in June also ruled on summary judgment that under a rational basis standard [Cornell LII backgrounder] of judicial scrutiny that DOMA is unconstitutional [JURIST report]. This month the elderly New York woman petitioned the US Supreme Court [official website] to expedite her DOMA challenge [JURIST report] and bypass the Second Circuit appeal. That same week a lesbian couple filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Central District of California [official website] in a DOMA challenge that seeks to achieve for gay and lesbian couples the same federal immigration rights afforded to heterosexual couples [JURIST report] under the Immigration and Nationality Act [materials]. Also that week 132 members of the US House of Representatives [official website] filed an amicus brief [JURIST report] stressing that the House is "not united on DOMA's validity" and arguing that statutory classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to heightened judicial scrutiny, but that DOMA should be overturned as unconstitutional under any level of judicial scrutiny. The brief was filed in the appeal of Karen Golinski v. Office of Personnel Management, the landmark case in which the US District Court for the Northern District of California [official website] ruled that DOMA is unconstitutional [JURIST report].

While current international law allows governments to use some chemical agents for crowd control purposes, Bahraini law enforcement officials routinely violate every UN principle of their use. Specifically, PHR documents in this report that Bahraini authorities:

1. Fail to exercise restraint before resorting to force;
2. Use disproportionate force when responding to protesters; and
3. Fail to minimize damage and injury to demonstrators.

Bahrain has faced continuous criticism for human rights violations since protests broke out last year. Last month Amnesty International (AI) urged the government to release all prisoners of conscience [JURIST report] immediately in the wake of an appeal by human rights activist Nabeel Rajab [JURIST news archive] challenging his three-month sentence for comments he posted on his Twitter page in June. Earlier in July the Bahrain Information Affairs Authority [official website] announced that it brought charges against 15 police officers [JURIST report] for alleged "mistreatment of inmates in custody" amid complaints about police activity. In June the government also announced that it would pay $2.6 million in restitution [JURIST report] to the families of protesters killed in pro-democracy protests last year to comply with the recommendations of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) [official website]. In April AI condemned the country for its continued human rights violations despite reforms following the BICI report [JURIST reports] concerning human rights violations committed against anti-government protesters.

Somalia has been urged by the international community to ensure that the country's transition proceeds peacefully. Last month UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told officials at the Istanbul II Conference on Somalia that Somalia must make all efforts to smoothly transition to a permanent government [JURIST report] with a new constitution. The TFG has been working toward establishment of a legitimate government since the 1991 end of the Muhammad Siad Barre [Britannica profile] dictatorship. In May UN representatives announced [JURIST report] that the Elders of Somalia were planning to select delegates for the NCA. Earlier that month a UN expert called on Somalia [JURIST report] to address issues with the judicial systems in Mogadishu and South Central Somalia after finding in Somalia's application of Sharia law and modern international and human rights law. In February Human Rights Watch criticized [JURIST report] the country's TFG for failing to prevent children recruitment into armed forces. Somalia has ranked at the bottom of the Transparency International [advocacy website] Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) [2011 report, PDF] for much of the last decade, leading the world in perceived corruption last year and in 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007 and 2006 [JURIST reports].

In June, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] denied [JURIST report] a similar petition filed by Proposition 8 supporters to rehear their case before the entire court. Proponents of the ban filed their plea in February after a three-judge panel voted 2-1 [JURIST reports] earlier in the month to overturn the law, finding that it violated the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses [Cornell LII backgrounders] of the Fourteenth Amendment. Proposition 8 was approved by California voters [JURIST report] in November of 2008.

Qarase was found guilty [Fiji Today report] by three assessors in the Suva High Court on July 30. His personal and political courtroom battles span several years, and his last case was in April 2009 when the Court of Appeal ruled that Fiji's appointment of a military government following a 2006 coup [JURIST report] was unconstitutional and had to be replaced by an interim prime minister until democratic elections could be held. There, the ousted prime minister Qarase brought the suit after a High Court found in November 2009 that then-president Ratu Josefa Iloilio had constitutional authority to appoint new leaders following the coup. In October 2008, the former Fijian figurehead challenged the legality of his ouster [JURIST report] by suing Commodore Frank Bainimarama [BBC profile] and others who participated in the December 2006 military coup.

Kenya's upcoming election has been under international attention because it will be the first since the violence that followed the 2007 elections [JURIST news archive]. Four individuals are currently facing trial before the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website] for fomenting the violence. Earlier this month, the ICC set [JURIST report] the trial dates for the two Kenyan post-election violence cases for next April. The trial of former Kenyan minister William Ruto and journalist Joshua Arap Sang [case materials] will begin on April 10, 2013, while the trial of Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and former civil service chief Francis Muthaura [case materials] is to start on April 11, 2013. Last month the ICC expressed its desire to start the two Kenyan trials simultaneously [JURIST report] to avoid any appearance of bias in the March 2013 presidential election. Ruto is considered a leading candidate in the election which will take place March 4. Ruto and Sang are facing three counts of murder, forcible transfer and persecution while Kenyatta and Muthaura are facing five counts of orchestrating murder, rape, forcible transfer and persecution in the polls' aftermath. In May, the appeals chamber of the ICC rejected [JURIST report] the jurisdiction challenges in the two cases presented by the defense, clearing the way for trial. The defense lawyers had argued that the court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the cases. The appeal stemmed from the pre-trial chamber's decision to confirm the charges [JURIST report] against the four men in January. The ICC claimed jurisdiction over the case despite Kenya's calls for dismissal [JURIST report]. The Kenyan government argued that it was capable of prosecuting the accused men domestically.