Ahead of the COP16 biodiversity summit, set for October 21 to November 1 in Cali, Colombia, Amnesty International called Thursday for states to strengthen human rights protection in the Global Biodiversity Framework. COP 16 is the sixteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties, the governing body to the Convention on Biological Diversity, an international [...]

The Nebraska Supreme Court ordered the state’s Secretary of State to implement Legislative Bill (LB) 20 on Wednesday, providing for the automatic restoration of voting rights for felons in Nebraska upon completion of their sentence. Nebraska Secretary of State Robert Evnen had refused to implement the statute after it passed in the Nebraska Legislature, directing [...]

The Senate of Kenya voted to impeach Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua on Thursday following a two-day hearing before a full Senate, in which he was convicted on five of 11 charges. As a result of the convictions, Gachagua will be removed from office and barred from holding public office for life. Gachagua is expected to [...]

The Estonian parliament, the Riigikogu, on Wednesday officially recognized the mass deportation of the Crimean Tatars by the Soviet Union in 1944 as an act of genocide. The statement passed in the 101-seat body with 83 votes in favor and eight abstentions. The decision comes at a time of renewed focus on Russia’s ongoing policies [...]

Two public interest groups implored US Attorney General Merrick Garland and Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul on Tuesday to investigate anonymous text messages sent to young Wisconsin voters threatening civil penalties and jail time for violating state voting laws. The groups described the messages as attempts at voter intimidation. Free Speech for the People wrote [...]

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) held Tuesday that Russia violated Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The violation concerned the case of Salikh Nabiyevich Gadzhiyev and Nikolay Gostev, who were dismissed from their respective positions as policeman and Metro worker, after voicing concerns about practices in their work sectors. Article [...]

Amnesty International, along with 14 other organizations, issued a complaint on Wednesday demanding the French Social Security Agency’s National Family Allowance Fund (CNAF) stop using a risk-scoring algorithmic system. The algorithm is used by the CNAF to flag overpayments and errors in benefit payments. This works with a scoring system, selecting individuals to be further [...]

The UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) is set to review Pakistan’s human rights record this Thursday and Friday under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). According to Amnesty International (AI), the review “comes at a crucial time for the country, as human rights violations and abuses remain rampant.” The review is part of Pakistan’s commitments [...]

The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, proposed the implementation of “return hubs” in third countries to combat irregular migration, in a letter to Commission members on Thursday. In the letter, she emphasizes the Italy-Albania protocol as an example of how the hubs may work in practice. The protocol is a migration [...]

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney temporarily suspended a state rule on Tuesday requiring paper ballots to be hand-counted in Georgia in the upcoming US election. The decision came in an expedited bench trial following the parties’ emergency motions. The respondent in the case, the Georgia State Election Board (SEB), approved the hand-count rule [...]