NewsHere’s the international legal news we covered this week:
The Ukraine parliament (Verkhovna Rada) passed a bill [materials, in Ukrainian] Thursday that recognizes regions currently under Russia-backed separatist control as “occupied” and supports retrieving those areas through political and diplomatic means while allowing for military action.
The bill was approved by 280 members of the 450-member parliament and endorsed [Tweet, in Ukrainian] by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court decided [press release, in Arabic] Wednesday to establish the Council of the Union, or the Federal Council, which will oversee provisions passed by parliament.
[JURIST] The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) [official website] on Wednesday announced [official notice] that it will bar Haitians from receiving H-2A and H-2B visas, which provide foreign workers access to the US for temporary agricultural and seasonal work.
DHS cited the “high rate of [Haitians] overstaying the terms” of their work visas as justification for removing Haiti from the list of visa-eligible countries.
Romania has made little progress against corruption in state institutions, according to a report [text, PDF] released Thursday by the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) [official website].
In the report, GRECO said that concerns regarding the lack of transparency in the legal process still remain.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] published its annual report [text, PDF] Thursday, covering global human rights issues from late 2016 through November 2017, and more than 90 countries.
The Supreme Court of British Columbia on Wednesday declared [judgment] Canada’s practice of indefinite solitary confinement in federal prisons unconstitutional and stated that the practice violates [press release] the Charter of Rights and Freedoms [text].
The UK House of Commons [official website] voted 324-295 [vote count] on Wednesday to pass the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill [text, PDF], also known as as the “Brexit” bill, after concluding its third and final reading [text] of the bill.
Bangladesh and Myanmar agreed Tuesday to complete the return of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya within two years.
A coalition of human rights groups, including the Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR UK), Stop the War Coalition, the Campaign Against Arms Trade [advocacy websites] and Human Rights for Yemen, sent a letter to Prime Minister Theresa May [official website] on Tuesday urging her to cancel Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the UK.
