Civil & Political Rights – Page 4 – Journalists for Human Rights

13 Mar

Pakistani High Court Permits Men to Marry Girls After Their First Period

Adyant Jaiswal2019 – 2020, Asia, Civil & Political Rights, Newspaper

Child marriages have been an unfortunate reality throughout the course of history. Until the 20th century, the average human’s life expectancy was approximately 50 years. Therefore, in an effort to expedite reproduction and the creation of families, girls were married off as soon as they hit puberty.

25 Feb

Presumed Innocent: Cash Bail and Pretrial Detention in the United States

Anne SampognaCivil & Political Rights, Editors' Picks, Newspaper, Social & Economic Rights, The Americas

Kalief Browder was arrested in May 2010 at the age of sixteen; he was accused of stealing a backpack. His bail was set at $3,000—an amount that his mother could not afford. For the next three years, Browder was held in pretrial detention on Rikers Island, a New York City prison notorious for a culture of violence propagated by its guards. While there, he endured two years of solitary confinement which led him to attempt suicide several times. Browder refused multiple plea deals, adamant that he had not committed a crime. Finally, three years, thirty-one court dates, and multiple plea deals later, Browder’s case was dismissed on May 29th, 2013. He was released the next day.

14 Feb

A Dire Outbreak: The Coronavirus and Racial Prejudice

Raya Chehabeddine2019 – 2020, Asia, Civil & Political Rights, Europe, Newspaper, The Americas

Amid the humanitarian crisis in Wuhan, the epicenter of the deadly outbreak, Chinese authorities are desperately resorting to extreme measures. In an effort to contain the spread of the disease, officials enforced an unprecedented quarantine of nearly 11 million citizens. Orders of house-to-house searches have been implemented and an emergency hospital was built in just ten days to tackle the outbreak. Despite the measures taken to contain the spread of this deadly disease, the number of infected cases has soared from 50 in China, to over 31,535 in more than 20 countries in the past three weeks. The death toll is even more alarming, amounting to 638.

13 Feb

Sexual Violence in India: The Unnao Rape Case

Adyant Jaiswal2019 – 2020, Asia, Civil & Political Rights, Newspaper, Social & Economic Rights

Over the past decade, reports of rape in rural and urban areas of India have been consistently increasing. In 2012, the infamous “Nirbhaya case” – in which 23-year-old Jyoti Singh, while traveling in Delhi, was gang-raped, beaten, and killed – garnered global attention. Under public scrutiny, certain “amendments” were made by the government to laws relating to rape. Chief Justice S.A. Bobde made the promise of “effective and speedy investigation and trial.” In the following years, however, those changes proved to be inconsequential as more rape cases were being reported in 2017 than in 2012.

06 Feb

India’s Borders, Open to Whom?

Andjelija Prekic2019 – 2020, Asia, Civil & Political Rights, Collective & Developmental Rights, Editors' Picks, Newspaper

Last month, the Indian government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), a new set of laws that would allow minority religious groups from neighbouring Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan to more easily gain Indian citizenship. While at first glance these policies seem welcoming to targeted minorities, they notably exclude Muslims, raising questions about their true motivations.

27 Nov

Nigerian Patients Chained: An Investigation of “Treatment Centres”

Adyant Jaiswal2019 – 2020, Africa, Civil & Political Rights, Newspaper

Across Nigeria, reports of mental health patients being mistreated in “treatment centres” – presumed medical centres dedicated to treating mental health patients – led human rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) to visit and investigate these centres. They found that patients were being chained, denied meals and a sanitary environment, and in some cases even harmed physically as part of their treatment procedure.

23 Nov

All Of Them Means All Of Them: The 2019 Lebanese Protests

Andjelija Prekic2019 – 2020, Civil & Political Rights, Editors' Picks, Middle East, Newspaper, Social & Economic Rights

Since October 17th, thousands of Lebanese citizens have been flooding the nation’s city centers in peaceful protest of long-standing government corruption, growing inequality, sectarianism, and poor provision of public services.

13 Nov

Venezuela: The Complexity of a Nation in Crisis

Sophie Crawford2019 – 2020, Civil & Political Rights, Newspaper, Social & Economic Rights, The Americas

A Nation in Need of Humanitarian Justice The United Socialist Party of Venezuela, now led by Nicolas Maduro, Hugo Chávez’s successor, has been criticized of democratic repression, electoral manipulation and […]

09 Nov

Forgotten But Not Gone: Migrant Detention Centers in the United States

Anne Sampogna2019 – 2020, Civil & Political Rights, Newspaper, The Americas

Tonight, over 52,000 people will fall asleep in detention centers across the United States. Many have come fleeing gang violence, domestic violence, and poverty. They are hungry, as they are not given sufficient food, and the little food that is given is lacking in nutrients, or sometimes even rotten. They are not guaranteed to receive toothbrushes and soap. Conditions are so inhumane and so clearly based in xenophobia that U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has called detention centers “concentration camps.”1

01 Nov

The Rohingya & Islamophobia: A Dire Situation

Ghayas Osseiran2019 – 2020, Asia, Civil & Political Rights, Collective & Developmental Rights, Newspaper

On August 31st, 2017, the lifeless husks of 9 women and 10 Rohingya refugees washed ashore the sands of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.1 Under dictatorial rule of the Myanmar army between 1962 and 2011, the Rohingya people of the Rakhine State have been handed a predicament of institutionalized oppression on the grounds of religious and ethnic discrimination. While these acts of terror are often justified by the supposed targeting of extremist subsets within the population, the scale and scope of these acts can only be regarded as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing,” says United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein. 2