The European Council in its special meeting on Tuesday elected Belgian Charles Michel as its president. He will serve a once renewable two and a half year term beginning 1 December 2019 until 31 May 2022. The council also considered nominees for other positions and defined its own role in nominating and appointing high profile [...]

The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus, Anaïs Marin, released a report Tuesday claiming that Belarus continues to commit human rights and fundamental freedom violations. Human Rights Council Resolution A/HRC/20/13, passed during the Council’s 20th session in 2012, mandated the Special Rapporteur to monitor the situation in Belarus and assist [...]

The House Committee on Natural Resources sent the World Wide Fund’s US branch a demand letter on Monday requesting internal documents for an ongoing investigation that seeks to determine if the US government funded anti-poaching organizations that committed human rights violations. A BuzzFeed investigation revealed that the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the world’s [...]

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet on Monday called for Venezuelan authorities to investigate the in-custody death of retired navy captain Rafael Acosta Arévalo, who was detained by unidentified armed men on June 21 and brought before a military tribunal June 28. Arévalo’s lawyers and relatives were not made aware of his arrest [...]

After years of back and forth, France’s Court of Cassation ruled on Friday that artificial life support for Vincent Lambert, a person who has been in a vegetative state since a road accident in 2008, can be terminated. The court’s ruling reverses a previous decision by a Paris Court of Appeal last month, which forced [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Sunday called on the government of Sri Lanka to halt plans to resume executions and restore its 43-year moratorium on the use of the death penalty. “Sri Lanka’s plan to resume use of the death penalty is a major setback for human rights. Sri Lanka has been a bulwark against [...]

In a country visit report published Friday, Dunja Mijatović, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, said the Polish government needs to do more to preserve judicial independence, citing “wide-ranging judicial reforms have met with serious concern” from stakeholders. The Commissioner’s report is the culmination of a five day visit in which “the Commissioner [...]

Ontario’s top court ruled Friday that Canada’s Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act is constitutional and has the critical purpose of fighting climate change. The Act，passed by Parliament in 2018，puts a price on carbon pollution in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to encourage innovation and the use of clean technologies. It places a fuel [...]

The European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on AI (AI HLEG) on Wednesday released a second report about artificial intelligence (AI) development and deployment, specifically aimed at “maximising [] benefits whilst minimising and preventing [] risks.” The report includes 33 recommendations for the EU, focusing on four domains: AI helping in general society, in the private [...]

The Moldovan Constitutional Court announced on Wednesday that all six of its judges were stepping down, ending a deadlock around the legitimacy of a new government made up both of a pro-EU and pro-Russian representatives. The resignations were due to trouble caused be the court’s recent rulings. The court was found to have effectively reduced [...]