For many in Russia the word ‘Strasbourg’ is identified with justice and the protection of human rights and the European Court receives thousands of applications every year. But recent proposed amendments to Russian laws would make the process of applying to Strasbourg more complicated and give the
As right wing commentators channel Enoch Powell, Steven Hirschler counts the human cost of misdiagnosing civil unrest
We lead this week with a look at a new Open Society report assessing the Portuguese government's rejection of the 'war on drugs' in 2000, and decriminalization of drug possession and use. What lessons can be learnt from this experience? ~ MW
We lead this week with news that former Mexican President Vicente Fox suggested on Friday that Mexican authorities consider calling on drug cartels for a truce and offering them amnesty, speaking out a day after an apparent cartel attack on a casino killed 52 people ~ MW
The West has got it wrong about on Tymoshenko. More than a simple struggle for power and influence, her trial marks a fundamental confrontation between the modern (Yanukovych) and postmodern (Tymoshenko). In a head-to-head battle, postmodernism is always likely to triumph, writes Dmitry Vydrin.
The trial of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has rallied the opposition behind her. Her supporters believe the outcome is already decided and her only hope of justice lies in the European Court of Human Rights. Yet beyond a call for her own personal liberty, does anybody know what
Simon Parker, Coordinator End Child Detention Now, reports from Edinburgh on Catherine O’Shea’s chilling take on the UK asylum system
The government is embarking on large-scale privatisation of British prisons, despite research indicating that private prisons are more likely to be dangerous and more costly in the long run
This week we lead with the alarming news that Irina Teplinskaya, friend of the openDemocracy Drug Policy Forum and renowned human rights activist currently undertaking litigation against the Russian Government, has been arrested while crossing the Russian border. Our lead article is an impassioned
It is nearly two years since Sergei Magnitsky died a shocking death in Moscow's Matrosskaya Tishina prison. Since then, an imaginative campaign by friends and colleagues has kept his case in the international spotlight. For Zoya Svetova, the recent decision by US authorities to impose visa sanctio
