Global Affairs Blog

The Right to Privacy’s legacy in India commenced with the 1975 case of Gobind v. State of M.P. In this verdict, the Indian Supreme Court while acknowledging the absence of the term “privacy” in the Indian Constitution, relied on Justice Douglas’ famous ‘penumbral’ reasoning in Griswold and gave recognition to the Right to Privacy as being inherent in the totality of the Indian Constitutional structure. Since then, the Supreme Court has time and again expanded the contours of the right to privacy in a diverse range of judgments relating to phone tapping, narco-analysis, brain mapping, prisoner’s rights, and computer networks.
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According to the United Nations, Rohingya Muslims are considered to be the most persecuted minority group in the world. These unfortunate people are an ethnic Muslim minority numbering around one million living in the Buddhist majority country of Myanmar. The Rohingya have been residing in the northern parts of “Rakhine”, which is a geographically isolated state in western Myanmar. The word “Rohingya” is considered taboo in a country where they have been residing for more than a century. The continued victimization of Rohingyas at the hands of the Myanmar government is not a contemporary issue. The former British colony after achieving independence in 1948 has been struggling with armed ethnic and religious conflict.

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On 22^nd August 2017, much to my delight, optimism and astonishment, the Indian Supreme Court by a ratio of 3:2 abolished the practice of Talaq-E-Biddat commonly known as triple talaq which allowed “any Muslim man to legally divorce his wife by stating the word talaq three times in oral, written, or more recently electronic form”. 
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Established in 2012 in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania Law School, the fellowship creates new pathways for students to build careers in international rule of law and human rights.
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The United Nations (UN) has long characterized the Rohingya Muslims as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities, with anti-Rohingya and anti-Muslim sentiment tainting Burma’s political and social spheres.  In contravention to international human rights law, Burmese officials subject Rohingya Muslims to a spectrum of human rights violations including the denial of citizenship rights, restrictions on religious freedom, forced displacement, gender-based violence and the arbitrary deprivation of life.
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Hassan Rouhani may prevail in tomorrow’s presidential elections. Whether he can continue on the path to reform is uncertain.
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On March 10, the eve of the Commission on the Status of Women’s 61st session in New York, Penn Law, UN Women, UNESCO, The UN Sustainable Development Goals Fund, and the International Law Development Organization (IDLO) convened leading women jurists, legislators, policymakers and advocates engaged in legislative and policy drafting for a High-Level Roundtable on Women and Legislative Reform hosted by Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz. Against the backdrop of the CSW’s annual two-week session when representatives of UN Member States, civil society organizations and UN entities gather to shape global standards on gender equality, thirty women and men representing over twenty countries analyzed the legal implementation gap through the prism of representative case studies on gender equality, violence against women and personal laws.
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A new round of chemical attacks in Syria has not only shocked the world, but it has also moved President Trump. And after years of war in Syria, Trump pulled the trigger. On Thursday night at the President’s orders, U.S. warships launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles.
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In the summer of 2016, Penn Law JD 2019 student Gabriela Siegel addressed a community of young Jewish leaders at the Schusterman ROI Summit in Jerusalem. She spoke about her experiences working with Syrian refugees and in the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon, and how she got involved in this area – both geographically and thematically – as a young Jewish woman.
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While historical enmities are at the root of the civil war, South Sudan’s woes amplified due to deficient constitutional engineering. If deeply divided fragile societies like South Sudan are to have a shot at survival, there must be power sharing at every level of governance with sufficient checks and balances. The transitional setup of South Sudan, on the contrary, was devoid of the latter and therefore failed at every step. At the root of it, are three grave constitutional design blunders.
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