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Claire McCann - 16th October 2017
In HM Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills v Al-Hijrah School, the UK Court of Appeal has concluded that sex segregation in education is discriminatory. Al-Hijrah school is a voluntary aided co-educational Islamic faith school in Birmingham which teaches children aged 4 to 16. From the age of 9, boys and girls are […]
Swapnil Tripathi - 14th October 2017
Manual scavenging has been called the worst surviving symbol of untouchability. The International Labour Organisation defines it as the removal of human excreta from public streets and dry latrines, and cleaning septic tanks, severs and gutters. The practice, though prevalent in other parts of the world, has a predominant presence in India. The people engaged […]
Bhagirath Ashiya - 13th October 2017
The Indian Supreme Court’s multi-religious Constitutional bench, in its much anticipated majority decision in the Shayara Bano case, has ruled the practice of triple talaq to be unconstitutional. The practice of triple talaq allows a Muslim man to divorce his wife instantaneously by pronouncing the word ‘talaq’ three times. This resulted in numerous social media […]
Shreya Munoth - 12th October 2017
The South African Constitution guarantees all of its citizens the right to equality, dignity, freedom of religion and belief as well as the right to protection against arbitrary deprivation of property. Surprisingly, however, despite these guarantees, Muslim marriages, i.e. monogamous and polygamous marriages that are conducted in accordance with Islamic rites/the Shari’ah, are not legally […]
Johanna L. Gusman - 11th October 2017
Last month, leaders from around the world gathered in New York for the 72nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). The Paris Agreement dominated high-level discussions, a poignant topic considering that the UNGA convened in a country that plans on backing out of its commitment to it. In the wake of recent hurricane-induced […]
Swagat Baruah - 9th October 2017
Modern slavery continues to be a significant problem, even in 2017. There are 46 million people around the world today who live in slavery, and 18 million (39%) of them are in India. Although these numbers are shocking, the fact that there is such high prevalence of slavery in India isn’t. Slavery in India is […]
Iago Morais de Oliveira - 6th October 2017
On 22 August 2017, Brazilian president Michel Temer issued a decree ending the protected status of a vast Amazon region known as Renca—an acronym for ‘National Reserve of Copper and Associates.’ The area is approximately 47,000 square kilometres and straddles the states of Pará and Amapá (northern Brazil). It encompasses seven units of environmental conservation […]
Nidhi Singh - 5th October 2017
A nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India on August 24 ruled that right to privacy is a fundamental right and is ‘intrinsic to life and liberty’ which is protected under various fundamental rights enshrined under Part III of the Indian Constitution. In a judgment as elaborate and detailed expanding to 547 pages, the […]
Jayna Kothari - 4th October 2017
2017 has been a big year for constitutional development in India. In a historic and landmark decision, a 9-judge bench of the Supreme Court pronounced that the right to privacy is a constitutional right which is not only rooted in the right to life and liberty, but also enshrined in all other fundamental rights, including […]
Rosalind Comyn - 3rd October 2017
Yesterday, I discussed the High Court’s decision in Campaign Against the Arms Trade’s unsuccessful judicial review of the Secretary of State for International Trade’s granting of arms export licences to Saudi Arabia. The primary question before the Court was whether the Secretary of State for Trade had acted irrationally in concluding that there was no […]
Rosalind Comyn - 2nd October 2017
Yemen’s devastating conflict has inflicted an egregious toll on civilians, catalysing, in the words of the UN Secretary General, a tragedy of ‘almost unprecedented proportions’. Last month the ICRC took the unusual step of identifying an ‘alarming trend’ of attacks against civilians and sharply criticised a Saudi led coalition strike as running ‘counter to the […]
Afreen Hashmi - 29th September 2017
The Indian Government recently issued a direction to identify and deport around 40,000 Rohingya refugees in India, labelling them as a burden on the resources of the country and a security threat. However, the Supreme Court of India has decided to hear a case contending that the proposed deportation is in violation of the fundamental […]