Search Results for: 2013-05-15

The Georgian Parliament passed the “transparency of foreign influence” bill in its first reading on Wednesday, according to Georgian news sources IMEDI News. The bill passed despite repeated calls from the EU to withdraw the legislation and mass domestic protests. During a session deliberating the bill’s passage on Monday, a brawl erupted during a speech [...]

The Parliament of Kyrgyzstan passed a bill modeled after Russia’s “foreign agents” law on Thursday, increasing the government’s oversight of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The law will require anyone receiving foreign donations to label themselves a “foreign representative” and follow tighter guidelines when documenting their activities. The bill specifically targets NGOs receiving foreign funding, and it requires [...]

The Associated Press (AP) released an exclusive report Thursday revealing a secret US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) spying program that targeted top Venezuelan officials, including Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, despite the program’s potential illegality under international law. According to AP, the program, internally referred to as Operation Money Badger, has been ongoing since at least [...]

The current conflict engulfing Israel and Palestine raises significant issues of international law and policy. This is part one in an anticipated two-part series that will discuss some of the relevant legal questions before the International Criminal Court (ICC; Part I) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ; Part II).  With both courts located in [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a statement on Monday ahead of the UN’s fifth scheduled review conference of the 1993 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction (“Chemical Weapons Convention”). HRW urged member states to uphold the convention’s ban on chemical weapons and “single [...]

More than two years after gunman Gabriel Wortman went on a shooting spree that killed 22 people in rural Nova Scotia, questions of why and how this atrocity happened still weigh heavily on Nova Scotian hearts. Families of the victims and the citizens of Nova Scotia have demanded accountability from the authorities under whose watch [...]

Amnesty International on Monday called on the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to immediately release a group of dissidents who have been behind bars beyond the end of their prison sentences. The “UAE-94” case concerns a mass trial conducted by UAE authorities against dissidents and members of the al-Islah political movement in 2012–2013, which Amnesty called [...]

An Egyptian emergency court Sunday sentenced former presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh to 15 years in prison for “spreading false news” and undermining state security. Aboul Fotouh along with several prominent figures from the banned Muslim Brotherhood organization were also accused of plotting to overthrow the state, according to Reuters. Aboul Fotouh ran for [...]

A Swedish woman has been charged with war crimes for bringing her young son to Syria, where he was enlisted as a child soldier, and ultimately killed in the country’s long-simmering conflict, prosecutors announced Tuesday. The Swedish Prosecution Authority alleges the unidentified woman brought her son to Syria in August 2013, when he was 12 [...]

The US Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Assets Control made a special designation Friday against Ali Darassa, the leader of a rebel group in the Central African Republic (CAR). As the leader of the Union for Peace in the Central African Republic (UPC), Darassa holds control over large areas of the country.  The UPC and [...]