Civil and Political Rights

The rise of Islamophobia in Europe specifically affects covered Muslim women. Legal restrictions and social hostility towards headscarves impede their right to express their faith, identity, and access to other human rights. These prohibitions must be approached as oppressive policies that limit the freedom of women to make their own decisions.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, religious minorities suffered limitations on their religious rights. Due to such limitations, religious minorities lost what is called the ‘collective effervescence’ of their rituals and started transitioning to a new religious digitalization.

Last elections in Italy marked the victory of the far right, confirming a European tendency of recent years. This shift poses some basic questions for the country and the European Union in relation to an effective promotion and protection of human rights.

Professional assassins are murdering more and more Latin American investigative reporters with impunity. Who are the perpetrators? What can be done to safeguard the media in the firing line?

On February 24, 2022, I woke up in a new reality. My morning began before dawn with phone calls, messages and emails from family, colleagues and friends telling me that Russia had attacked Ukraine, with tanks entering from the territory of Belarus.

Much has changed since Uganda gained independence in 1962. Yet the country retains colonial laws that impede proper functioning of the media and freedom of expression. State intimidation of journalists also breaches international human rights standards.

Two well-known human rights NGOs from the Russian Federation were banned by the decisions of its judiciary in December 2021. It is a case study that reveals the link between a corrupt judiciary and an authoritarian state for which human rights are the greatest threat.

The way in which authorities have dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic raises fundamental issues under the right to life. At the least, wilful failure to take reasonable steps to prevent deaths will violate the duty to protect life.

Freedom of expression is in the eye of the storm created by the COVID-19 pandemic, clashing in particular with efforts to combat misinformation and disinformation that have been spreading online.

International human rights law is geared toward protecting rights of individuals. COVID-19, however, necessitated widespread restrictions placing the common good above personal liberties. Such derogations should be explicit, clearly defined and limited to safeguard against creeping normalisation of exceptional provisions.