Human Rights
Just Security’s expert authors offer in-depth analysis on critical human rights challenges, including those related to armed conflict, emerging technologies, abuses by authoritarian governments, repression of human rights advocates and independent media, human rights litigation, racial justice, gender equality, and more.
3,153 Articles

Salvaging US Refugee Law in 2021: The Case for Tackling the Problem of Discretionary Asylum
Our statutes improperly give U.S. government officials broad discretion to deny asylum even to those who are determined by the government to face persecution in their home countries.

On Biden’s Planned Summit: Humility, Not Hubris, Can Save Democracy
The voices of those who have suffered most from democracy’s ills are crucial to understanding – and addressing -- the impact of backsliding laws, policies, and institutions…

US Human Rights Policy: How to Really Build Back Better
The Biden administration must create a system in which human rights and democracy policymaking is embedded and integrated in its decision-making machinery.

MLK Believed “No Justice, No Peace”
Arguments that the protests over the killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and countless others betray King’s legacy are not only in bad faith, but plainly wrong.

Incitement to Violence Ain’t Free Speech
The First Amendment protects abstract appeals for illegal actions. But there can and should be criminal liability for speech that incites the likely and imminent risk of violence.…

A New Assault on a Democratic Citadel in Turkey, Too
A week before the Jan. 6 US Capitol attack, Turkey's president waged another kind of assault on one of his country’s last bastions of democratic thought.

Impeachment Defense, the Constitution, and Bill of Rights
The question at the moment isn’t whether the president could be charged with incitement to violence in criminal court.

How Samantha Power Can Restore USAID’s Crucial Role in US Foreign Policy
The nomination signals that international cooperation is back in the toolbox for America's pursuit of an equitable, prosperous, and just world.

Responding to the Capitol Attack: Accountability Without Overreaction
There are many indisputable facts about last week’s violent and deadly incursion into the Capitol building. It is beyond debate that the fiasco included multiple criminal acts.…

Nestlé & Cargill v. Doe Series: Remedying the Corporate Accountability Gap at the ICC
[Editor’s Note: This article is part of a Just Security series on the consolidated cases of Nestlé USA, Inc. v. Doe I and Cargill Inc. v. Doe I, which was argued before…

Father-Son Separation at US Border Illustrates Lasting Harm That Demands Redress
The abuses they faced under the Trump administration's immigration policy echo those revealed in a new Human Rights Watch investigation.

Ugandan Human Rights Lawyer Fights Charges on Eve of Presidential Election
Following a now-predictable pattern in the leadup to the polls, authorities have hastened arrests of political opponents and critics of President Museveni.