To understand Rodrigo Duterte’s rise to power and the public support for killing drug dealers and users, we need to distinguish the empirical from the normative – the ‘what is’ from ‘what should be’.
A blueprint for ISIS – and for a video game? Camp Bucca, Iraq.
Atef Hassan/Reuters
Does including torture or other human rights violations in video games trivialize the actions? Or might it force us to think more critically about them?
South Africa’s elite police unit, the Hawks, block a street during an operation.
Independent Media/Picture:Bhekikhaya Mabaso
The main criticism leveled at the body that oversees the work of South Africa’s elite police unit, the Hawks, is that it lacks the power to initiate investigations, making it ineffective.
George Brandis (centre) was ‘the guest’ of the co-ordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs, Wiranto (right), during a recent visit to Indonesia.
Matius Murib
It has taken more than three months for the Australian and PNG governments to jointly announce the Manus Island detention centre will close. But the detainees’ fate is now even more uncertain.
Only Australia uses less-developed countries to process refugee claims.
AAP/Eoin Blackwell
Reports of abuse on Nauru should provide a flashpoint for the Turnbull government to reassess its asylum-seeker policies before more serious harm is inflicted on Australia’s international standing.
Twenty countries in our region have laws criminalising sex between consenting males.
AAP/Richard Milnes
Shahram Amiri is one of 250 people executed this year despite President Rouhani’s efforts to improve his country’s human right’s record.
Some fear that Chinese investment will lead to a painful trade-off between Ukraine’s desperate economic needs and its long-standing democratic dream.
Sasha Maksymenko/flickr
Ukraine desperately needs Chinese investment but, like many other countries in this position, this is giving rise to concerns about the consequences for its fragile democracy.
What are Australia’s international obligations in relation to its offshore processing centres?
AAP/Mick Tsikas
Leaked incident reports from the Nauru detention centre affirm what has been known for a long time: detention is no place for children, and we need alternatives to offshore processing.
Human rights experts in Indonesia have repeatedly called for the government to stop the use of capital punishment.
Reuters/Beawiharta
Feared and deplored for his slash-and-burn approach to criminal justice, Rodrigo Duterte has suddenly shown his conciliatory side.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer records 265 deaths of suspected criminals and drug users between June 30, the day Rodrigo Duterte assumed office, and July 18.
Reuters/Czar Dancel
Legislating against racial and religious vilification is highly fraught, as the ongoing debate around Section 18C has demonstrated, and unlikely to become less so any time soon.
Taking over a country by military force is much harder in this age of globalised rights.
Tshwane Executive Mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa, surrounded by school pupils and officials, samples the metropole’s free internet service.
Pretoria News/Masi Losi
That South Africa has voted against rights enshrined in its globally celebrated, progressive constitution suggests a troubling indifference to its human rights commitments.
Trump speaks at the Lincoln Memorial. How would Lincoln respond?
REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Donald Nieman, Binghamton University, State University of New York
In the 1850s, an influx of immigrants incited xenophobia in Americans. How did Abraham Lincoln, the GOP’s first president, react to the angry mood? A Civil War historian tells the tale.