In Iran and across the globe, the name Mahsa Amini has become synonymous with the suppression of women’s rights in Iran. Of Kurdish origin, 22-year old Amini died on 16 September 2022 as a result of being beaten by Iranian police while in custody, after being arrested for not wearing the hijab in accordance with government standards. Eyewitnesses who were detained with her reported that she was severely beaten and died as a result of police brutality. Her death sent shockwaves through Iran and the subsequent protests in cities across the country highlighted the plight of women in Iran generall ..read more

On 11 March 2024, the European Union’s employment and social affairs ministers voted to adopt the Platform Work Directive (‘PWD’). First proposed by the Commission in December 2021, the Directive had been the subject of intense negotiations for months, not least given significant opposition from the French government. The instrument’s overarching goal is to ‘improve working conditions in platform work’. To this end, it seeks to combat false self-employment in platform work, but also to create a comprehensive set of rules for algorithmic management applicable to all workers, irrespective of the ..read more

The relationship between Islam, religious freedom, and human rights has long been a subject of debate in Britain. However, the significance of the latest instalment in this saga, the judgment of R v Michaela Community Schools Trust, lies not in Islam’s relationship with secularism or human rights but instead in illustrating the incoherence of British ideas on freedom of religion. The issue began when Muslims students at Michaela School started to pray in the playground during lunch times in March 2023. Michaela responded by banning all ritual prayer, with the justification of preventing segreg ..read more

On 9 April 2024, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or Court) handed down its judgment in the case of Duarte Agostinho and Others v Portugal and 32 Other States. The case, brought by six youth applicants from Portugal, was an ambitious one, relying on the extraterritoriality of Convention rights to bring the case against 32 other Council of Europe Member States. Specifically, the applicants alleged that there had been a breach of their rights under Articles 2, 3, 8 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) due to the existing and future impacts of climate change caused by ..read more

Military justice is in the spotlight again with the Supreme Court of Canada’s judgment in R v Edwards [2024] SCC 15, where the majority upheld the constitutionality of Canada’s military justice system. It represents the latest in a long line of decisions that have considered the validity of the application of military justice according to both constitutional imperatives (e.g. the separation of powers in the Australian Constitution) and the right to a fair trial in the European, Inter-American and African human rights instruments. While military justice systems have been subject to criticism on ..read more

About 18.3% of girls and 4.7% of boys in Pakistan are married before the age of 18. Child marriage is a human rights violation which affects both genders. However, it affects girls disproportionately. In fact, 54% of girls in Pakistan get pregnant before their 18th birthday. Child brides face greater pregnancy-related health risks and their babies are more likely to have health problems. Further, the prevalence of maternal and infant mortality in the country is significantly associated with early marriage practices. Moreover, child brides face 3% more incidence of physical assaults a ..read more

Food-delivery company Zomato recently came up with an “all-vegetarian fleet policy” wherein vegetarian food would be delivered by a different set of delivery drivers wearing green to ensure food segregation. As this could have led to discrimination faced by those delivering non-vegetarian food, the policy was rolled back. However, it sparked an age-old debate in India: are Indians predominantly vegetarians? According to Government data, about 70% of Indians are non-vegetarians. A person’s caste, religion, and linguistic identity determines their dietary practice, all of which are intrinsically ..read more

By 2050, 66 per cent of the world’s population is projected to live in urban areas, and UN Women estimates that one in seven people live in deprived urban areas today. Women will form the majority of the people living in cities and evidence from UN Habitat shows that they are increasingly affected by urban poverty such as inadequate access to shelter and service. However, none of the UN human rights conventions or treaties include a specific reference to gender-based poverty in urban areas or explicit human rights obligations to address this concern. Nevertheless, despite the supposed limitati ..read more

Individual strikers are protected from dismissal where they are dismissed for participating in ‘protected’ (i.e lawful and official) industrial action, under s. 238A of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (TULRCA). However, there are many ways in which employers can penalise individual strikers other than through dismissal, such as through demotion, suspension, fines, disciplinary warnings, and disproportionate pay deductions. In Secretary of State for Business and Trade v Mercer, the Supreme Court considered if a worker proposing to strike was protected from ‘detrime ..read more

Under India’s National Health Mission and the Integrated Child Development Scheme, a group of workers, referred to here as ‘scheme workers’, are employed by the government as part of a welfare policy aimed at improving healthcare access in rural areas. Despite being indispensable to the rural healthcare system, scheme workers are denied recognition, employment regularisation, and minimum wages. This denial was affirmed in the judgement of State of Karnataka v Ameerbi. In this blog series, the Ameerbi judgement is critically examined. Part I argues that the decision of Ameerbi wrongly excludes ..read more