Three women enslaved in an ordinary London house for 30 years: this is shocking. But it should not be a surprise. In the modern world the trade in human slaves is booming – indeed, by some calculations slaves alive today outnumber those stolen from Africa over four centuries.In the

Tougher penalties for extremely violent rapes are to be introduced later this year, the new chairman of the Sentencing Council, Lord Justice Treacy, has revealed.The appeal court judge this week starts work as head of the body that researches, revises and sets out the underlying tariffs

Five disabled people have won their court of appeal bid to overturn the government`s decision to abolish the independent living fund (ILF).The ILF provides support enabling nearly 20,000 severely disabled people to live independent lives in the community.The appeal by the five was against

Funerals can be lengthy affairs in western Kenya, and Liz, a 16-year-old schoolgirl, was out late at a wake for her grandfather that had stretched into the evening. She was on her way home when she recognised some familiar and unfriendly faces in the darkness. She knew instantly that the

The European court of human rights has accused British newspapers, including the Daily Mail, of publishing "seriously misleading" reports. A statement issued by the registrar of the court and emailed to reporters last Friday, says the court is "concerned about the frequent

Even though the human rights court in Strasbourg and the convention it enforces are never far from the headlines these days, it is rare to find any mention of another important human rights agreement – the European Union`s charter of fundamental rights. This is understandable: although

Some of the 28 Greenpeace activists and two journalists being detained in Russia while awaiting piracy charges are being kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, while others are held in "extremely cold" cells, according to the head of Greenpeace.Kumi Naidoo, Greenpeace

Exhausted to the point of collapse by four days of fighting in the southern tip of Vietnam, the strewn men look more like corpses than soldiers. A widow crouches distraught over the remains of the husband she identified from his teeth. And a young paratrooper sports a helmet that says it

The Conservative party in the UK is prepared to withdraw from the European convention on human rights (ECHR) after the next election, the home secretary Theresa May has said, as she detailed a fresh drive to curb the appeal rights of 70,000 people who face deportation every year."The next

Government attempts to promote mediation as an alternative to expensive courtroom divorce and custody battles are failing, according to figures obtained through freedom of information requests.Statistics compiled by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) show that the number of couples attending

New regulations dealing with complaints against judges are coming into force at the beginning of next month in UK. They are designed to speed up the process and provide a service that is fairer, both to judges and complainants.So it seems a strange time for Lord Carlile QC to be calling

Inmates could soon be banned from smoking at prisons in England and Wales, the Ministry of Justice has said. A pilot scheme to monitor how prisoners react to the move is being planned by the government, but sites have not yet been chosen.A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said: "We

Save the Children is going to organize an advocacy workshop on Monday September 23, 2013 in Khulna in order to facilitate Khas lands for extreme poor households under Shiree programme. The Economic Empowerment of the Poorest Programme (EEP/SHIREE-Stimulating Household Improvements

A fast track court, which has convicted four persons in the December 16 gangrape-cum-murder case, on Wednesday fixed September 13 for pronouncing the quantum of sentence to be awarded to them. Additional Sessions Judge Yogesh Khanna reserved the order on punishment after hearing

Barack Obama`s claim that he is "president of the word`s oldest constitutional democracy" was either a deliberate insult to an ally that had just let him down or breathtaking ignorance on the part of a former president of the Harvard Law Review. Leaving aside the question of how long

The Department of Law & Justice, Southeast University (SEU) has clinched the championship of the 9th National Henry Dunant Memorial Moot Court Competition-2013 while the Department of Law, Dhaka University (DU) has become runner up.The competition was jointly organized by the

The discussion about Syria when G20 leaders meet in St. Petersburg on September 5 and 6, 2013, should address the member countries’ abysmal response to the Syrian crisis as a whole over the past two years. While G20 leaders are unlikely to agree on the response to the alleged chemical

A controversial new Bollywood thriller, to be released in India within months, aims to deter potential rapists through a "very violent and brutal" representation of how a victim who manages to capture her attacker decides his fate.Titled Kill the Rapist?, the film, dedicated to "women

A "modern slavery" bill that tightens the laws on human trafficking will be introduced in a bid to help to eradicate an "evil in our midst", Theresa May has announced. The home secretary said that prosecution rates for human trafficking were still shockingly low across Europe and that an

The gang rape of a journalist in Mumbai has left a lot of women in India worried about their safety – and rightly so. After a student was gang raped and died in Delhi last December, I was frequently asked by journalists if Delhi was the “most dangerous” place for women to live.