-The Indian Express By doing nothing, institutions foster hostile sexual environments. Once upon a time, facts amounting to sexual harassment did not socially "exist", let alone constitute a legal claim. Behaviour such as sexual innuendo, sexually offensive gestures, sexually explicit material, sexual expletives, hostile workplace environments, job-related decisions based on implied requests for sexual favours were, well, just the way things were - it was systemic in nature. These were common life...

--Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) On Sunday (15th December) CHRI made a submission to the Independent People's Tribunal that was hearing people's perceptions about the working of the National Human Rights Commission on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Protection of Human Rights Act, which provides for the establishment of the NHRC to look into complaints of Human Rights violations suffered by people. Please click here to download the...

-The Indian Express The Justice Ganguly case shows up some lacunae. For one, the sexual harassment act will have to be changed to extend to unpaid interns. There is immense pressure from women activists, the media and some political parties for retired Supreme Court justice, A.K. Ganguly, to resign as the chairperson of the West Bengal Human Rights Commission for allegedly harassing a young intern. The courage of the young intern in...

-The Hindu In upholding the constitutionality of Section 377 of the IPC the Supreme Court has made a judgment that is value-laden, based on a particular worldview that many disagree with The Supreme Court, in its judgment in Suresh Kumar Koushal and another v. NAZ Foundation and others (Civil Appeal No. 10972 of 2013) upholding the constitutionality of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, has been widely perceived to have espoused...

-Outlook The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) has refused to disclose communications exchanged between former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Chief Minister Narendra Modi during the 2002 Gujarat riots even after 11 years. Responding to an RTI application, the Prime Minister's Office cited section 8(1)(h) of the transparency law, which exempts information that would impede the process of investigation or apprehension or prosecution of offenders. Nearly 2,000 people were killed in the...