The Constitutional Court considered the persistence of an unconstitutional state of affairs with regard to forced displacement, which disproportionately affected women in Colombia. The Court originally declared an unconstitutional state of affairs in Ruling T-025 of 2004 and again in Resolution 218 of 2006. More than half the displaced people in Colombia  (54 per cent) …Read more

The Emberá-Chamí community, which is located on the Río San Juan Embera-Chamí native reservation, practices female genital mutilation. This consists of cutting and cauterizing the clitorises of newborn girls. The practice is customary for this community and appears to have two rationales: first, to prevent infidelity among adolescent girls and women, and second, to prevent, …Read more

Mini Numa is an indigenous rural community located in the state of Guerrero, Mexico, composed of a population of 270 and whose closest medical center is four kilometers/one hour away in Metlatónoc, Guerrero. The regulations for the construction of a medical center in Guerrero required that the community hold at least 2500 to 3000 inhabitants …Read more

The petition challenged clause (1) of  No. 28B of the Chapter on Life in the National Code which provided that “a health worker attaining the qualification as prescribed, may, with the consent of the concerned pregnant women, remove her fetus within 12 weeks of conception” (the Clause). The Petitioner contended that this was contrary to …Read more

In 1996, the plaintiff, Mrs. Hadijatou Mani Koraou, was sold at the age of 12 to 46-year-old Mr. El Hadj Souleymane Naroua, for the sum of two hundred and forty-thousand francs. This transaction occurred as a “Wahiya,” a common practice in the Republic of Niger, which consists in acquiring a young girl, generally of servile status, to serve as both …Read more

A girl, aged 13, was a victim of rape and became pregnant as a result. The girl was affiliated with the Coomeva healthcare provider company. However, the company refused to perform a legal abortion claiming conscientious objection on the part of all of its physicians. The company then referred her to the Erasmo Meoz de …Read more

The petitioner claimed that the defendant hospital’s practice of only admitting mothers with sick children was discriminatory. In particular, the petitioners pointed to the defendant hospital’s notice board which read:  “children up to 3 years of age are admitted along with their mothers”, and “Mother – not relatives”. However, the defendant hospital argued that this …Read more

The parties to the dispute settled out of court based on the stipulation that the policies of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) concerning the recruitment, deployment and promotion of people living with HIV were unconstitutional. The SANDF was given six months to set aside these policies. In this decision, the Court considered the …Read more

The Mental Disability Advocacy Center (‘MDAC’) alleged that Bulgaria was violating Article 17(2) (right to free education for children) alone and in conjunction with Article E (non-discrimination) of the Revised European Social Charter (the ‘Charter’) because Bulgaria was not educating children with moderate to profound intellectual disabilities living in homes for mentally disabled children (‘HMDCs’). MDAC claimed that until 2002, children with moderate to …Read more

Please note that only portions of the original judgment have been translated into English. This summary is primarily written from those portions. The Federal District legislature approved reforms to the Criminal Code of the Federal District in which it decriminalized and legalized abortion performed during the first 12 weeks of gestation. It also amended the …Read more

This case has been reviewed by the Supreme Court, which upheld this court’s verdict. The Petitioner, Novartis, had its patent application rejected by the relevant statutory authority, the Controller General of Patents and Designs (Patent Controller) because did not comply with the requirements of section 3(d) of the Indian Patent (Amendment) Act, 2005 (the Act). …Read more

This case concerned whether there was unlawful discrimination under New Zealand’s Human Rights Act (1993) (“HRA”), where legislation provided financial support for a disability arising from an accident, but not for a disability arising from a degenerative process or the manifestation of a disease. Ms. Trevethicks (Plaintiff) suffered from multiple sclerosis. She could only drive …Read more

This case has comes after Decision No. 1 and before the judgment of the High Court. The Plaintiff challenged the government’s interpretation of the definition of “disability” in s.21(1)(h) of the Human Rights Act (“HRA”). The New Zealand government distributed different levels of funding to people with the same types of disabilities depending on the …Read more

The Ombudsperson of the Republic of Macedonia (the Ombudsperson) challenged a provision from the Law on Amending and Supplementing the Law on Health Insurance (the Law). The Law provided that insurees would have a right to basic health services from health facilities that had concluded a contract with the Health Insurance Fund (the Fund), but …Read more

A Chief of Police contracted Hepatitis C while intervening in the attempted suicide of a prisoner. The the Court of Justice of São Paulo held that the state and its health system were responsible for providing him, an individual in financial need, with medications to treat his Hepatitis C. The State of São Paulo filed an extraordinary …Read more

Paulina del Carmen Ramírez Jacinto, a minor child, filed a complaint against the United Mexican States for violating her human rights of when she allegedly became pregnant as a result of a rape when she was fourteen years old and was prevented by the state authorities from exercising her right to terminate that pregnancy as …Read more

The Forum for Women, Law and Development, the Petitioner, was an organization working with vulnerable communities such as women, children and people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIVA). Although the right to privacy was guaranteed under Article 28 of the Interim Constitution, 2007, there were no legal provisions safeguarding the privacy of women, children, or PLHIVA (the …Read more

Applicant alleged a violation of Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) of the Convention when she had been refused a therapeutic abortion considered legal under the Family Planning Act of Poland–when the pregnancy is thought to endanger the mother’s life, as was the case here. Applicant suffered from severe myopia and …Read more

The applicant was registered as female at birth in 1978 but regarded himself as a male from an early age. In 1997 he sought medical advice and was diagnosed as transgendered. Lithuania adopted Article 2.27 § 2 of the Civil Code, which provided that unmarried adults had the right to undergo medically endorsed gender reassignment …Read more

On August 28, 2009, Mrs. Y, a pregnant woman of Roma ethnic origin, went to Targu Neamt Hospital Obstetrics and Gynaecology Department, a public hospital, for a check-up.  Dr. X performed the check-up and sent her home, telling her there was nothing wrong with her and making certain derogatory statements about gypsies. When Mrs. Y …Read more

The plaintiff, a Romani woman, claimed that she was discriminated against by I.A., an ambulance technician, who supposedly refused to lift the plaintiff into the ambulance because of her ethnic origin. These facts were contested by the ambulance technician, who claims that she was hit by one of the plaintiff’s male family members while trying …Read more

Applicant had her eggs extracted for the purposes of in vitro fertilization in 2001. Her ovaries were thereafter removed due to the presence of tumors. Six embryos were created using her eggs and the sperm of her partner ‘J.’. Schedule 3 of the Human Fertilization and Embryology Act of 1990 allowed for the withdrawal of …Read more

L, a women’s rights advocacy group, filed two petitions dealing with the constitutional validity of sections of the Ugandan Penal Code Act regarding adultery and sections of the Succession Act regarding gender equality in succession and inheritance. L argued that s 154 of the Penal Code Act was inconsistent with Articles 20,[1] 21,[2] 24,[3] 26,[4] …Read more

Ablamskiy, Lobashova and Matveev were approved for compulsory medical treatment or institutionalization after psychiatric examinations, and were thus not allowed to appeal their compulsory medical measures or participate in their criminal proceedings. They argued that the procedural rules governing the due process rights of individuals declared mentally incompetent were unconstitutional under the Constitution of the …Read more

The applicants in this case were the wife and children of Mr. I.M. who was diagnosed with icterus and went through investigations and treatment. After being hospitalized, it was confirmed that he had “cholestatic jaundice due to cholestatic calculus – left renal lithiasis clinically significant for approximately three days”; he and his family hadn’t been …Read more