Since 1996, conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been marked by widespread sexual violence used deliberately as a weapon of war, including rape, sexual slavery, and forced pregnancy.[1] Once dismissed as an inevitable by-product of conflict, such acts are now increasingly recognised as serious violations of international law. Against this backdrop, […]
In recent decades, several countries have witnessed the rise of populist politics, both in established and ‘emerging’ democracies. From a public law perspective, populists tend to criticise the disconnection between ordinary citizens and the liberal-democratic institutions that are supposed to represent them. In their view, representative democracy is filled with slow, artificial, cumbersome and unnecessary […]
Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, concerns about abortion grew considerably in Italy. This transformation was neither rapid nor linear: it was the product of ideological tensions, nationalist pressures, medical and religious interests that intertwined in complex ways for nearly a century, culminating in the approval of Law 194 in 1978. Retracing this […]
Her gaze is direct and serious, but not severe; it is open, dignified, and even gentle, showing no trace of self-pity but graceful determination. Her photograph accompanies a newspaper article which reveals that, as a former member of Japan’s Self-Defence Forces (SDFs), she was visiting its headquarters in Tokyo to hand in a petition demanding […]
In his book, Human Rights on Gender, Sex, and the Law in Nigeria, the late Yinka Olomojobi explains that human dignity provides a ‘powerful mechanism’ to protect and promote the rights of [its] citizens[1]. However, historical articulation of dignity in emancipatory texts was not always inclusive in practice. In many emancipation documents adopted before the […]
At least 34,412 migrants have died or gone missing when they attempted to reach European Union (EU) territory along perilous Mediterranean routes since 2014. Undocumented migrants who die and whose remains are recovered at the EU’s borders are often not identified within the EU. Their families are not informed about the fate of their loved […]
In 2024, intersectionality’s long journey through international human rights jurisprudence reached two milestones — almost simultaneously, yet worlds apart. On 10 December 2024, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) explicitly recognised intersectional discrimination for the first time, in FM and Others v Russia, a ruling in which five trafficked women were found to have […]
Despite its centrality to human rights, human dignity is an unclear and contested concept. It can be understood as ‘the freedom to be and become the person one chooses, which happens in and through a social context’. In this description, Jill Marshall proposes an empowerment understanding of human dignity, in which people can navigate their […]
Reproductive Governance in the Twenty-First Century Reproductive governance has emerged as a crucial arena of contestation in the twenty-first century, encompassing questions of gender identity, the relationship between science and religion, the limits of intervention upon the female body, and the status of the unborn. Biomedical advances and governmental policies continually challenge seemingly settled principles, […]
Across the world, judges have been instrumental in making human dignity happen[1]. They have bridged the gap between the solemn promise of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) that ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and in rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards […]