Amnesty International: Reacting to news that Moldova’s parliament has passed amendments to the country’s Criminal Code which redefine “high treason,” Veaceslav Tofan, Executive Director of Amnesty International Moldova, said: “The amendment to Moldova’s Criminal Code adopted by the parliament is alarming. The broadened definition of high treason is vague and...

ICJ-Kenya: Nakuru, Kenya – Since time immemorial, Kenya’s culturally rich communities proudly championed and practiced their own forms of justice that was tethered in basic mechanisms and principles of reconciliation and peaceful coexistence. For decades, this inherent system; either customary or informal justice mechanisms was at the center of dispute...

Peter Dimba, chairman of the Legal Affairs Committee in Parliament, has called for a thorough revision of the Penal Code, citing its numerous inconsistencies with the current Constitution. Dimba highlighted that several offenses in the Penal Code date back to colonial rule and were intended to restrict the local population....

SALC: Some lawmakers have lamented [Malawian] Parliament’s delays to facilitate the review of Section 184 of the Penal Code, which provides for the offence of rogue and vagabond. The development has since riled human rights defenders. In 2018, three people from Kasungu challenged police sweeping exercises after they were arrested...

INN: In March 2024, the 2nd Annual Global Freedom Fellowship, organized by Incarceration Nations Network, brought together 16 formerly incarcerated fellows from 13 countries for a life-changing experience of healing, knowledge-sharing and transnational solidarity in South Africa. Highlights of their two weeks included a private tour of the iconic Robben...

Two years after it was filed at the regional court, a case challenging Sierra Leone’s laws on loitering has had its first day before judges at the Community Court of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The women’s rights campaign group, AdvocAid Sierra Leone, is challenging the legality...

Prison Insider: Research findings and prevention work in collaboration with the prison administration Suicide and self-harm are major concerns in prisons around the world, with rates often significantly higher among prisoners than in the general population. In 2017, the Moroccan prison administration initiated a collaboration with DIGNITY, the Danish Institute...

SALC: In the centre of Southern Africa, we find one of the region’s most stable nations – Botswana. Having dominated the top spot in Africa for the respect of civil and political rights by global observers, the country has remained stable while protecting the rights of all people. Throughout time,...

Parit Chiwarak, Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul, and Arnon Nampa dared to call for reform of the Thai monarchy at a 2020 protest. They were arrested, charged, put on trial and are facing over a decade in prison. #TrialWatch is fighting for their freedom. https://youtu.be/V885VNtn4kA?si=DnXibYrNSCRQUEQj

Kenya: Majority of remandees are held for minor crimes ranging from being idle, disorderly, littering, begging, urinating in public, and hawking. This is the reason Julie Wayua, [ICJ-Kenya] is advocating for legal reforms.

Amnesty International: Authorities across East and Southern Africa continued to impose severe restrictions on the right to freedom of expression and media freedom over the past year, said Amnesty International on World Press Freedom Day. The human rights organization documented widespread intimidation, harassment and detention of journalists in countries throughout...

https://youtu.be/qYzx4ZGQnc8 Invisible People: In this compelling documentary, Invisible People traveled to Grants Pass, Oregon, a picturesque city of about 40,000 residents, which is now at the forefront of a significant legal battle with nationwide implications. The U.S. Supreme Court is set to deliberate on the pressing issue of homelessness and...

Amnesty International: Two young Thai activists were today indicted on ‘groundless’ royal defamation and computer crime charges, Amnesty International has said. Niraphorn “Bie” Onnkhaow, an Amnesty International Digital Rights Champion who recently engaged with the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, and Panusaya “Rung” Sithijirawattanakul, a prominent protest leader featured in Amnesty...

In April 2024, the Dullah Omar Institute submitted a written statement on behalf of the Campaign to Decriminalise Poverty and Status in response to the activity report of the Special Rapporteur on Prisons, Conditions of Detention and Policing in Africa. The submission focuses on the challenges related to the criminalisation...

NHLC: This past Monday [April 22, 2024], the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Johnson v. Grants Pass, a case about whether communities can make it illegal for homeless persons to sleep in public spaces with so much as a blanket, even in the absence of any adequate shelter alternatives. The...

One week after International Women’s Day, a coalition of organisations and experts convened to address the rising trend of women’s criminalisation driven by poverty in a side event at the 68th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York on 15 March. The event...

April 25 is Africa Pretrial Detention Day, aimed at drawing attention to the excessive use of pretrial detention and the need for urgent reform across African criminal justice systems. In 2014, members of the Campaign, supported the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights to adopt the Luanda Guidelines on...

Amnesty International: Responding to a decision by Uganda’s Constitutional Court to only revoke parts of the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023 (AHA), a law which prompted rising attacks against LGBTI people, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, Tigere Chagutah, said: "We are dismayed that the Court has turned its...

Advocating for a non-discriminatory approach in European policies ASF, Prison Insider, FEANTSA and European Alternatives participated in a workshop to discuss how to advocate for a non-discriminatory coherent approach to migration and poverty in Europe and its neighborhood.In the contemporary European political space, an overly securitized and criminalized approach is...

Malawi: The High Court sitting in Blantyre yesterday adjourned to June 6 2024 the case in which people who were begging in the city are challenging the constitutionality of Section 180(b) of the Penal Code, which criminalises begging. The case involves 12 applicants who were arrested on April 11 2017...

SALC: After a year of postponements and delays, the High Court of Botswana has set 15 May 2024 as the date to hear the constitutional challenge of Section 59(1) of the Botswana Penal Code. The provision is phrased in vague and broad terms and curtails freedom of expression. It further places...

Invisible People: Florida state lawmakers approved a bill that prohibits camping on public property at a time when homelessness has increased by more than 8% across the state since 2022. The law, also known as House Bill 1365, would prohibit cities and counties from allowing people experiencing homelessness to sleep or...

Amnesty International: Following a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Wa Baile v Switzerland, Amnesty International Switzerland’s Legal Advisor Alicia Giraudel, said: “The court’s judgement in the Wa Baile case is an opportunity for the Court to catalyse legal protection from ethnic profiling and racial discrimination...

ICwS & ICJ: On 7 March 2024, the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (ICwS) presented its joint project on the decriminalisation of poverty and status to the 2024 Commonwealth Law Ministers Meeting in Zanzibar, United Republic of Tanzania. The project is being implemented together with the Commonwealth Secretariat and the International...

At least 22 African countries – former colonies of the Belgians, British, Dutch, French and Portuguese – retain domestic laws that make ‘vagrancy’ illegal and equip the police with excessive detention powers in respect of vagrants. Activists say that these laws criminalise poor, homeless or unemployed individuals. Hawkers, street vendors,...

PALU: The Pan African Lawyers Union (PALU) and the Congress of African Journalists (CAJ) in coordination with the UNESCO Liaison Office to AU and UNECA, have formally unveiled the framework of the African Media Lawyers Network (AMLN), following a stakeholders’ validation meeting that took place on 31 January 2024. The...

AdvocAid: On Thursday, February 15, 2024, AdvocAid Sierra Leone engaged members of the Legislative and Human rights committees in Parliament on the decriminalisation and declassification of petty offences otherwise known as “misdemeanours” in Sierra Leonean law. The engagement falls under the project titled: Decriminalising Poverty; Advocating for Legal Reforms on Petty...

Amnesty International: Responding to the passing of the “Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, 2024” by Ghana’s parliament on February 28, Amnesty International’s Ghana Country Director, Genevieve Partington, said: “The Parliament’s passage of this draconian bill is shocking and deeply disappointing, coming shortly after Ghana was elected to serve...

Amnesty International: Ethiopian authorities have used the state of emergency to silence peaceful dissent by arbitrarily detaining prominent politicians critical of the government and journalists, Amnesty International said today. On 2 February 2024, Ethiopia’s House of People’s Representatives endorsed an extension of the state of emergency, which came into force...

Mohamed Wa Baile claims to have been subjected to ethnic profiling in 2015, when he was stopped by police officers in a train station in Zurich and told to identify himself. Wa Baile, a Swiss citizen and a visible minority, states that he was not given a reason for the check. He...

Moving building towards a just Africa On 30th November to 2nd December 2023, campaign partner, Clean Start Africa organized The Beyond the Bars Conference. The Beyond the Bars conference is a semi-annual event that brings together formerly imprisoned women, stakeholders, community leaders and partners in the criminal justice space from...

The Campaign to Decriminalise Poverty and Status welcomes the adoption of the first-ever resolution on access to justice for all by the United Nations General Assembly. This resolution supports the advancement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, whose overarching vision is to “leave no one behind” and in particular Goal 16,...

https://www.youtube.com/live/RTMuLbUU6j4?si=hXY-UpuF4rBe9ik8&t=1294 SALC: Despite significant successes by activists, the global anti-rights movement has swung the pendulum in favour of the increased use of the law and criminal justice system to criminalize and stigmatize marginalized persons and voices. Whether it is Indigenous communities, migrants, refugees, sexual and gender minorities, or people of...

Amnesty International: Responding to the landmark verdict on 5 December on the killing of Nabaraj BK and five others by the West Rukum District Court in Nepal, convicting 26 individuals for murder and caste-based discrimination, Nirajan Thapaliya, Director of Amnesty International Nepal, said:  “The District Court verdict is a welcome...

National Homelessness Law Center: WASHINGTON, D.C. – (November 3, 2023) Today, the United Nations Human Rights Committee highlighted serious and ongoing patterns of human rights abuses — including those against people experiencing homelessness and poverty — in the Concluding Observations from its recent convening that investigated the United States’ compliance with the International Covenant on...

Amnesty International: The Supreme Court’s ruling recognizes as “extremist” an undefined “international public LGBT movement.” This phrase, used by the Russian Ministry of Justice, appears to target not an established, clearly defined group or initiative, but any activism in defence of the human rights of LGBTI people or even any public association...

Invisible People: The United Nations Human Rights Committee recently called on U.S. officials to abolish laws criminalizing homelessness in concluding observations from the body’s fifth periodic report on the country. Concluding observations are produced at the end of every session for participating states to review. They often include policy recommendations...

Invisible People: Another study confirmed what many housing advocates already know: Homelessness is primarily caused by a lack of affordable housing, not substance abuse. The study, which Washington State University conducted, analyzed state-level differences in rates of homelessness in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia using data from 2020...

Penal Reform International (PRI) and Women Beyond Walls are collaborating to map out the key areas in need of reform related to the criminalisation of women globally due to their poverty and status. We want to know which criminal laws target or disproportionately impact women, what do we know about the impact of...

ICJ-Kenya: NAIROBI,Kenya, – The distinction between petty offences and all other offences is that they are categorized as misdemeanours, now enshrined in law. Calls to decriminalize petty offences, which primarily affect groups like sex workers, street vendors, hawkers, public service vehicle touts, street families, drug users, and even human rights...

SALC: Sedition laws are a serious threat to freedom of expression and democracy in Africa. These laws are often used to silence dissent and criminalize legitimate criticism of the government. In recent years, there has been a worrying trend of African governments enacting new laws or expanding the scope of...

NEW YORK (27 October 2023) – The vast majority of countries that have laws and policies targeting individuals based on their sexual orientation or gender identity have inherited these practices from the legacy of colonisation, a UN expert said. "Most colonial projects regulated sexuality and gender as part of their broader...

Harm Reduction International: On 13 October 2023, the Human Rights Council (HRC) concluded its 54th session (11/09/2023 to 13/10/2023). This briefing highlight key debates, decisions and documents in which drug control and its impact on human rights were analysed and addressed. Read full highlights and download the briefing here: 54th...

PRI: The International Corrections and Prisons Association (ICPA) Annual Conference 2023 took place in Antwerp, Belgium, from 22-27 October 2023, hosted by the Belgian Prison Service. The theme of the conference was “Humane Corrections: What more can we do“, reflecting the need for a more humane approach to corrections and to...

From 18-20 October 2023, 257 delegates representing 7 countries from across Africa convened for a regional conference: ‘Unlocking Barriers: Rights of Women in the Criminal Justice System in Africa’. The first of its kind, the conference considered recommendations in an open and collaborative forum, which identified the challenges, strategies and...

The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing and the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty sent a communication to Italy on a draft law that could lead to the criminalization of individuals living in precarious situations, and undermine the procedural guarantees to protect the occupants of a dwelling from being pushed into homelessness. ...

PRI: In many countries around the world, criminal justice fines disproportionately affect the poorest and most marginalised in society, effectively creating tiered justice systems. In this blog, Jean Galbraith and Rheem Brooks from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School summarise the findings of new research and discuss what international human rights...

ICJ-Kenya: KAMPALA, Uganda – The International Commission of Jurists, Kenyan Section has been at the forefront of National, Regional and Global campaigns calling for the decriminalization and reclassification of petty offences.  Under the banner of, ‘Poverty is Not a Crime’, ICJ Kenya has consistently advocated and championed for legislations that...

ICJ-Kenya: The Kenyan Chapter of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ-K) is championing for Judicial Independence and Accountability in the country, that will facilitate Judicial institutions to properly execute their mandate. On the sidelines of this year’s Annual Jurists Conference, ICJ Kenya Executive Director Elsy Sainna and Chairperson Protas Saende...

AdvocAid: As Sierra Leone together with the rest of the world celebrate the International Day of the Girl Child under the global theme – Our time is now—our rights, our future, Kadiatu (not her real name), now a 16 year old in detention has never heard about this day or know...