To submit a blog, please read the OxHRH Blog guidelines.
Meghan Campbell - 22nd May 2019
Last week, the UK Supreme Court in DA, DS and others v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions upheld a series of legal reforms that capped the level of benefits for lone parents, who are likely to be mothers, with young children under the age of 5. Lone parents with young children are forced […]
Raghav Mendiratta - 19th May 2019
On April 22, 2019, in a significant decision for India’s transgender community, the Madras High Court in Tamil Nadu upheld the right of a trans-woman and a man to register their marriage under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955. What was so far only etched as an abstract right of gender self-determination through the NALSA judgment, […]
Koldo Casla - 14th May 2019
Section 1 of the Equality Act 2010 asks public authorities to actively consider the way in which their policies and their most strategic decisions can increase or decrease inequalities. I am talking about the socio-economic duty. However, successive governments since 2010 have failed to commence it, to bring it to life in technical terms, which means […]
Catarina Helena Cortada Barbieri - 14th May 2019
2018 was a challenging year for women’s rights in Brazil, and perhaps a taste of trials in the years to come. In October 2018, Brazilians elected a far-right president and a highly conservative Congress. President Jair Bolsonaro has been an MP for 30 years and has always been controversial, although he was a marginal figure […]
Fleur van Leeuwen - 13th May 2019
In October 2018 the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee (HRC) adopted general comment (GC) 36 on the right to life, replacing GC 6 and GC 14. Latter documents date back to the 1980s and attest to the androcentric nature of the international human rights system. Neither document pays attention to issues that characteristically affect the […]
Helen Kehoe - 23rd April 2019
Ireland has an extensive history of systemic human rights abuses of women and children, encompassing multiple institutional settings and spanning most of the 20th century: Magdalene Laundries, Mother and Baby Homes, industrial schools and the non-consensual practice of symphysiotomy in hospitals. The legal responses of the state have been fragmented, generally narrow in approach, and often the subject of […]
Martin Kwan - 15th April 2019
A death sentence against a convict with an intellectual disability (ID) would violate the Eighth Amendment’s proscription of cruel and unusual punishments, because it would serve no penological purpose. In the recent US Supreme Court (SC) decision of Moore v Texas, the issue was (once again, having been litigated before in 2017) the correctness of the […]
Peter Dunne and Alex Sharpe - 28th March 2019
A recent, high-profile article published on HuffPost claimed that the popular leisure group – David Lloyd Leisure – had decided to exclude all trans persons from their preferred gender segregated facilities unless they could produce a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC). Given that only 4,500 GRCs have been issued (and that GRCs are not available to trans minors), this […]
Diana Niksova - 27th March 2019
Under Austrian law, Good Friday is a public holiday only for members of the Evangelical Churches of the Augsburg and Helvetic Confessions, the Old Catholic Church, and the United Methodist Church. Hence, only members of these four Churches are entitled to an additional 14thpaid public holiday. They receive their regular salary if they do not […]
Nicole Busby - 14th March 2019
On 10th December 2018 the First Minister’s Advisory Group on Human Rights Leadership set out its vision for the future of human rights in Scotland. The publication of the Group’s report on International Human Rights Day was the culmination of a participative process which stretched beyond its membership with representation from across civil society. The consideration of how […]
Prankul Boobana - 12th March 2019
A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India (‘SC’) recently relaxed the stringent conditions imposed by the Maharashtra government for obtaining licenses and running dance bars, public establishments which are an important source of livelihood for female dancers. These dancers generally belong to the traditional dancing communities and are following their hereditary occupation. It […]
Leonie James - 11th March 2019
R (Johnson and others) and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2019] EWHC 23 (Admin) is an English High Court case relating to the benefit payment, Universal Credit. Universal Credit is a UK benefits payment, paid by the UK Government to support those out of work or in very low income work. In this […]