Rwanda: New Torture and Illegal Detention Allegations in a Climate of Political Oppression
A decade after living through one of the most brutal genocides of the past century, Rwanda has not yet fully recovered from the legacy of its past. A report published...
Preventing Torture
In March 2017, the School of Law at Royal Holloway University of London and the University of Bristol Human Rights Implementation Centre hosted a seminar for leading members of...
Midazolam and the Lethal Injection – ‘In re: Ohio Execution Protocol Litigation’
On January 26 2017, a federal court in Ohio ruled that its current execution method is unconstitutional. This was on the basis that the use of the first drug in...
Work of Oxford Pro Bono Publico for UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention receives Supreme Court backing
After a record long gestation period the Supreme Court today handed down its judgment in Belhaj v Jack Straw & Sir Mark Allen and Rahmatullah (No 1) v Ministry of...
Australia set to ban asylum seekers from entering Australia: It is time to hold Australia accountable
On the 30th of October 2016, the Australian government announced that it would be introducing a law into parliament banning asylum seekers from entering Australia. This law will make it...
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...
Using the Convention Against Torture to Advance Transgender and Intersex Rights
Violence and cruelty towards LGBTQI people worldwide is still far too common, making the Convention Against Torture (CAT) an obvious tool for LGBTQI activists. However, it is less obvious that...
Human Rights Advisory Panel urges the UN to compensate Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian families for lead poisoning in IDP camps
On 8 April 2016, the Human Rights Advisory Panel (HRAP) released its long-awaited opinion in the case of N.M & others against the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo...
The Mandatory Costs of Mandatory Minimum Sentences in Canada
Another day another mandatory minimum struck down. In Lloyd, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a one-year mandatory minimum sentence that applied to drug trafficking offenders with a prior...
Administrative Decisions and Terrorist Suspects: The UK Supreme Court’s Decision in Youssef v SSFC
The month of January witnessed an important UK Supreme Court decision in Youssef v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (“Youssef”) pertaining to civil rights. It considered a...
A Backwards Step for Human Rights Law in Victoria: Bare v Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission
In July 2015, the Victoria Court of Appeal, Australia, handed down a landmark decision in Bare v Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (‘Bare’). The Court held that Victoria’s Charter of Human...
The Mau Mau Litigation – Justice at Last
It is rare for the British Government to apologise for state sponsored human rights abuses, particularly if they took place over 50 years ago. But in September 2015 the British...
