Search Results for: 2006-02-07

Under President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s leadership, the Sri Lankan civil war reached a brutal conclusion on May 18, 2009, ending a 25-year-long conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a separatist rebel group. Rooted in longstanding grievances, including discriminatory policies against Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority, the conflict saw the [...]

Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Karim A.A. Khan concluded his trip to Israel and Palestine on Sunday, issuing a statement stressing the importance of international law. This was the first visit to Israel and Palestine by an ICC prosecutor. Khan made the trip after families of October 7 attack victims asked the [...]

Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to sit on the US Supreme Court, died Friday. According to an announcement from the court, O’Connor died of “complications related to advanced dementia, probably Alzheimer’s, and a respiratory illness” at the age of 93. O’Connor was appointed to the court in 1981 by then-president Ronald Reagan. During her [...]

International civil society watchdog CIVICUS added Bangladesh on Thursday to its CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist and rated the civic space in Bangladesh as “repressed,” the watchdog’s second lowest rating. The CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist rates the civic space of jurisdictions based on expression, peaceful assembly and freedom of association. CIVICUS stated it added Bangladesh to its watchlist because [...]

Sexual assault in the US Armed Forces is a very real and prescient issue for all service members. In April 2023, the US Department of Defense (DoD) reported that in 2022 there had been “a roughly 1% increase in overall reports of sexual assaults” with all the service branches having seen an increase in reported [...]

The UK’s Metropolitan Police said on Tuesday that they have charged two men and a woman with ‘identity document offences.’ The Met’s statement came after the BBC reported the group was accused of spying for Russia. Those charged, said to be Bulgarian nationals, were remanded to custody in February before being released on police bail. [...]

For years, Sri Lanka has occupied the international spotlight for one of its contentious laws—the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). The PTA was introduced in 1979 during the Sri Lankan Civil War using the emergency law provisions in Part II of the Public Security Ordinance. While similar laws exist in other nations, showing widespread acceptance [...]

A top International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegate Friday said that inmates held by the US at Guantanamo Bay Detention Center are experiencing “symptoms of accelerated .” Patrick Hamilton, the head of the ICRC’s US and Canada delegation, visited Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in March and says that the inmates’ symptoms are consistent with [...]

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. (Matthew 5:9) South Sudan, Africa’s youngest nation, has been struggling with civil strife, armed conflict and a deplorable state of human rights and the rule of law before and after its independence in 2011. South Sudan came to international attention in the early [...]

The Mo Ibrahim Foundation (MIF) Wednesday released its 2022 Index of African Governance, noting that governance across the African continent has “flatlined” since 2019. The report cited deteriorating security and movements to undermine the rule of law as reasons for the stagnation, and warned the lack of progress could seriously jeopardize the African Union’s Agenda [...]