Over the last decade or so, FCRA has increasingly been used by the Government to tighten its hold over NGOs, CSOs and other voluntary organisations, by cancelling registrations, denying renewals and confiscating their property. As of April 2026, the FCRA Dashboard hosted by the MHA indicates that 22,273 registrations were cancelled, and 15,182 expired registrations were not renewed.

In March 2026, the Central Government introduced a bill (Amendment) to amend various provisions of FCRA. While the Amendment portrays itself as a routine legislative exercise to bridge legal gaps through a “comprehensive statutory framework”, its potential impact disastrously worsens things for NGOs. It proposes the establishment of a “Designated Authority” as specified by the Central Government. As per Section 16A, the foreign contribution and assets shall “provisionally vest” in such Designated Authority on cancellation or surrender of registration or if the registration ceases to exist as per the provisions of FCRA or its rules. The Designated Authority can also take over the management of the person whose assets are provisionally vested in it in “public interest”. Further, if such a person fails to obtain fresh registration/renewal/restoration, the foreign contribution and assets “stand permanently vested” in the Designated Authority. Consequently, the Designated Authority is authorised to, “for public purposes”, transfer the assets to any Ministry, Department, authority or Agency of the Central or State Government or any local authority or dispose of such assets through sale or other means and credit the sale process together with any unutilised foreign contribution to the Consolidated Fund of India.

Sections 16B and 16C of the 2026 Amendment also provide for retrospective application. Section 16B provides that all foreign contributions and assets vested under Section 15 as omitted by FCRA or its rules, immediately before the commencement of the Amendment, shall, from the date of its commencement provisionally vest with the Designated Authority.  Section 16C provides that if any person who was permitted to accept foreign contribution under FCRA “ceases to exist or is rendered inoperative or defunct”, the foreign contribution and assets of such person shall permanently vest in the Designated Authority.

As per the aforementioned data, around 37,455 registrations have been cancelled or not renewed. Funding and asset-building through such contributions are absolutely fundamental to the survival of NGOs, especially grassroots-level organisations engaged in crucial areas of health, education, sustainable development, and upliftment of marginal communities. FCRA already ensures deep control and regulation of NGOs that do not align with the Government. This Amendment provides further sweeping and arbitrary powers to completely paralyse NGOs and effectively ensure that NGOs that are struggling or have succumbed to this law lose all scope of revival.

The Amendment is in furtherance of the gradual tightening of deep control, sweeping confiscation and unjust expropriation initiated by the Government. In Noel Harper v Union of India, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the 2020 Amendment to FCRA, observing that there is no fundamental right to receive foreign contributions and the right to freedom of association under Article 19 of the Constitution of India is not violated if the Government regulates such contributions to protect national interests.

Thus, although the fundamental right to freedom of association is enshrined in the Constitution and Article 22 of the ICCPR, the courts have failed to recognise that increasing control and subjection of NGOs to such laws not only creates a chilling effect but also reduces the already shrinking public space for dissent and criticism. As Habermas profoundly posited, civil society ensures that discussions in the public sphere percolate through the channels of the democratic setup to form part of the institutionalised decision-making. Seen this way, NGOs and civil society embody the public spirit, much like the government. The way forward should be to enable them to thrive, not to stifle them.

On 15 December 2025, the Court of First Instance of the High Court of Hong Kong handed down a monumental 855-page judgment in the case of HKSAR v Lai Chee Ying [2025] HKCFI 6291 (“Jimmy Lai Judgment”). While the vast majority of the decision serves as a meticulous fact-finding exercise regarding the complex evidentiary record, the jurisprudential core of the ruling resides in Chapters 2 and 29. It is in these chapters that the Court addresses the legal controversies surrounding the charges of collusion with foreign forces provided in Article 29 of the Hong Kong National Security Law (“HKNSL”) and sedition provided in Sections 9 & 10 of the then Crimes Ordinance (now replaced by Sections 23 – 26 of the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance). A close reading of these chapters reveals a judicial approach marked by distinct strengths in legal methodology, critical weaknesses regarding rights protection, and looming uncertainties for the future of Hong Kong’s common law system.

The Good: Methodological Rigour and Common Law Connectivity

Lai and his three newspaper companies faced three charges related to national security. On Count 1, the court found that the defendants published a series of seditious articles designed to incite hatred against the Central Authorities and the HKSAR government. For Counts 2 and 3, the ruling stated that Lai used his extensive foreign network to lobby senior US officials to impose sanctions and engage in other hostile activities against the PRC and Hong Kong.

The judgment is notable for its steadfast adherence to traditional common law interpretation methodologies, thereby ensuring that the HKNSL is navigated with technical precision. To interpret the elements of the collusion offence, the Court prioritized the “literal rule”, emphasising the ordinary meaning, purpose, and context of the statutory text [47]–[63]. This strict adherence to textual analysis is designed to enhance legal certainty and predictability, serving as a vital reflection of the rule of law.

Furthermore, the Court employed the “purposive rule” to analyze the legislative background, thereby defining key terms such as “hostile activities” and “request” to reject overly narrow defence interpretations [57]. This combination of textual and purposive analysis aligns with the Hong Kong courts’ historical approach to national security cases (see, for example, the Court of Final Appeal’s ruling in HKSAR v Tam Tak Chi [2025] HKCFA 4).

The Bad: Literalism Over Liberty

However, this technical adherence to text often appears to overshadow the substantive protection of fundamental rights. Despite the HKNSL explicitly mandating respect for human rights (Article 4) and the rule of law (Article 5), the judgment did not sufficiently elaborate on how these rights are to be balanced against security concerns at an operational level.  While the Court affirmed that it had taken rights protections and rule of law principles into account [57], its operative logic was heavily skewed toward the literal meaning of the provisions. This intense focus on literalism risks sidelining the robust human rights balancing exercises required in modern constitutional adjudication.

This issue is compounded by the judgment’s comparative analysis, which relied on the existence of “similar” national security laws in the UK, Australia, Canada, and Singapore [46]. This broad-brush approach largely ignored significant differences, especially when most of those jurisdictions do not criminalize the act of requesting foreign sanctions at all or in the same manner as the HKNSL. By failing to dissect these differences alongside the similarities, the Court missed a critical opportunity to clarify the boundary between criminal collusion and legitimate political expression under international human rights standards.

The Uncertain: The Appellate Horizon

The element of uncertainty lies in what comes next. The Court of First Instance has laid a foundation that is logically rigorous yet seemingly imbalanced regarding civil liberties. The judgment explicitly leaves room for exploration regarding the discourse on rights and comparative law. As the case potentially moves up the appellate ladder, the central question remains whether appellate courts will accept the lower court’s heavy reliance on literalism or if they will require a more substantive proportionality analysis. Until the appellate courts clarify whether the interpretation rules allow for a more generous accommodation of human rights, the precise boundaries of acceptable political conduct in Hong Kong remain in flux.

Finished Chapter, Unfinished Story

The Jimmy Lai judgment is a document of immense complexity. It is logically detailed and rooted in common law tradition, yet open to critique for its comparative analysis and rights protection. It represents a significant chapter in Hong Kong’s legal history, but it is unlikely to be the final one.

Six French citizens of African or North African origin, residing in Roubaix, Marseille, Vaulx-en-Velin, Saint-Ouen, and Besançon, denounced “racial profiling” during 2011 and 2012. They therefore sought a conviction for discrimination, violation of privacy, and freedom of movement. They also sought to compel the French authorities to implement measures to prevent discriminatory checks and ensure the traceability of these checks.

These six plaintiffs are part of a group of 13 men who launched a legal battle, denouncing unjustified checks, sometimes associated with frisking, insults, or informal address.

After losing at first instance in October 2013, all the plaintiffs appealed, and in June 2015, the Paris Court of Appeal ruled in favor of five of them, ordering the State to pay €1,500 in damages to each. In November 2016, the Court of Cassation definitively condemned the State in three cases, a historic first. The six men who had not won their case therefore decided to appeal to the ECtHR in 2017.

The decision handed down on Thursday, June 26, 2025 comes at a time when the extent of this racist practice was confirmed by the Defender of Rights, Claire Hédon in a report which states that “Young men perceived as Black, Arab, or North African are four times more likely to have been stopped than the rest of the population, and 12 times more likely to be subject to a more intensive stop”.

This is the first time France has been condemned on this ground. While stating that it was “aware of the difficulties police officers face in deciding, very quickly and without necessarily having clear internal instructions, whether they are facing a threat,” [129] the Court concluded, regarding  Karim Touil, who was stopped nearly 15 years ago, that there exists in his case “a presumption of discriminatory treatment against him, which the government has failed to rebut” [92]. Five other applicants, however, had their applications dismissed. Like the domestic courts, the Court considered that, for the identity checks of five of the six applicants, all of which had had at least one identified legal basis, no individualised prima facie evidence of a differentiation of treatment had been produced by demonstrating the coexistence of sufficiently strong, clear and concordant inferences capable of giving rise to a presumption of discriminatory treatment [122].

Defender of Rights Claire Hédon recommends (p. 43) implementing traceability for identity checks to ensure that those stopped have the opportunity to seek redress, particularly in the event of an allegation of discrimination. She also suggests amending the legal framework for identity checks by specifying in Article 78-2 of the French Code of Criminal Procedure that identity checks must not be based on protected characteristics, and that the reason for the person’s selection must be objectively clarified and stated to the person stopped, wherever possible.

As early as 2021, the Paris Court of Appeal had already condemned the State for gross negligence following the identity checks of three high school students in 2017 by police officers at Gare du Nord. However, it is clear that no action has been taken since then. This state of affairs is all the more worrying in the context where, a week earlier, the Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, had launched a veritable hunt for exiles in stations and on trains, against which several unions from the world of justice had filed an appeal with the Conseil d’Etat.

The decision is important, but suffers from a real ambiguity: the Court assures, on the one hand, that “identity checks motivated by physical characteristics, associated with a real or supposed origin” are well established in France, and certainly cannot be reduced to “isolated cases”, but disputes that this is a “systemic” or “generalized” practice. The Council of State (where, notably, the French president of the ECHR, Mattias Guyomar, has spent his entire career) had made a comparable analysis in 2023.

This decision represents a crucial step towards justice and accountability. However, it is clear that the Court did not address the structural nature of discriminatory stop and search practices in France. The risk is that this decision could further entrench the practice of arbitrary stop and search, already common in much of Europe, which stigmatizes migrants and other visible minorities, perpetuates stereotypes, and constitutes an ineffective and counterproductive method of policing.

Strong Public Support for Animal Protection

Analysis of public submissions on the Emergency Management Bill demonstrates overwhelming support for embedding animal welfare in disaster law. A recent thematic study found that 61% of all submissions raised the importance of including animals in emergency legislation, with nearly half of all submissions directly influenced by the “No Animal Left Behind” campaign—the largest animal disaster management advocacy effort in New Zealand’s history. Key themes included calls for:

• Clear statutory powers for animal rescue and evacuation;
• Mandated animal-inclusive emergency planning;
• Improved coordination and funding for animal disaster response; and
• Protection and identification of disability assistance dogs during disaster.

These priorities reflect both ethical concerns and practical realities: research from past disasters shows that people often risk their own safety to save animals, and that failing to plan for animals can undermine both human and animal welfare.

Despite the clarity and volume of public input, animal welfare provisions have repeatedly been sidelined or treated as peripheral in legislative drafts and policy documents. This pattern is not new. For example, after the 2017 Edgecumbe flood—where nearly 29% of evacuees breached safety cordons to rescue pets—animal welfare concerns raised in subsequent reviews were relegated to annexes for “future consideration,” rather than being integrated into core recommendations.

Such practices undermine the legitimacy of public consultation and risk breaching New Zealand’s obligations under Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees citizens the right to participate meaningfully in public affairs. As Bentley’s research on COVID-19 lawmaking in New Zealand has shown, rushed or performative consultation processes can erode civil and political rights, especially when governments fail to act on clear public priorities.

The Government’s Latest Discussion Document

The government’s new discussion document acknowledges the high volume of submissions advocating for animal-inclusive disaster law, a positive sign that public voices are at least being recognised. However, past experience suggests caution: previous documents have referenced academic work in passing but have not always engaged with the substance of the evidence or the most comprehensive research in the field despite such research being provided.

While the discussion document includes a reference to Glassey’s research, it does not fully reflect the breadth of analysis or the scale of public advocacy documented in recent peer-reviewed studies or the substantive report presented at Parliament in 2019. Nonetheless, the fact that the volume of animal-focused submissions is explicitly noted in the consultation process is a step forward.

The case for animal-inclusive disaster law is both moral and practical. International experience—from Hurricane Katrina in the US to the Edgecumbe flood in New Zealand—shows that people’s attachment to animals is a critical factor in disaster response. Laws that fail to account for this bond risk not only animal suffering but also human non-compliance with evacuation orders, increased danger, and reduced trust in authorities.

Moreover, national examples like the US’ Pets Emergency and Transportation Standards (PETS) Act 2006 and Italy’s Civil Protection Code 2018 demonstrate that animal-inclusive disaster law is both achievable and able to be integrated into primary disaster management law.

A Roadmap for Reform

The public has provided a clear roadmap for reform, calling for:

• Mandatory inclusion of animals in emergency management plans;
• Clear statutory powers for animal rescue and care;
• Proper funding and coordination for animal welfare response; and
• Recognition of the human-animal bond in disaster policy.

These recommendations are grounded in both lived experience and a growing body of academic research, including recent thematic analyses of public submissions.

As New Zealand prepares a new draft bill, there is hope that this time the voices of citizens will be reflected in law. The lessons of past failures are clear: meaningful reform requires not just consultation, but genuine responsiveness to public priorities. By embedding animal welfare into disaster law, New Zealand can set a global standard for compassionate, effective emergency management—and restore faith in the democratic process.

Since August 2021, the Taliban de facto government has issued more than 80 edicts restricting the rights and freedoms of Afghan women and girls in all spheres of their existence: public participation and political life, economic and social life, health and safety, and family and cultural life. Women described their experience saying, “We are alive, but not living”. The ‘Morality Law’ of August 2024 prohibits women from speaking in public on the grounds that the female voice should only be expressed in an intimate setting, and even prevents women from singing publicly.

The prohibitions issued by the Taliban also include discretionary powers to apply severe punishments for non-compliance, further heightening a social climate of fear and uncertainty. The intent to erase women’s and girls’ human rights to the extreme has also facilitated the reinforcement of harmful practices and gender stereotypes, as well as patriarchal conducts towards women and girls, including in some cases by their own family members.

This deprivation of fundamental rights of Afghan women and girls, and LGBTI persons, and harsh methods of enforcement, can be characterized as gender persecution, a crime against humanity already contemplated in Article 7(1)(h) of the Rome Statute of the ICC and prosecutable by the ICC. The Prosecutor’s move has been welcomed by Afghan civil society organisations, as well as by UN human rights experts, as a positive step in the pursuit of justice for misogynistic policies and for past and ongoing gender-based crimes.

How does this help the movement to end gender apartheid?

Feminist campaigns, human rights organisations, UN human rights experts, renowned activists like Malala Yousafzai, and some States have defended that the system of institutionalized discrimination, segregation and subjugation of women and girls based on gender, also amounts to ‘gender apartheid’, and should be explicitly recognized and codified as such in international law. Defenders of this position argue that ‘gender apartheid’ builds on the legal figure of racial apartheid to fully capture the institutionalised and systematic nature of the inhumane acts being perpetrated in Afghanistan based on gender and would complement the existing crime against humanity of gender persecution. The UN General Assembly’s Sixth Committee (Legal) is currently discussing the possibility of including gender apartheid in the draft Convention on Crimes Against Humanity and it will resume its analysis in its meeting of January 2026.

While the outrage over the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan is crucial, it is also essential to understand it not as an isolated event in a single country, but as a symptomatic situation – certainly one of the most serious – of the global gender backlash. As such, Afghanistan is a test for the international community, its founding values and its red lines: the reaction to this reality will point the path to take in the face of (potential) acts of gender oppression in other parts of the world.

One can only hope the ICC judges live up to the expectations of the Afghan people and issue the requested arrest warrants. This would place the dignity and human rights of women and girls at the centre of the international stage where they belong.