Recruiting child soldiers under the age of 18 is a crime under international law. Recruiting children under the age of 15 is a war crime. The International Criminal Court‘s first trial will be that of DRC warlord Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, charged with recruiting child soldiers as young as 10. The term ‘child soldier’ refers to […]
A crucial feature of the UN human rights armoury is under threat: the Special Procedures. Some members of the newly constituted Human Rights Council are anxious to end this form of scrutiny, to the alarm of human rights NGOs. The credibility of the UN itself is at stake, says Amnesty International. The United Nations, like […]
Advancing the global campaign against explosive remnants of war, Belgium has taken the unprecedented step of banning investment in companies that manufacture cluster bombs. Belgium banned the weapon itself a year ago. Cluster munitions spread ‘bomblets’ — hundreds or thousands at a time — over wide areas from 1 to 20 square kilometres. Unlike landmines, […]
At least 57 countries have signed the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance since it was adopted by the UN General Assembly in December last year. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, says the new treaty articulates limits in the 'war on terror.' Whatever the goal, secret detention […]
Acclaimed Harvard legal academic Mary Ann Glendon's A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Random House, New York 2001) is a great read for anyone with more than a passing interest in human rights. It does what good history writing should do: help us understand where we are today. […]
When a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) was finally established in The Hague in 1998, its founding document contained four classes of major crimes that could be heard by the Court. Three of them are genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, each with legal precedent and a clear definition in the Rome Statute establishing […]
Last year, RightsBase hailed the introduction of free primary education in Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and Uganda, resulting in huge increases in school attendance and great knock-on benefits to the kids and their society. Now Uganda is offering free secondary education, in accordance with its human rights obligations. The International Covenant on the Economic, Social and […]
The highest international authority on civil and political rights has found Australia is violating the rights of a Bangladeshi asylum seeker detained for nearly seven-and-a-half years. Danyal Shafiq, 34, was raised in an orphanage in Bangladesh. Fearing torture, harsh imprisonment or death at the hands of either Bangladeshi police or the Sharbahara Party, he fled […]
Charles Taylor, former President of Liberia wanted on 17 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, made headlines last year when he was finally arrested in Nigeria and handed over to be tried by the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone. Now the law has caught up with his son, Charles ‘Chuckie’ Taylor, a […]
It’s 40 years since Australia executed anyone. Forty years ago today a flock of pigeons took flight from the roof of Pentridge Gaol in Melbourne when the gallows trap crashed open under Ronald Ryan’s feet. He was, and may he remain, the last person executed in Australia. On this bleak anniversary Lex Lasry QC reminds […]
Follow rightsbase on 