The use of unpaid internships in the human rights sector has ballooned in recent years. While human rights bodies have employed interns in a general work experience capacity for decades, the last few years…
Any attack motivated by the pen upon that pen’s purveyor is an attack on free speech.
The slaying of the Charlie Hebdo journalists and cartoonists because of their work is the grossest attack on the value of free speech, and of course the right to life. In the deadly attack on the magazine’s…
The shocking events at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris did not happen in a vacuum. They are not the actions of a few outcasts on the edge of society. These brutal murders, apparently in the name of…
William III’s ascent to the throne spurred the genesis of human rights.
Wikimedia Commons
David Cameron is riding into the 2015 election campaign with a promise to finally fulfil one of the Conservatives’ 2010 manifesto commitments: to repeal the 1998 Human Rights Act, restore the sovereignty…
The case of Baby Gammy made the Australian public confront the often-disturbing reality of the international commercial surrogacy industry.
EPA/RUNGROJ YONGRIT
This year the international spotlight turned with full-force on cross-border commercial surrogacy. The reality of children being born this way and the potentially devastating consequences of babies being…
There’s a balance between service providers’ responsiveness and responsibility when it comes to online abuse.
Stefan/Flickr
Nicolas Suzor, Queensland University of Technology and Suzannah Wood, Queensland University of Technology
It’s the stuff of nightmares: your intimate images are leaked and posted online by somebody you thought you could trust. But in Australia, victims often have no real legal remedy for this kind of abuse…
Left out: migrants protest in Hamburg.
EPA/Maja Hitij
December 18 2014 is International Migrants Day, marking 24 years since the UN General Assembly adopted the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of…
Dilma Rousseff holds back tears as she releases details of torture under Brazil’s military regime.
EPA/Fernando Bizzera
As the world digests the findings of a report on the way the US has treated detainees suspected of terrorism, Brazil has owned up to similar abuses of its own citizens. The Brazilian Truth Commission has…
Over the past few days, the media and human rights communities have devoted much time and many column inches to discussion about torture: techniques, reasons, implications, weaknesses, and the like. Should…
Feeding Britain, a new report of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Hunger and Food Poverty, has been greeted with some fanfare. It details the full extent of the UK’s food poverty crisis and urges…
Reform within the Indonesian police have been very slow, with discriminatory ‘virginity testings’ and police torture and brutality still rampant.
global-citizen-01.blogspot.com/flickr
Human Rights Watch reported last week that Indonesian police conducted two-finger “virginity tests” on young female police cadets as part of their recruitment process. Following a public uproar, the Indonesian…
Criminals the lot of them: that is what people who stand against government plans ‘to rebuild Tasmania’s forestry industry’ could become under the new anti-protest law.
The Workplaces (Protection from Protesters) Bill – locally known as the “anti-protest” bill – was passed by Tasmanian parliament late on Tuesday night. The law was introduced as part of the government’s…
UN troops come close to being above the law.
Peter Macdiarmid/PA Archive
Sexual exploitation, child abuse, corruption and torture. These are just some of the many crimes committed by United Nations peacekeepers. Such abuses have the potential to undermine and even delegitimise…
The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has announced a major campaign, #ibelong, to eliminate statelessness within a decade. A noble aim indeed – but before statelessness can be ended…
The new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein, criticised Australia in his opening address to the UN Human Rights Council.
EPA/Salvatore di Nolfi
The Australian government is being examined on Monday evening by the United Nations Committee against Torture. Before the independent committee of experts, an Australian government delegation has to answer…
Protestors demand answers over undercover policing in 2011.
John Stillwell/PA Archive
The Metropolitan Police has agreed to pay more than £400,000 to an anonymous woman who unwittingly entered a relationship with an undercover police officer investigating her. The woman was left traumatised…
Three policemen died in the incident that led to Roberts’ sentence.
PA
The news that Harry Roberts is to be released from prison – potentially within days – has been greeted with outrage among the police. But after 48 years in prison, it’s time the knee-jerk reactions stopped…
The UN is mandated to protect all people without discrimination, to advance equality and to protect the human rights of all individuals. It has a strong track record of putting those things into place…
Kicking foreign prisoners out isn’t – and shouldn’t be – easy.
Yorkshire Police
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…