Child marriage and sexual assault of children in Turkey – does public opinion matter?
The issue of child marriage and sexual abuse of children in Turkey has once again been placed in the spotlight, resulting in wide news coverage. Turkey counts among the countries...
Iran’s Criminalization of Human Rights Defenders: The Case of Narges Mohammadi
The “harassment” of human rights defenders’ and “criminalization” of their activities in Iran has become common practice by the judicial branch of the Islamic Republic in recent years. According to...
Lifting the Veil on Enforced Disappearances and Extrajudicial Killings in Kenya
Kenya has experienced an upsurge in cases of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings over the last five years, a situation that has not gone unnoticed in the international arena. The...
Ahmed v United Kingdom: European Court of Human Rights Still Skirting Around Jury Bias
The European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR”) recently handed down its long-awaited admissibility decision in Ahmed v United Kingdom. It unanimously declared that the defendant’s claim, that at least one...
Ending the Perverse Culture of Mob Justice in Nigeria
The failure of Nigerian criminal justice institutions and agencies to prevent mob justice or punish those who engage in it, has lent an air of acceptability to the vile practice....
Crimes Against Culture
A landmark case for international law is currently before the International Criminal Court (ICC), where the destruction of cultural heritage in Timbuktu is being tried as a war crime under...
Retrospective Punishment: A Reasonable Limit on Charter Rights (R v. KRJ)
In KRJ, the Supreme Court of Canada tackled the retrospective application of criminal sanctions on certain sexual offenders. In particular, whether or not sentencing legislation could be applied to an...
Canada to Hold National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls
On August 3, 2016, the government of Canada announced a National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (the “Inquiry”). The Commission’s mandate is “to examine and report...
Guilty of Rape, But Not Punished
On 3 February 2016, the Criminal Division of the Court of First Instance of Ghent in Belgium found a 33-year old man guilty of rape, but decided to suspend the...
Velásquez Paiz et al v Guatemala: Gender Stereotypes and Lack of Justice – Part I
In November 2015, a decade after the sexual assault and murder of a young Guatemalan woman, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (‘the Court’) released a ground-breaking judgment further clarifying...
The Intersection of Age, Gender and Disability in the Prosecution of Sexual Violence in India
This post examines a petition made to the Indian Supreme Court by a rape victim’s mother. The petitioner avers that her daughter’s case should be tried in a court set...
Killing Time: A Comment on the Case of Brandon Astor
On 3 February 2016, the State of Georgia executed a 72 year old man – Brandon Astor – by lethal injection. Astor was convicted of killing a convenience store manager...
