Statelessness is an amorphous concept. What and who constitutes “stateless people” is unclear and unquantifiable. Foundationally, it simply encompasses those who have no legal affiliation to any country (nationality). Such status essentially excludes a person from social integration by creating a barrier to accessing education, healthcare, work, and perhaps most profoundly, a dignified official burial upon death. While the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates 4.4 million peop

On Thursday 11th June, Trump ordered to sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC)-an independent adjudicating body, almost two months after the Court decided to probe in the alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Afghanistan after the US troops entered the land in 2003. Established in 1998, after the Yugoslavian and Rwandan crisis, it started functioning after the Rome Statute (a multilateral treaty) came into force in 2002. Almost a year after 9/11

In 1918, the Spanish Flu infected nearly 500 million people. The Governments of the world took restrictive actions to contain the spread of the highly infectious disease resulting in the containment of the virus within two years. Now, 100 years later, we see similar trends emerging with the outbreak of COVID-19. The Coronavirus, caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov-2), was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11th,

In a chilling exemplification of a repressive regime, Egyptian security forces under President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi have been accused of arbitrarily arresting and torturing children aged as young as 12. A report documented by Human Rights Watch (HRW) underscores that prosecutors and judges have exacerbated these abuses through due process violations and unfair trials. The unnerving account details the use of varied modus operandi for torture. To enlist a few: seven children w

On August 5, 2019 the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, imposed Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure in Kashmir, suspending and imposing a blanket ban on mobile, broadband internet, cable TV services citing “maintenance of law and order” issues. This was followed by the abrogation of Article 370 that granted special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The state suspended the internet in the valley for almost six months until the Supreme Court ruling in Anuradha B

Amidst the chaos of last month’s cabinet reshuffle, claims of the new Attorney General’s membership in a ‘Buddhist cult’ particularly caught the public eye. Yet this is far from the most problematic characteristic of Suella Braverman MP, a former barrister and Queens’ College graduate. Braverman has made some notable interventions in legal debates in recent months, particularly a conveniently timed Conservative Home article criticising a ‘chronic and steady encroachment by th

Z I Khan Panna v Bangladesh (‘Case’) is a landmark judgment in Bangladesh, wherein the Supreme Court interpreted the indemnity clause in the Constitution in a progressive and harmonious manner. This case relates to the infamous ‘Operation Clean Heart’ ordered by the then Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) – Jamaat alliance led government, during the period between October 2002 to January 2003, with a view to allegedly end countrywide violent crimes.

As the clocks ticked forward into the new decade, UN officials could be forgiven for feeling burdened by the goals targeted in the upcoming years. Few human rights goals have been as ambitious as that to end statelessness by 2024, with 12 million people remaining without a legal nationality. Whilst instability in the Middle East and climate threats in the Sahel have been by now ‘factored in,’ it is in South Asia where such efforts appearing to be irrevocably floundering.

A 19 year old British girl has been convicted of public mischief in the Famagusta District Court in Cyprus for allegedly falsely accusing 12 Israeli tourists of raping her.[1] The judge made this decision on the basis of a retracted criminal complaint, which she says she signed at the police station without receiving legal advice and after police intimidation. The UK Foreign Office has raised fair trial concerns, while domestic and international human rights groups have widel

In the wake of the horrific deaths of 39 Vietnamese nationals whose bodies were found in a lorry in Essex in October and the human trafficking charges pressed on the suspects, it is timely to consider the legal responses to human trafficking. Whilst trafficking has clearly been established as a crime domestically (s.2, Modern Slavery Act 2015) and internationally (UN Palermo Protocol, within the Organized Crime Convention), the human rights framework for human trafficking is

When representatives of the Yemeni government and the Houthi rebels agreed to a UN-brokered ceasefire for the port city of Hodeidah on 13 December, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres lauded the efforts as ‘real progress towards future talks to end the conflict.

Although it is all too easy to believe that slavery ended with the success of the abolitionist movement up to 200 years ago, a flurry of news stories in recent weeks has brought the issue of modern day slavery to our attention. Significant coverage stemmed from the high-profile Rooney case, where a UK family was convicted of numerous counts of modern slavery offences. This was swiftly followed by the first review of the UK legislation in a Backbench Business Committee debate

Twenty-four years after the ICTY was established by the UN Security Council, the Tribunal concluded its final trial, upholding the sentence of former Bosnian Croat commander Slobodan Praljak to 20 years imprisonment for war crimes. The events which followed will unfortunately be unavoidably engrained into the Tribunal’s history, with the war criminal swallowing a vial of cyanide and killing himself.

After the International Human Rights Day, it seems an appropriate time to pen a response to a piece titled “Human Rights Do Not Exist!” by the Conservative English journalist Peter Hitchens, published in The YLJ.

When will the international community’s response to the persecution of the Uighurs in Xinjiang become proportional to the severity of the crimes that China has been accused of committing?

With the exponential growth of media interest in Xinjiang’s ‘re-education camps’ in recent months, the so-called ‘story China wants the world to forget,’[1] it is safe to say that Xi’s China has steadfastly abandoned Deng Xiaoping’s policy of ‘keeping a low profile.’ (taoguangyanghui)

Where are you going for your next holiday? Hopefully not Syria or Iraq. Not only is it rather dangerous, it now seems likely that it will be illegal to go there without a reasonable excuse. Clause 4 of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill will make it a criminal offence for a UK national or resident to enter or remain in a ‘designated area’. The Secretary of State decides what this constitutes; the designation must be considered necessary to prevent people from visi