News

Hungary’s parliament will consider an emergency bill next week that would give prime minister Viktor Orbán sweeping powers to rule by decree, without a clear cut-off date. The bill seeks to extend indefinitely Hungary’s state of emergency, which was declared two weeks ago. Parliament would only be able to lift the state of emergency by a two-thirds majority, exactly the majority held by ruling party Fidesz, meaning ultimately it’s Orban’s … Read more →

An estimated 50,000 stateless people in Uzbekistan are set to acquire citizenship following the passing of a new law in the country. There are currently 97,346 documented stateless people in Uzbekistan, many are ethnic Uzbeks who fled Tajikistan’s civil war in the early 1990s. Statelessness in the country and across the wider region is largely a result of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the formation of … Read more →

The long awaited Windrush Lessons Learned Review was laid before the UK Parliament on Thursday 19 March, 2020. The damning independent report was produced by Wendy Williams, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary. The report identified that the Windrush scandal was “foreseeable and preventable”. It accused the Home Office of “ignorance and thoughtlessness” over race and highlighted an institutional failure which had turned the lives of thousands of people upside down. … Read more →

Governments, journalists and medical officials are scrambling to provide the public with accurate and timely information about the novel coronavirus but those efforts are being undermined by the spread of medical misinformation and fake news. Amidst this, on 18th March, China decided to effectively expel journalists from three American newspapers in retaliation for restrictions on its news outlets in the US. At least 13 journalists will be expelled in what … Read more →

After more than 420 Russian academics, lawyers and writers published an open letter urging their countrymen to resist President Putin’s plans to remain in power for a further 16 years, over 18,000 people have signed it. The letter was published on 15th March, shortly before the country’s highest court endorsed a move by the Kremlin to enable Putin to extend his presidential term limits as part of a package of … Read more →

As countries around the world struggle to contain the Coronavirus pandemic, measures must consider human rights before they are taken. For instance, by taking drastic and what some have called draconian measures, China appears to have slowed down the coronavirus, but it has come at a high cost. “The case of Li Wenliang is a tragic reminder of how the Chinese authorities’ preoccupation with maintaining ‘stability’ drives it to suppress … Read more →