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Shubhangi Agarwalla - 2nd March 2018
The death penalty needs to have significant social benefits, not attainable with the next most severe form of punishment, life imprisonment, for it to be justified. Existing arguments already show how death penalty fails this test by drawing attention to the inherent barbarity of the punishment, the arbitrary way it is inflicted and the lack […]
Swagat Baruah - 24th January 2018
When Rodrigo Duterte took to office as President of the Philippines on June 30 2016, he sought to fulfil, among his many other deadly campaign promises, his promise to cleanse the country of drugs users and dealers, explicitly by extra-judicial means. On August 8, 2016, he declared: “I don’t care for human rights, believe me.” […]
Ayushi Agarwal - 12th December 2017
In a recent case, Independent Thought v. Union of India and Anr, a division bench of the Supreme Court of India partially read down an archaic exception to the offense of rape, finding that a husband who rapes his minor wife cannot be exempted from prosecution. Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (IPC) […]
Benjamin Joshua Ong - 17th November 2017
The High Court of Singapore recently increased the sentences of two employers who had starved their foreign domestic worker, causing serious physical injury. In so doing, the court affirmed the victim’s right to human dignity despite the relative leniency of the charge. This case prompts reflection not only on the vulnerability of foreign domestic workers […]
Ndjodi Ndeunyema - 31st August 2017
The decision of Likanyi v The State, which was recently handed down by the Namibian Supreme Court, raises pertinent issues relating to the understanding and application of the principles of public international law which govern the extraterritorial arrest of individuals by States. The Court had to consider whether it could exercise criminal jurisdiction over one […]
Prateek Srivastava and Dushyant Thakur - 22nd August 2017
The practice of beggary is rampant in India and currently, over 4 lakh (400,000) people are involved in it. Some practice beggary because of their religious beliefs while for some it is their sole source of livelihood. Incidents of human trafficking for the purpose of beggary and miscreants disguised as beggars create further issues. Presently, […]
Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias - 18th July 2017
On a November night in 2015, an effigy of a Jew was burnt in the main market square in Wrocław, Poland, as part of a protest against accepting refugees into Poland. The figure was holding the European Union’s flag. The burning was committed by Piotr Rybak, an activist known for his nationalistic and xenophobic views. […]
Amartya Kanjilal and Poornima Rajeshwar - 29th May 2017
On 16th December 2012, a particularly disturbing case of gangrape and murder in New Delhi (‘the Delhi gangrape case’) set off massive nationwide protests. Widespread discussions on sexual violence in India led to significant criminal law amendments, including, the introduction of death penalty for the repeat offence of rape and also for rape resulting in […]
Dimitriy Mednikov - 22nd May 2017
Article 31 of the Russian Constitution, which guarantees a right of peaceful assembly, has recently clashed with the Russian Criminal Code which, as of 2014, has criminalised repeated participation in unauthorised demonstrations. When the first person in Russia was prosecuted under the new law, a handful of attorneys and NGO lawyers challenged the Russian Government […]
Alice Storey - 20th March 2017
On January 26 2017, a federal court in Ohio ruled that its current execution method is unconstitutional. This was on the basis that the use of the first drug in its three-drug protocol, midazolam, would create a “substantial risk of serious harm” or an ”objectively intolerable risk of harm” in violation of the Petitioners’ Eighth […]
Alice Storey - 21st January 2017
Prior to the election of Donald Trump, death penalty abolitionists were quietly confident that capital punishment was nearing its inevitable end in the United States. The number of executions has been falling year-on-year; in 2015 the US executed 28 people, a relatively low number when compared with the 60 executions which took place in 2005. […]
Elizabeth King - 2nd December 2016
In the first case to prosecute crimes against culture as war crimes, the Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) found Mr Al Mahdi — a member of Ansar Dine — guilty of the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against religious and historic buildings in Timbuktu in 2012. This case represents the recognition […]