Issues

Human rights abuses in their home countries are the driving force behind the surge in boat migration in the Mediterranean to reach Europe, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani has made good on his election promise and appointed Anisa Rassouli to be his country’s first female Supreme Court judge. She is the first Afghan woman to be given such an important legal job.

Beginning June 23, all of the main state bodies in Afghanistan will lose their constitutional basis. The Afghan Parliament’s term will end on June 22 with no new parliament in line to replace it due to the government’s failure to hold elections this past April.

Over the past ten years Afghanistan’s Constitution has been tested on several occasions, but how has it fared? As part of an AREU project to evaluate the Afghan Constitution, our latest paper examines the issue of the separation of powers under the current Constitution and finds that it suffers from flaws both on paper and in practice.

oung people have traditionally been at the forefront of social and political movements in societies and, as witnessed during the recent Arab Spring, have also been instrumental in bringing about regime changes through revolutions.

In 2006, Azerbaijan’s National Assembly and its 125 members pledged their full support for the European Union’s campaign to tackle all forms of violence against women in Azerbaijan.

RIAL, ECCHR and FIDH have published their first annual review of the main universal jurisdiction cases in 2014. “Make Way for Justice” examines all cases in which notable developments occurred in 2014.

At 15 Omar Khadr was held at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Now 28 years old, after 13 years locked away, he is finally able to speak about his experiences. He was branded as a terrorist and convicted as a murderer.

“Torture is a man-made disaster,” said Felicitas Treue. “Wherever it takes place it is an emergency situation and a direct attack against the victim, against their family and their community.”

Seventeen months after Setara’s husband cut her face and chest with a knife, disfiguring her for life and only narrowly failing to kill her, the laws of her native Afghanistan have still not allowed her to divorce him.