Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a statement on Monday calling on Ethiopian authorities to immediately release seven “arbitrarily detained” opposition figures. The seven detained individuals belong to the formerly banned Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). HRW claims their detainment is politically motivated. The seven OLF figures were arrested in 2020 and 2021. Since then they have [...]

Rights groups and civil society organisations in Kenya called Sunday for the urgent reconstitution of the country’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission and the full repeal of the controversial Finance Act 2023 in a bid to calm the hot political climate in the country. Their call came after widespread demonstrations last week against the incumbent [...]

UNESCO released a statement Sunday condemning Russian strikes on Odesa, Ukraine, which allegedly damaged several World Heritage Sites, including the first Orthodox Christian church built in Odesa, the Transfiguration Cathedral. Ukraine is home to eight locations on the World Heritage List. UNESCO’s Director-General Audrey Azoulay stated: This outrageous destruction marks an escalation of violence against [...]

Myanmar law students are reporting for JURIST on challenges to the rule of law in their country under the military junta that deposed the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021.  On Sunday, the Central Bank of Myanmar made an announcement concerning currency. The main points of the announcement were as follows.  [...]

Hundreds of people protested on Saturday in Botswana’s capital Gaborone against a bill seeking to make same-sex relations legal. Botswana’s parliament was forced to introduce the bill legalizing same-sex relations pursuant to a 2019 ruling of the High Court of Botswana, which held that laws criminalizing same-sex relations are unconstitutional. The case was brought by [...]

Law students and law graduates in Pakistan are reporting for JURIST on events in that country impacting its legal system. Mashal Asim Khan is an LLB student in the University of London  External Programme at The Institute of Legal Studies (TILS). She files this from Islamabad.  On Thursday last week, July 20th, there was yet [...]

INTERPOL and Europol announced Monday that the organizations broke up a migrant smuggling ring that brought migrants from Cuba to the European Union (EU). 62 arrests were made in cooperation with the governments of Germany, Greece, Northern Macedonia, Spain and Serbia. The investigation into the smuggling ring began in October 2021 after several EU countries [...]

A Russian court found a supporter of opposition activist Alexey Navalny guilty of “participation in an extremist community” and sentenced him to 9 years in prison on Monday. Vadim Ostanin was a member of Team Navalny, an activist organization associated with the Russian opposition firebrand who is currently serving a lengthy prison sentence. Team Navalny [...]

Sharon Basch is an Israeli American who lived in Israel before starting her JD at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, where she is a rising 2L. Following seven months of protests the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) Monday passed the first of its proposed and highly controversial reform bills. The bill seeks to restrict the [...]

Chairman-elect of the Israel Bar Association Amit Bechar said in a live-streamed meeting Sunday the Association will petition the Israeli Supreme Court to cancel the Israeli Knesset’s decision on the “reasonableness doctrine” if the reform passes in a vote expected Monday. Bechar also announced that the Bar Association may cease providing services to its members [...]