Human Rights

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What’s at Stake in the Abortion Case Before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights?

El Salvador’s punitive treatment of women through its absolute criminalization of abortion will come under scrutiny by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (the “Court”) on March 22-23, in a case involving the state’s treatment of a woman in need of a life-saving abortion. Beatriz was a young woman from the impoverished state of Usulután, who, after experiencing a pregnancy fraught with complications due to an autoimmune disease, found herself pregnant a second time. Despite medical consensus of the lack of viability of the anencephalic fetus and the harm to Beatriz if the pregnancy continued, Beatriz was forced to wait in physical and mental anguish for months while the hospital decided whether to let her doctors perform a therapeutic abortion, separated from her family and young son while in fear of dying or suffering irreparable health damage. This case follows the Court’s 2021 judgment in Manuela v. El Salvador, which documented the negative consequences of the abortion ban on impoverished women and girls. However, in Manuela the Court…

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Another Advisory Opinion on the Climate Emergency? The Added Value of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

The highest human rights tribunal in the Americas, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), sits in Costa Rica’s capital San Jose, part of a region significantly exposed and vulnerable to climate impacts. If the global temperature continues to rise due to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that remain trapped in the atmosphere, enjoying the whole…

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Nicaragua: Expatriation as an Aggravated Form of Political Persecution

In an unprecedented move in the modern history of international law, Nicaragua has stripped more than 300 dissident citizens of their nationality in the last two weeks. 222 of these citizens were deported to the United States on 9 February (see here), with the Managua Appeals Court (Tribunal de Apelaciones) removing their nationality the day…

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There wasn’t before, and now there even more definitely isn’t, any legal barrier to providing cross-border humanitarian assistance in northwest Syria

For three long days following last week’s earthquake in Southern Türkiye, thousands of people in northwest Syria lay trapped under rubble, with no help from the UN. The road through Türkiye to the border crossing between southern Türkiye and northwest Syria, Bab al-Hawa, was damaged. Although, to quote the International Crisis Group’s Syria Analyst Dareen Khalifa,…

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Basu v. Germany and Muhammad v. Spain: Why the first European Court of Human Rights’ judgments on racial profiling in identity checks are disappointing  

Racial profiling by the police is a mounting concern in Europe. It has been defined by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) as “the use by the police, with no objective or reasonable justification, of grounds such as race, colour, language, religion, nationality or national or ethnic origin in control, surveillance or investigation activities” (ECRI…

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