UN leaders at the 60th General Assembly session now underway in New York in the aftermath of the 2005 World Summit are pressing for agreement on a definition of terrorism and are calling for a broad international convention to serve as a co-ordinating framework for governmental anti-terror efforts. Progress towards a convention has been made, [...]

Approximately 900 detainees held in Australian Department of Immigration detention camps have caused themselves injury during the past three years, according to documents obtained by Macquarie University academic Denise Leith under Australia's Freedom of Information Act. According to the report, there have been 506 incidents of self-harm carried out by 878 detainees in the past [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond School of Law says that Senators considering the nomination of Judge John Roberts, Jr. as Chief Justice of the United States should not overlook his potential administrative responsibilities, including leadership of the Judicial Conference of the United States, the policymaking arm for the federal courts [...]

Rwandan Foreign Minister Charles Murigande told the UN General Assembly Sunday that Rwanda is dissatisfied with United Nations reforms pushed through at the 2005 World Summit last week. The agreement includes the statement that the international community must intervene in genocide cases, a response to international failure to respond to genocides in Rwanda , Srebrenica [...]

Iraq constitution final draft (as translated into English), presented to the Iraqi National Assembly September 18, 2005 and delivered to the UN for printing. Read the full text via the Education for Peace in Iraq Center. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Constitución Política de la República de Chile, enacted September 17, 2005 . Read the full text of the constitution in Spanish. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Former Illinois Governor George Ryan , who made national headlines and won praise in some quarters in January 2003 when just before leaving office he commuted the executions of all Illinois inmates then on death row , will go on trial Monday in Chicago on 22 counts of corruption and fraud . The charges against [...]

The head of a support group for families of Kuwaiti prisoners held by the US at the Guantanamo Bay military prison has said that American authorities have agreed to release five of the remaining eleven Kuwait prisoners held at the facility, but have not yet agreed to a timetable for their transfer. Khalid al-Ouda expressed [...]

Afghans voted in their first parliamentary elections in decades Sunday, without the significant violence feared by officials . Anti-government Taliban fighters had agreed not to attack civilian voters, but warned people to stay away from areas where militants may attack security forces and foreign troops . In the last 6 months, militants have killed seven [...]

Widespread hunger strikes at the US military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay are troubling senior US commanders and presenting serious challenges in managing the detainees, the New York Times reported Sunday. As many as 200 detainees or more than 1/3 of the camp's population, have refused food recently to protest prison conditions and their extended [...]