By Courtney Cox

Last year, a Dominican court held that illegal migrant workers’ children born in the Dominican Republic were denied automatic citizenship. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights found that the court’s holding was discriminatory towards Dominicans of Haitian descent and gave the country six months to invalidate the court’s ruling. This did not sit well with the Dominican government which found the finding to be unfair and unacceptable.

Nevertheless, the Associated Press reported that the Dominican Republic justified the withdrawal from the Inter-American Court’s jurisdiction on constitutional grounds: “the country had to withdraw from the rights court because the Senate never issued a resolution to ratify the February 1999 agreement with the rights court as required by the Dominican constitution.” Previously, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled against the Dominican Republic on related issues including “indiscriminate deportations” of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian ancestry.

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December 02, 2014

By Courtney Cox

Catarina de Albuquerque, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water, visited the U.S. this week to examine what appears to be a water emergency in Detroit, one of our nation’s most fiscally distressed cities. Al Jazeera reports that water disconnections have occurred at an alarming level this year as the city attempts to handle “the largest municipal bankruptcy in federal history.” The cost of water in Detroit is much higher than the national average making it difficult for mid and low income residents to pay their bills. While residents’ water supply is hastily disconnected, businesses (industrial and commercial users) face no service interruptions, even with their collective $30 million in unpaid water bills.

Albuquerque highlighted the indignity that residents face as a result of their disconnected water in a city that was once an industrial capital. Humiliating blue marks are sketched on the sidewalk in front of homes with disconnected service. Records reflect that African Americans (who represent 80% of the population) are particularly affected by these disconnections. Albuquerque asserted that the water shutoffs not only violate residents’ human right to water under international law, but could also constitute discrimination under international law. The mass water disconnections also raise public health issues,, because these conditions breed communicable diseases.

Albuquerque recommended that the city restore disconnected water and adopt a mandatory affordability threshold. Additionally, she charged the federal government to investigate the disconnection to determine whether they have a disproportionate impact on African Americans and other groups protected against discrimination.

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October 28, 2014

By Katie Bacharach

A Thomson Reuters Foundation poll found that Egypt is the worst Arab state for women. Egypt’s place at the bottom of the ranking is attributed to discriminatory laws, a spike in trafficking, sexual harassment, high rates of female genital cutting, and a surge in violence and Islamist feeling after the Arab Spring uprisings. The poll surveyed 336 gender experts in August and September in 21 Arab League states and Syria. Questions were based on provisions of the U.N. Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which 19 Arab states have signed.

Complete poll results can be found here.

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November 22, 2013