The meeting on reform of the legal system in Zimbabwe convened by the ICJ and other human rights institutions adopted a final resolution containing a clear analysis of the situation and recommendations for reforms.
Zimbabwe-Seminar reform legal system-event-2009 (full text in English, PDF)
The ICJ releases the electronic version of Practitioners’ Guide No. 4: Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and International Human Rights Law.
Around the world, people of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities are singled out for abuse. In states with laws that criminalize same-sex sexual conduct, LGBT people are arrested, detained, tortured, and, in some cases, executed.
Even in states with no official penal sanctions, LGBT people are the target of violent hate crimes, harassment, and ostracism. They live in fear of losing their jobs, their housing, and their families, all because of how they live and whom they love.
For the past five years, ICJ has worked on promoting the applicability of human rights law to violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Together with the International Service for Human Rights, ICJ facilitated the development of the Yogyakarta Principles.
This document, drafted by a distinguished group of human rights experts, articulates the human rights principles that apply to sexual orientation and gender identity, and identifies the legal sources of States’ obligations to protect, promote and fulfil rights.
Drawing on the Yogyakarta Principles, the ICJ wrote the Practitioners’ Guide to provide judges, lawyers, and activists a detailed understanding of the legal foundations for the protection of people victimized on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
The Practitioners’ Guide offers a comprehensive review of the principles of non-discrimination, equality, and privacy. It then analyzes the scope and nature of the legal prohibition against some of the most severe violations – torture, deprivation of liberty, extrajudicial and arbitrary executions, and denial of the rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly.
Through the Practitioners’ Guide, the ICJ hopes to increase awareness of human rights principles that protect people of all sexual orientations and gender identities, as well as to encourage legal advocacy.
For the text of this Practitioners guide, see Sexual orientation, gender identity and international human rights law – Practitioners’ guide, no. 4
The ICJ says the fight against impunity and for international justice has made positive progress in the last decade, not least with the commencement of the first cases at the International Criminal Court.
Nevertheless, international justice continues to encounter obstacles in its development. The ICJ, the legal community and all the human rights movement must continue their efforts to attain universal justice and an end to impunity.
Fight against impunity must be continued-web story-2009 (full text, PDF)
Following the abduction and murder of Chechen human rights defender Natalya Estemirova, the ICJ today expressed its deep concern at threats to the safety of human rights defenders in Russia.
The International Commission of Jurists Welcomes Our New Commissioners
Lebanon: Ensure draft media law upholds free expression
Nepal: Protesters Demand Integrity, Rights, Rule of Law
India: Joint statement urging Indian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release human rights defender and student activist Umar Khalid