Once upon a time, you could tell an election was just around the corner when politicians of all kinds started talking relentlessly about crime. “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” was Tony Blair’s…
The Nobel Peace Prize is a major achievement in itself. For it to be awarded – jointly with the Indian anti-child slavery activist Kailash Satyarthi – to a teenager still at secondary school is extraordinary…
Uhuru Kenyatta, incumbent president of Kenya, has finally appeared before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. He is charged with murder, forcible transfer, rape, persecution, and other…
A US appeals court is currently hearing the case of a chimpanzee named Tommy and is to decide if he has the right to bodily integrity and liberty, just like a person. The case, brought by the Nonhuman…
In October 2010, a cholera outbreak began in Haiti for the first time in more than 100 years. The strain that was brought into Haiti has been traced to a region in Nepal from which a UN peacekeeping contingent…
More than 80% of Australian paediatricians believe mandatory detention of asylum seeker children constitutes child abuse, according to survey results published today in the Medical Journal of Australia…
As Australia prepares to join combat operations, the coalition of nations stitched together by the US in response to the developing threat of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS or ISIL) is overlooking the…
Next year it will be 50 years since a group of middle-ranking army officers abducted the top brass of the Indonesian army. They had planned to bring them before President Sukarno, as they had heard rumours…
The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Australia and Cambodia raises important questions about Australia’s international legal obligations, the nature of regional refugee protection and resettlement…
The international movement to protect “traditional family values” has grown in proportion to protection for the human rights of LGBT people. In 2011, the Council held a panel on LGBT rights, at the start…
Emil Jeyaratnam, The Conversation and Prodita Sabarini, The Conversation
Indonesian human rights activist Usman Hamid says president-elect Joko Widodo could do better than the outgoing Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in solving the murder of rights activist Munir Said Thalib, despite…
A few weeks into his presidency, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono uttered one of his most memorable statements. Solving the murder case of the nation’s leading human rights activist, Munir…
As questions are asked about whether a young Iranian who died of septicaemia received adequate treatment, Australia’s asylum seeker policy is under attack in the United Nations Human Rights Council. The…
Ever since the first New Labour administration of 1997, successive British governments have declared their commitment to so-called “ethical” arms sales. But recent decisions about which countries should…
The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) yesterday recommended introducing new laws that would give a legal remedy for serious invasions of privacy. Unfortunately, the federal government has already…
Peter Manning, London School of Economics and Political Science
More than 40 years after the Year Zero horror of Cambodia’s Killing Fields, two of the most senior Khmer Rouge leaders have been found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life imprisonment…
Tragically, the 72-hour ceasefire brokered between the Israeli Defence Force and Hamas collapsed within two hours – just as shops in Gaza were opening and the fishing fleet setting out to sea for the first…
Following the shocking news of the destruction of flight MH17, foreign minister Julie Bishop wasted no time in boarding a plane for the United Nations in New York. Australian diplomats engaged in intense…
Recent reports have indicated that the Home Office has enjoyed access to the NHS records of more than 6,900 people since 2010, and used information from them for ramped-up efforts to track down illegal…
The current debate over the right to be forgotten, spurred by a European Union ruling that allows people to stop certain web pages from appearing in search results, is proof – if further proof was required…