A dispute has arisen between the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and Richard Ratcliffe, husband of British-Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been imprisoned in Iran for the last five years. … Read more →
UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, has raised concerns regarding the treatment of asylum seekers at Europe’s borders – calling for states to halt abusive practices and investigate the actions taken by their respective border agencies. UNHCR has found that some European states are “restricting access to asylum, returning people after they have reached territory or… … Read more →
A letter sent from UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, to Turkish Minister of External Affairs Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, details the concerns for Turkey’s human rights record since the third cycle of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), and a possible framework for improvement. … Read more →
Iran has begun blocking its citizens from using the end-to-end encryption service, Signal. Under repressive regimes, such as that in Tehran, services like Signal offer journalists, activists and ordinary citizens the ability to communicate, without being monitored by the state. … Read more →
United Nations Independent Expert on human rights and international solidarity, Mr Obiora C. Okafor, released a statement urging global coordination and … Read more →
Human Rights Group, Amnesty International, has called for New York City to ban police use of “invasive” facial recognition, warning of a potential escalation of discriminatory practices should the software be integrated further. … Read more →
Asylum seekers held in temporary Home Office accommodation are being threatened, according to testimony from residents. They have allegedly been told by staff employed by private contractors that their asylum claims will be harmed if they “misbehave” … Read more →
A new report by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) found that thousands of EU care workers currently in the UK risk being criminalised overnight and losing their right to work. JCWI issued an urgent warning that there … Read more →
On 21 January 2020, the Turkey Tribunal held a webinar in collaboration with the International Observatory of Human Rights (IOHR) to consider the state of impunity in Turkey. The speakers included political and legal figures Marie Arena, MEP (Belgium), Michael Polak, Barrister (UK) and Orsola Casagrande, Co-author of “Fight Impunity” report (Italy), and Turkish activists Emre Turkut, co-author of “Impunity in Turkey Today”, and Natali Avazyan, a Turkish human rights activist. Finally, a video statement was given by Ercan Kurkut, brother of Kemal Kurkut, a university student who was killed by Turkish police in 2017. … Read more →
David Isaac, the former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, has called on the government to ensure its review of the Human Rights Act is “independent-minded on potentially political issues and “should not mean turning our back on European human rights.” In December 2020, it was announced that former … Read more →