The Supreme Court of India (SCI) Thursday delivered a landmark judgement on the right to safe and legal abortion, ruling that unmarried women are entitled to seek an abortion. Justices DY Chandrachud, AS Bopanna and JB Pardiwala further ruled that the exclusion of unmarried women who conceive in live-in relationships from the Medical Termination of [...]

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Thursday demanded a stay of execution for Zahra Sedighi-Hamadani and Elham Choubdar. In August, the Islamic Revolution Court of Urumieh charged Sedighi-Hamadani and Choubdar with “corruption on earth” for allegedly promoting homosexuality and sentenced both women to death. Sedighi-Hamadani was arrested and arbitrarily detained [...]

India’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) Wednesday banned the organisation Popular Front of India (PFI) for undertaking “unlawful activities” which are “prejudicial to the integrity, sovereignty and security of the country” and for its alleged connection to the organisations. Under Section 3 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA), PFI is banned for five [...]

The National Registry of Exonerations (NRE) Tuesday released a report stating that black people in the United States are seven times more likely than white people to be falsely convicted of serious crimes, more likely to be the targets of police misconduct and spend more time in prison before being exonerated. NRE has documented and analysed [...]

Amnesty International Tuesday called for immediate international action to ensure accountability the of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini’s death in the custody of Iranian police. The organization requests that Iran repeal the statutory provisions that impose compulsory veiling on women and girls, perpetuate sexual violence, and violate women’s dignity and abolish the morality police that enforce the [...]

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch Tuesday called for the immediate release of Algerian activist Slimane Bouhafs. According to organizations, Algerian authorities have progressively employed the Algerian penal code’s wide definition of terrorism to prosecute activists and human rights defenders and targeted other critics among the Algerian diaspora with travel bans and extradition. In 2016, [...]

Amnesty International Friday called for meaningful action in response to the repression in Iran after a nationwide protest over the death of Mahsa Amini in custody. Iranian authorities restricted Internet usage on Wednesday for much of the nation. On September 13, Mahsa Amini was arrested and violently beaten in a police van in Tehran by Iran’s [...]

The Republic of Poland, the Kingdom of Denmark and the Italian Republic Friday filed declarations of intervention in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the case of Ukraine v. Russian Federation. Human rights experts across the world have accused Russia of genocide during its invasion of Ukraine. Under Article 63 of the Statute of the Court, states may [...]

Amnesty International Friday published an announcement that Dipti Rani Das, a Bangladeshi teenager who was detained over a Facebook post, was released from detention on March 15. In October 2020, Dipti Rani Das, a Hindu minority teenage girl, was arrested in Dinajpur, Bangladesh, under Bangladesh’s Digital Security Act, 2018 over a Facebook post which contained [...]

India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MHFW) Thursday filed an affidavit before the Supreme Court of India stating that Indian medical students who returned from Ukraine due to the Russia-Ukraine war can’t be accommodated in Indian medical colleges in the absence of any provision in the National Medical Commission Act allowing such accommodation. MHFW filed [...]