The former United Nations Special Rapporteur on arbitrary executions and renowned human rights law professor Christof Heyns passed away this weekend.

“It is with great shock, bereavement and sadness that the Faculty of Law at the University of Pretoria has received the news of the passing today of one of its internationally esteemed and stalwart colleagues and friends,” said a tweet from the university on Sunday.

Tributes have flooded in around the world for Nawal El Saadawi, an Egyptian doctor, feminist and writer, who was a panel member in the 2010 Permanent People’s Tribunal on Sri Lanka which acknowledged the “importance of continuing investigation into the possibility of genocide”.

Nawal El Saadawi passed away aged 89-years-old, having been a prolific writer and campaigner throughout her life, speaking out against practices such as Female Genital Mutilation and gender-based oppression.

Secretary-General of the UN António Guterres stressed the key role that the United Nationals plays in combating deteriorating human rights violations around the globe in his opening remarks at the 46^th session of the UNHRC session in Geneva.

“Every corner of the globe is suffering from the sickness of violations of human rights,” he said, highlighting the ways in which democracies and fundamental rights of certain groups of people continue to be undermined since the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The United Kingdom and Canada announced that they are imposing sanctions on individuals responsible for serious human rights violations against the people of Myanmar during the coup. 

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announced that three Myanmar military generals will face travel bans and their assets will be frozen under the UK's sanctions regime. 

Photo of ICC’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda

The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday determined that it has jurisdiction over the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict, opening the way for the chief prosecutor to inquire into allegations of Israeli war crimes.

Myanmar’s civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been detained by the country’s military following a military coup in which the top army commander, Min Aung Hlaing, seized total control.

Indian riot police attempted to clear farmers from one of the farmer protest sites in Ghazipur by cutting off water and electricity supplies. 

The protesters defiantly refused to leave the site and were joined by thousands of protesters, forcing the police to back down. 

Three British Sikh men of Indian origin have been arrested by the UK police in connection with the murder of Rulda Singh, a member of the Hindu-supremacist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), in India in 2009. 

In a series of dawn raids, Gursharanvir Singh Wahiwala and his brother Amritivir Singh aged 37 and 40 respectively were arrested in Coventry and Piara Singh Gill, 38, was arrested in Wolverhampton. 

Extradition warrants have been issued by the Westminster magistrates’ court against the three men on suspicions of conspiracy to murder. 

A group of United Nations human rights experts have accused US president Donald Trump of violating international law after he pardoned four Blackwater private security contractors who were serving prison sentences for killing 14 innocent Iraqi civilians, including two children, in Baghdad in 2007.

According to the US Justice Department, at around noon on 16 September 2007, several contractors opened fire indiscriminately in Nisour Square. When the shooting stopped, Iraqi authorities ruled 17 Iraqi civilians had been killed. An FBI investigation concluded there were 14 deaths, including that of two children aged 9 and 11, and said the deaths were considered unjustified under the rules of the use of deadly force.

The city of Detroit announced last month that it is countersuing Black Lives Matter protestors after a group of organizers sued the local government in late August. 

After protests across the USA and around the world over the killing of George Floyd police in May, activists in Detroit sued the local government for how the police reacted to the demonstrations. Alleging that Detroit cops “repeatedly responded with violence” and asking the federal judge to bar the police from using tools of “excessive force” like chemical weapons or rubber bullets in the future. 

The city has now filed a countersuit in response, alleging a “civil conspiracy” and claiming the protests in