UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk cautioned on Thursday that the UK government’s decision to list the activist group Palestine Action under terrorist legislation may contravene international standards. Türk noted that under international standards, acts of terrorism should be limited to “criminal acts intended to cause death or serious injury” with the goal of “intimidating [...]

Amnesty International raised fair trial concerns Friday after the four-year prison sentence handed to 19-year-old protester Saba Jikia in Georgia. Jikia was sentenced for allegedly kicking a police officer who was lying on the ground. The fair trial concerns arise, in part, from the video evidence used by the prosecution to make their case. According [...]

Amnesty International on Saturday decried an Italian government order, claiming its elevated sanctions against activists, prisoners and migrants constitute a potential grant of arbitrary law enforcement power. The new measures, called “draconian” by the organization, create new offenses for prisoners and migrants at detention centers for not cooperating with or passively resisting police orders. According [...]

Large protests erupted Thursday afternoon in Bratislava, Slovakia, against a series of amendments to the law on non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which would make the activity of civil society organizations in the country more challenging. While introducing the concept of “foreign supported” organizations for NGOs receiving foreign funding larger than five thousand euros, if approved, the [...]

The Helsinki District Court in Finland on Friday sentenced a 38-year-old man to life for committing war crimes in Ukraine. Voislav Torden, 38, a Russian-Norwegian better known as Yan Petrovskiy, was a deputy leader of a neo-Nazi paramilitary unit called Rusich, during Russia’s first attacks on Ukraine in 2014. According to the prosecutors, Petrovskyi was [...]

The European Commission published a press release on Friday outlining its new Gender Balance on Corporate Boards Directive, which entered into application at the end of December 2024. The new directive aims to produce effective national measures that promote gender equality among companies’ administrative and oversight boards. Micro, small and medium sized enterprises will not [...]

The Hague District Court in the Netherlands on Friday rejected a motion by 10 Palestinian and Dutch NGOs to halt arms export to Israel. The judge ruled that the state has room to assess whether its arms export policy violates its international law obligations. The court observed that applications for export have been rejected regularly, [...]

The Romanian Constitutional Court decided on Friday to halt the country’s ongoing presidential elections. The decision came after the president in-duty, Klaus Iohannis declassified four internal intelligence documents, indicating that Russia unduly supported one of the candidates via aggressive hybrid attacks. Georgescu, the main ultra-nationalist and pro-Russian candidate in the country’s electoral race condemned the [...]

Several restrictive measures were taken this Friday in the Netherlands’ capital Amsterdam by the mayor, chief public prosecutor, and police chief, following a series of allegedly antisemitic hit-and-run episodes aimed at supporters of the Maccabi Tel Aviv football club. Amsterdam has been designated a high-risk area and a ban on demonstrations has been put in [...]

The Seanad Éireann, Ireland’s legislature, passed a bill to establish specialized family law court divisions on Thursday, aiming to make an efficient and user-friendly family justice system. The Family Courts Bill 2022 establishes the Family District Court, Family Circuit Court and Family High Court, as dedicated divisions within the existing District, Circuit and High courts. [...]