Student Commentary

Pixabay credit Klaus Hausmann

It’s become increasingly clear that Australia could be in breach of its human rights commitments as reports of mistreatment continue to emerge from youth detention centers in Western Australia. On January 12, a class action involving more than 500 young children and adults who have been held in Western Australia’s Banksia Hill detention center was [...]

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Unknown Author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

On February 1, 2021, Myanmar’s military ousted the nation’s democratically elected government. Almost two years on, conflict continues to plague Myanmar and its citizens. In some parts of the country, a handful of groups have taken up arms. Most notably, the Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs), the People Defense Forces (PDF), an insurgent group supported by [...]

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Thennicke / Wikimedia Commons

It is a dangerous time to be a judge in America. Retired Wisconsin judge John Roemer was killed at his home in June 2022. That same month, US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh narrowly avoided a kidnapping and possible assassination attempt. These incidents follow in the wake of an assassination attempt on U.S. District Court [...]

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The Indian government, on August 4, 2022, withdrew the Personal Data Protection Bill 2019 from the parliament. Though no significant reason was given by the government, the Minister of IT, Ashwini Vaishnav, said that this bill was being revamped as it was paving the way for a complete draft and suited the present legal systems [...]

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Last Sunday was Transgender Remembrance Day, the day the LGBTQ community and its allies mourn trans people lost to violence and vow to erase transphobic hate. In the runup to Sunday, people were talking about how Transgender Remembrance Day was particularly important this year, given the push for anti-trans legislation in many states. Tragically, another [...]

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Taymaz Valley from Ottawa, Canada, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

On September 16, 2022, Iran’s Basij Resistance Force, a volunteer paramilitary organization that operates under the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, arrested Mahsa Amini for her refusal to comply with the country’s headscarf requirement, an alleged breach of its public morality code. Reports surfaced that the Basij severely beat Amini for resisting an officer’s insults, after which Amini [...]

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Pixabay / turkey

In 2002, when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in Turkey, defeating Kemalist hegemony, there was a glimmer of hope in the West for the overwhelmingly Muslim country. However, the experience of Turkey over the past 20 years is one descending into an authoritarian regime with clampdowns [...]

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Wikimedia Commons / Mark Dixon

“Sticks dipped in oil, wire, knitting needles, coat hangers, ball point pens” This is not your ordinary grocery list but the list of items used to induce abortion in a country that has criminalized abortion. People specifically from marginalized communities resorted to consumption of turpentine, bleach and detergent solutions and used the above listed objects [...]

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WikiMedia (Tom Page)

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturned Roe v. Wade with a 6-3 majority. This judgment raises multiple constitutional law and due process issues. However, this article will not be addressing these issues. The focus of this piece is to analyze and highlight [...]

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Indian Parliament - Lakun Patra

“Defectors often cause more difficulty than disinterested disbelievers” – Neal Ash Maxwell, American scholar, educator, and religious leader. Recent events in the Indian state of Maharashtra reaffirm the existence of glaring loopholes in a law aimed at bolstering political stability in India. The recent fall of the democratically elected government led by the state’s former [...]

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