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Shauna Olney - 25th November 2019
“For me, as for most women workers I know, this Convention and this Recommendation are personal… This Convention, and its recognition of violence and harassment as a range of behaviours and practices, tells me that what I have experienced counts.” – Worker delegate, at the adoption of Convention No. 190 and Recommendation No. 206. On […]
Dhruva Gandhi and Unnati Ghia - 21st November 2019
In October 2019, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments on a question of law that might shape the trajectory of LGBTQ rights for the years to come. The court grappled with the question of whether the prohibition against sex discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act 1964 applies to discrimination perpetuated against […]
Nick Queffurus - 20th November 2019
On 17th October, a gloomy, blustery evening in Bloomsbury was lit up by an illuminating event to celebrate 30 years since Kimberlé Crenshaw coined ‘intersectionality’. Early in the discussion, it was noted that intersectionality has become another of those buzzwords which reverberates around progressive circles, sometimes without a clear definition. The chair, therefore, cited Crenshaw’s […]
Abby Buttle - 20th November 2019
As the current Oxford Human Rights Hub/Rhodes University Travelling Fellow, I’ll be blogging about my experiences at the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) and the Rhodes University Law Faculty for the next five months. Hundreds of Makhanda residents are currently living with raw sewage periodically flooding homes, roads and grazing land. In some areas, children are having […]
Monica Arango Olaya - 17th November 2019
The Colombian Constitutional Court has recently delivered two groundbreaking decisions. One struck down taxes on tampons and sanitary pads, while the other ordered the city of Bogota to create a public policy on menstrual hygiene for women living on the streets. The reasoning in both decisions was innovative: the first applied principles governing substantive equality […]
Cono Giardullo - 15th November 2019
The issue of ‘contested territories’ has become one of the main bones of contention with regard to how the human rights legal framework addresses the violation of human rights extraterritorially. Notably in the European region, case law related to similar entities such as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transdniestria, and […]
Naz Khan - 15th November 2019
In 2003 and 2008, the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) requested the U.N. Secretary-General to investigate reports of gross violations of humanitarian and human rights laws in the Darfur region of Sudan. The International Commission established that the Sudanese government, along with the Rapid Support Forces (Janjaweed militias), carried out attacks on civilians including mass rapes, […]
Eva Rom - 14th November 2019
For the past few months, continental Europe has become increasingly aware of the intricacies surrounding Northern Ireland’s past. Yet, the perspective of the outsider, shaped by the Brexit negotiations, seems to only concentrate on the by now significantly softened Backstop. This post wants to draw attention to the wider debate taking place in the United […]
Alix Schulz - 9th November 2019
Two recent decisions by the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht – BVerfG) shed new light on the horizontal effects of the constitutional right to equality in private law relationships. The Court identified specific circumstances under which the equality guarantee of the German Basic Law (Grundgesetz – GG) will take effect between private actors. The Court […]
Daniela Nadj - 6th November 2019
Considered one of the worst man-made disasters in post-World War II Britain, the Grenfell Tower fire of June 14th, 2017 is a breach of the right to life, an assault on human dignity and a manifestation of stark inequality in the UK. The fire was a foreseeable consequence of collective political inaction to regulate health […]
Fairuz Mullagee - 5th November 2019
In a recent South African High Court judgement, the court held the failure to cover domestic workers under Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act (COIDA) to be unconstitutional. This finding could be a springboard for extending protection for occupational injuries to all precarious workers, including platform workers. Section 23 of the South African Constitution […]
Jade Weiner - 5th November 2019
On the 18th of September 2019, Chief Justice Mogoeng handed down a unanimous judgment declaring the common law defence of moderate and reasonable chastisement constitutionally invalid. Freedom of Religion SA (FoR SA) argued that parents should be able to use physical force upon a child as a means of corrective educational discipline. The state should […]