African Commission Addresses Torture of Human Rights Defenders in Sudan

On March 10, 2015, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights published a decision condemning Sudan’s mistreatment of human rights defenders, which remains a pressing concern in the country.  In the case of Monim Elgak, Osman Hummeida and Amir Suliman v. Sudan, the African Commission held that the government of Sudan violated several articles of the African Charter on

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Aya Fujimura-Fanselow

Aya Fujimura-Fanselow joined the International Justice Resource Center as Staff Attorney in 2015. Most recently, Aya was based in Mexico City, where she worked on projects in the field of torture, reproductive rights, and human rights violations committed in drug detention centers (with organizations including GIRE, the US Human Rights Network, and Open Society Foundations). Prior to relocating to Mexico,

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Kenya participates in the UPR

Universal Review of 14 Countries’ Human Rights Records Underway

The human rights records of 14 States are under review during the 21st session of the Human Rights Council’s (HRC) Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Working Group, being held in Geneva, Switzerland from January 19 to January 30, 2015. [OHCHR Press Release] Through this peer review process, United Nations Member States review one another’s overall human rights record every four and

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The U.S. appears before the Committee Against Torture

Human Rights Experts Call for Prosecution, Reparations in Wake of U.S. Torture Report

On Tuesday, December 9, the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (Intelligence Committee) published a report detailing the “abuses and countless mistakes” of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) detention and interrogation program in the years after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. See Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program:

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The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination reviews the United States

Human Rights Bodies Respond to Killings by Police in U.S.

Recent decisions by two grand juries in the United States not to indict white police officers for the shooting deaths of two black men, Eric Garner in New York and Michael Brown in Missouri, have sparked “legitimate concerns” about American police practices among United Nations human rights experts. [UN News Centre] The deaths of Garner and Brown in separate incidents

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In the Case of Dominican and Haitian People Expelled v. the Dominican Republic, IACtHR Finds Multitude of Human Rights Violations

Last week, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights released its opinion in Case of Dominican and Haitian People Expelled v. the Dominican Republic, where it held that the State’s discrimination, detention, and mass expulsion of individuals of Haitian descent violated the rights to: juridical personality, nationality, a name, personal liberty, privacy, fair trial, judicial protection, equal protection before the law,

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Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity

For more information on specific rights discussed in this guide, please see the full list of IJRC’s thematic guides. OVERVIEW International and regional human rights conventions protect all persons regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights lays out this key principle of modern human rights, declaring, “All human beings are born free and

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