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UN Committee Criticizes Detention of Mentally Disabled Defendant
October 11, 2016
The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has found that the state of Western Australia violated international law by detaining a mentally disabled man accused of child abuse indefinitely without trial and called on the state to amend the law that permits such detention when a defendant is deemed unable to understand the notion of criminal responsibility.
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OSCE Plans Largest-Ever US Elections Observer Team
October 05, 2016
Reuters reports that the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe is seeking to organize the largest team it has ever sent to monitor US elections in November, in particular to scrutinize activists' charges of racially discriminatory voting laws in certain US states.
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HRW Seeks Strengthened OSCE Rights Monitoring
October 05, 2016
During the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's annual human rights meeting, Human Rights Watch called on the OSCE to drop its consensus-based process in order to permit human rights monitoring and reporting over the objection of one or more of the organization's members.
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Article Calls for Reassertion of WTO Relevance
October 05, 2016
Lamenting the complex "spaghetti bowl" of international trade agreements that bypass the World Trade Organization, Maria Panezi of the Centre for International Governance Innovation has called on the WTO to reassert itself by reviewing and, if necessary, taking legal action to promote transparency in these agreements.
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UN Observers Call for Racial Reparations in US
September 28, 2016
The UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent has produced a study seeking financial or other reparations from the US government to African-Americans for past "racial terrorism" and calling recent police shootings of minorities "reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching."