Professor Tonja Jacobi and Dylan Schweers published a study in 2017 which found that interruption rates in the United States Supreme Court were highly ideological, in that conservative judges interrupted...
Sexual Violence and Genocide: The International Court of Justice’s ruling on Rohingya
Since August 2017, at least 10,000 Rohingya – a Muslim minority group in Myanmar’s Rakhine state – have been killed and 700,000 have fled to neighboring Bangladesh amidst a brutal...
Women’s Equality: Paradigm and Backlash
Women’s rights seemed simple 72 years ago, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, under the visionary leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt, launched an international regime which outlawed sex discrimination and...
The Gambia v Myanmar: ICJ upholds the rights of Rohingyas
On January 23, the International Court of Justice announced the imposition of provisional measures against Myanmar. Myanmar is required to immediately cease all atrocities and human rights violations against Rohingyas,...
A novel approach to Get refusal: the use of the offence of coercive control to obtain a religious divorce
For Jewish women, obtaining a religious divorce (Get) can be life-changing. Women denied a Get are considered ‘chained’ to their husband, preventing them from re-marrying within the faith (whilst not...
Landmark Transgender Ruling in Zimbabwe: An Opening for Future LGBTQIA Activism and Litigation?
On the 14th of November 2019, Judge Bere of the High Court of Zimbabwe ruled in favour of Ricky (Rikki) Nathanson, a transgender woman, who was suing the police for...
Younger women, older men: The perpetuation of gender discrimination through minimum legal age for marriage
In India, the minimum legal age for marriage is different for men and women. Section 4(c), Special Marriage Act, 1954 requires a male to have completed 21 years of age...
South African Constitutional Court Affirms Doctrine of Common Purpose in Rape Cases
In criminal law, the doctrine of common purpose establishes that where two or more people agree to a commit a crime, each will be responsible for the acts of the...
Eswatini Court Upholds a Widow’s Rights to Customary Land Use – A Beacon of Hope?
On October 9th, Ethel Dlamini (nee Gule), an elderly Swazi woman and a widow, approached the Courts to seek an interim interdict against Prince Chief Gasawa Ngwane (of Lavumisa), that...
CEDAW: The Every Woman Treaty that Already Exists
There is an initiative for a new treaty focused on violence against women that calls itself the “Every Woman Treaty”. It is proposed as a stand-alone United Nations (UN) treaty...
Equal Pay for Equal Work? Flaws in the Indian Law
The Equal Remuneration Act 1976 (‘ERA’), a legislation in India dealing with equal pay for equal work for men and women, was repealed in August 2019, and replaced by the...
Accountability for Sexual Harassment at the International Criminal Court – The Case of Defence Support Staff
In March 2018, amid the rise of the #MeToo hashtag on Twitter, international media brought attention to a series of uninvited advances by an experienced defence counsel at the ICC...
