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Reproduction without pregnancy: would it really emancipate women?

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team of Israeli scientists announced the mother of all inventions last week. Researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science revealed in the journal Nature that they had successfully gestated hundreds of mice inside an artificial womb. They placed newly fertilised eggs inside glass vials rotating in a ventilated incubator, and grew the embryos for 11 days - the mid-point of a mouse pregnancy - outside their mothers' bodies. The embryos developed normally; their hearts, visible through the glass vials, pounded steadily at 170 beats per minute.

The mice were no bigger than sunflower seeds, but what they represent is enormous: the breakthrough brings us one step closer to reproduction without pregnancy. The division of labour in gestation is the most intractable imbalance between the sexes. Men only have to contribute a single cell to make a baby, whereas women carry their children for nine months and give birth, sometimes risking their bodies and often risking their careers, in a world of work built largely by men. An artificial womb would mean complete reproductive parity between the sexes: all anyone needs to do is throw in their gametes and the rest is taken care of. But this equality could come at great cost to women. This is radically disruptive technology, and with every new development we are sleepwalking into a world of tough ethical choices.

The idea of babies grown in jars may conjure up images of the hatchery of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World or the foetus fields of The Matrix, but scientists have been trying to make it happen for decades. In 1992, Japanese researchers had some success growing goats inside rubber sacs. In 2017, researchers at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) revealed they had grown lamb foetuses in plastic bags from the equivalent of around halfway through a typical ewe pregnancy to full term. In 2019, Dutch researchers received a €2.9m (£2.6m) grant from the EU to develop an artificial womb that would use replicas of human babies dotted with sensors before being deployed in hospitals.

The scientists behind these innovations are motivated by noble intentions: they want to save the most vulnerable human beings on the planet by improving outcomes for super-premature babies, or to understand early gestation, and why so many pregnancies end in miscarriage. Artificial wombs offer a window on to the closed world of embryonic development, so the reasons it might go wrong can be studied in real time. They allow the process of gestation to continue outside the body, so that babies born too soon no longer have to face the high risk of disability and chronic illness associated with extreme prematurity. It is hard to argue that something with such potential to save lives shouldn't exist.

But artificial wombs could also undermine the basis of women's reproductive rights and freedoms. In England, Scotland and Wales, the abortion limit is pegged to the viability of foetuses outside the human body; it's currently set at 24 weeks' gestation because foetuses at an earlier stage of development aren't expected to be able to survive outside the womb. What if all foetuses, and even embryos, are potentially viable because they could be gestated inside an artificial womb? Any unborn child could be considered to have a right to life.

In countries where abortion is legal, access to it derives from a woman's right to choose what happens to her body. But if unwanted babies could be "rescued" by technology - gestated inside an artificial womb and then given up for adoption - then abortion could be simultaneously pro-choice and "pro-life". Why should a mother be able to decide to terminate an unwanted baby if an artificial womb can save its life?

This technology has been developed in order to rescue the world's most vulnerable babies. It's not so much of a conceptual leap to imagine that babies gestating inside the wombs of women who drink, smoke, take drugs or engage in risky behaviour during pregnancy could be considered vulnerable and worthy of rescue in an artificial womb. In a culture where pregnant women are constantly scrutinised and judged, and the state has the sometimes contentiously used power to declare mothers unfit and take away their children, the threat of this technology will have enormous potential to coerce and control pregnant women.

Many tech and media companies, including Apple, Google, Facebook, VICE and Buzzfeed, already offer to cover the cost of freezing their employees' eggs so they don't have to worry about dwindling fertility during the most productive years for their careers. Gestating a baby in an artificial womb may one day be a choice open to elite women whose companies will pay for it, or who can afford to cover the cost themselves. "Natural" pregnancy could be seen as a sign of poverty, of unplanned pregnancy, or a chaotic lifestyle.

A full replacement for pregnancy may be decades away, but artificial wombs are coming sooner than you think. Right now there are teams of researchers across the globe working on competing systems to replicate the human womb. CHOP is in the process of getting the US Food and Drug Administration to approve trials of its "biobag" device with human babies, and other teams in Australia and Japan, are snapping at their heels.

The obstacles to growing humans outside the human body will be ethical and legal, not technological. We need to be discussing artificial wombs now, and the precautious, contingent basis of women's reproductive rights, before this technology arrives in our hospitals and fertility clinics.

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Reproduction without pregnancy: would it really emancipate women? | Jenny Kleeman

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team of Israeli scientists announced the mother of all inventions last week. Researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science revealed in the journal Nature that they had successfully gestated hundreds of mice inside an artificial womb.

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Women from poorer backgrounds three times more likely to have abortions

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Women from the most deprived backgrounds are almost three times more likely to have abortions than women from the wealthiest backgrounds, and the gap has worsened during the pandemic, data suggests.

A Guardian analysis of data provided by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) found that in 2020, women from the most deprived backgrounds accounted for 16.5% of all abortions, and women from the wealthiest backgrounds accounted for 5.9%.

The gap has widened since 2019, when the figures were 13.7% and 6.6%.

The data suggests that the pandemic's impact on wages may have played a role in women's decisions on whether to continue a pregnancy.

Clare Murphy, the chief executive of BPAS, said the data made clear the significant impact that wealth has on women's pregnancy choices.

"Unintended pregnancy is a fact of life, but women will make very different decisions about whether to continue that pregnancy based on the circumstances she finds herself and her existing family," Murphy said.

"Our research shows women on low incomes are feeling a deep sense of anxiety about their employment prospects and their financial precarity. At the same time, families are facing rising costs, including energy and food bills, as a result of spending more time at home. Almost two-thirds of the women we cared for who already had children told us financial factors played a role in their decision-making."

The data is provided by BPAS, which provides around 40% of all abortion care in England and Wales. Deprivation levels are calculated using the English indices of deprivation.

Murphy said permanent access to telemedical abortion care, or pills by post, was crucial to removing financial barriers to accessing care, and she raised concern that if the government were to revoke this service it would be "women from the most deprived communities that suffer the most".

She added: "We must be able to continue to provide this service for all women. If not, we expect that women who lack financial resources will once again turn to online pills and risk criminal sanction."

Dr Pam Lowe, a researcher at Aston University who specialises in women's reproductive health with a focus on abortion, said the figures were unsurprising.

She said: "Unfortunately, abortion is still stigmatised. The focus on 'what can we do to reduce the abortion statistics?' is the wrong question. The right question is: what can we do to ensure people have good access to contraceptive services and access to abortion services should they need to, and be able to make decisions about whether or not to continue a pregnancy in a society whereby it's not dependent on how much you earn?"

She added that a broader focus should be given to levels of poverty in society. "If we deal with levels of inequality, then in some ways we shouldn't have to worry quite so much about the different rates of abortion."

The government is considering whether temporary legislation allowing for early medical abortions should be made permanent, following a consultation.

Northern Ireland intervention

Separately on Tuesday, the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, laid regulations to seize control of responsibility for abortion provision in the region, citing the failure of Stormont to act after a year of abortion being legalised in the country.

Lewis said there was "continuing failure to commission abortion services that are consistent with the regulations we made almost a year ago", and the UK government had had "no success" with its engagement ahead of the decision to take over the powers.

"We do not take this step lightly. However, the devolution settlement does not absolve us of our responsibility to uphold the rights of women and girls," Lewis said, though he signalled he would prefer the executive to begin action itself before his department starts issuing formal direction.

"Our strong preference remains for the Northern Ireland executive to take responsibility itself for upholding these rights," he said. "We will continue to engage with the minister of health and the executive to try and find a way forward over the coming weeks before any direction is given ... We have used every opportunity and avenue to encourage progress and offer our support over the past year, so we are disappointed that we have reached this impasse."

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Women from poorer backgrounds three times more likely to have abortions

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Women from the most deprived backgrounds are almost three times more likely to have abortions than women from the wealthiest backgrounds, and the gap has worsened during the pandemic, data suggests. A Guardian analysis of data provided by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) found that in 2020, women from the most deprived backgrounds accounted for 16.5% of all abortions, and women from the wealthiest backgrounds accounted for 5.9%.

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Abortion has come grudgingly to Northern Ireland in the wake of coronavirus

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bortion law reform was officially meant to arrive in Northern Ireland on 1 April - having been previously voted on and passed through Westminster when Stormont was still languishing on its hill, all the way back in what might now feel like another astral dimension, October 2019.

In a chaotic timeline of events, Northern Ireland's health department missed its original April deadline for providing regulations that offer solid access to abortion care. The coronavirus crisis, the ensuing lockdown and widespread pressure on health services were blamed for the delay. But with heel-dragging and wilful ignorance becoming synonymous with Northern Ireland's leading parties, campaigners and clinicians criticised anti-choice sentiment for slowing down the implementation of abortion services. DUP and UUP assembly members had still been resisting change.

Health trusts readied themselves to deliver services, but were halted by the Department of Health. Women's bodies were, still, used in capricious political gameplay - pawns yet again in poisonous tribal politics.

Even worse, the political line became one of gaslighting - Northern Ireland's health minister, Robin Swann, and the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, resisted calls for telemedicine to provide abortion pills to people safely at home. They also stated that travelling to England was still a viable option.

While telemedicine was introduced in the rest of the UK, and separately in Ireland, they recklessly inferred that pregnant people in Northern Ireland should defy government guidelines to stay at home. With strained health services and travel restrictions, scarce flights and hotels closed, it was a terrifying prospect, and in many cases totally impossible.

Campaigners pointed out that the only available route to safe abortion care in England was a ludicrous eight-hour freight ferry to Birkenhead. We heard of women self-harming and at least one who attempted to take her own life when they couldn't get terminations. Worry grew that such barriers, as the country's shameful past shows, would lead women to make desperate, dangerous decisions. In a year that was poised to be one of liberation and body autonomy for people long treated as second-class citizens in Northern Ireland, access to care was suddenly worse than ever.

Late on Thursday, Northern Ireland authorities confirmed that early abortions can now be carried out in local hospitals. It's a historic occasion, but it is not difficult to see the efforts of some Stormont politicians to deliberately impede the rollout of free, safe, legal, local abortion care for anyone who may need it.Long-awaited access to abortion services is a result of thunderous public pressure and pro-choice groups threatening legal action. Once again, it's been down to campaigners, activists, and healthcare professionals to bring about the vital modernisation of reproductive care in line with the rest of the UK.

Grassroots organisers and charities have filled the gap in the years when Stormont languished without a functioning assembly and in the stormy months since its restoration. They have refused to stand by as women's health became a political bargaining chip, while an international health crisis raged.

Alliance for Choice, a valiant local group, stepped in to post pills for self-managed abortions, in line with regulations, while the British Pregnancy Advice Service launched its own scheme for abortion medication by post. The swift action on telemedicine for pregnant people in the UK and Ireland - something still unavailable in the north - only further amplifies the inequality gap and contemptible political unwillingness to protect women in Northern Ireland.

Civil society battling back against government callousness will be a legacy of the coronavirus crisis. The pandemic lays bare severe structural inequalities - in Northern Ireland, women suffer its impact and shoulder the crisis burden. Whether that's the lack of telemedicine and unclear regulations, or that 93.8% of nurses - those on the frontline - are women.

The crisis has seen a tenfold increase in universal credit applications in Northern Ireland, a scheme found to disproportionately disadvantage women. The pandemic will likely lead to increased domestic abuse: women are forced to stay at home with their abusers, and the highest ever number of domestic violence crimes in Northern Ireland was recorded in the last year. Here, the coronavirus and the issue of accessible abortion care run in parallel as health and welfare concerns that are innately feminist issues.

It remains an unfinished revolution for free, safe, legal abortion care in Northern Ireland. Despite the coronavirus lockdown, women still have to leave their homes when they could safely take the two World Health Organization-recognised pills at home unlike their English, Welsh, Scottish and Manx counterparts. Robin Swann has the mandate for implementing telemedicine, and any further delay puts vulnerable people at significant risk. Clarity, detail and purpose are needed to see these regulations implemented fast. The fight is not over.

Anna Cafolla is a Belfast-born journalist specialising in women's rights, Northern Ireland, youth culture and activism

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Abortion has come grudgingly to Northern Ireland in the wake of coronavirus | Anna Cafolla

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bortion law reform was officially meant to arrive in Northern Ireland on 1 April - having been previously voted on and passed through Westminster when Stormont was still languishing on its hill, all the way back in what might now feel like another astral dimension, October 2019.

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Northern Ireland's women won abortion rights but its politicians won't accept that

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orthern Ireland is no country for young women. Out of 87 members of the legislative assembly (MLAs) at Stormont last week, just 12 voted to allow women the right to choose abortion in line with international human rights standards. These are built into a law smuggled into NI while the institutions in Belfast were collapsed in acrimony in 2019, following an inspiring collective effort by local feminists and the British Labour MP Stella Creasy. Jubilant, proud, relieved and tearful, women stood at Stormont with banners that said, simply, " Decriminalised ".

But so far, Stormont has succeeded in thwarting the implementation of the new law, leading the NI Human Rights Commission to mount a legal challenge. On Thursday, the Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis intervened and is expected next week to direct that the services to which women are legally entitled are actually made available. The Good Friday agreement promised equality - the continued stymying of abortion access is a depressing indicator of just how far we are from reaching it.

Feminists campaigned for decades to get the British government to deal with the fact that women in Northern Ireland were denied the same reproductive rights as women in the rest of the UK. Abortion was all but banned. Thousands of women crossed the Irish Sea for terminations in England. Ultimately, the UN found the UK government was in contravention of its obligations under international human rights laws and the supreme court obliged it to act. The law allows abortion in many circumstances, including after 24 weeks in cases where severe foetal impairment is diagnosed. The bill the DUP brought to its second stage at Stormont last week seeks to restrict this right except when the impairment is fatal.

The UN's committee for the elimination of discrimination against women (Cedaw) included in its recommendations to the UK "that abortion on the ground of severe foetal impairment be available to facilitate reproductive choice and autonomy". It also called for social and financial support for women who decide to carry such pregnancies to term.

The DUP calls abortion one of its "red line" issues. Yet a 2020 poll showed almost 60% of people believe abortion should be decriminalised, rising to 70% when it comes to fatal foetal abnormality cases. Westminster's interventions must be a matter of private relief to the party, but it will do all it can to signal to its more conservative voters (including a significant fire and brimstone element) that it continues to fight the good fight.

Progressives are used to being appalled by the DUP. The party also last week fought back against an expert panel calling for sexual orientation and gender equality to be included in relationships and sex education (RSE) in schools, high profile figures have recently defended conversion therapy, and the party is against same sex marriage, which also had to be brought in by Westminster. But there was bewilderment and anger among feminists over Sinn Féin's behaviour on the abortion bill. The party's 27 MLAs all abstained.

Sinn Fein's president, Mary Lou McDonald, defended the decision. She said the DUP bill was a "stunt". One woman who found herself trapped with a devastating diagnosis and unable to get a late abortion several years ago told me the proposed bill felt like yet another punishment, and she was "beyond disappointed" that Sinn Féin had not "stood up and just said no".

The truth is that Sinn Féin could not do this - because it supports the DUP's position. It does not "trust women" as feminism requires. There is a smiling photograph of Mary Lou McDonald and the North's deputy first minister Michelle O'Neill in 2018 on the day when the referendum to lift the abortion ban in the Republic was won: they're holding a banner that says, "The North is Next!" While it is now broadly pro-choice, Sinn Féin shares the DUP's position that some abortion rights must be legally restricted. It does not support the UN's recommendation on severe foetal impairment. Voting with the DUP would have been honest but impossibly embarrassing to it, so abstention was the only option.

McDonald said her party wants "the same legislative framework and regime" to apply to the whole of Ireland. The Republic's legislation on the late abortion issue is actually in line with the DUP and Sinn Féin's. It does not work for women, because the distinction between severe and fatal impairment is in practice often impossible to make. Some severe abnormalities are not even detectable until 20 weeks, and women, their families and their doctors should not be forced to make an inevitably painful decision while also facing complex legal hurdles. But Sinn Féin will not risk alienating entirely those among its core voters who are as conservative as the DUP.

Stormont's health minister, Robin Swann of the Ulster Unionist party, has refused to commission the services except in very limited circumstances, claiming public consultation and executive agreement are required - to implement a British law. The DUP has vowed to fight the British over this. Throughout the pandemic, women have continued to have to cross the Irish Sea to get abortions in England. As Green party leader Clare Bailey noted, this is hypocrisy. The DUP's "frenzied" opposition to the Irish Sea border installed in the Brexit trade deal was, she pointed out, supposedly about the alleged diminishment of Britishness yet when it came to women's rights, the party insisted we remain in "a place apart".

Both Sinn Féin and the DUP know that the law has to comply with the UN's recommendations. This could end up in the courts again, causing more delay, more torture for women in heartbreaking situations. Brave women laid their souls bare through court case after court case to get these rights. Just 12 of Northern Ireland's politicians are willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with them.

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Northern Ireland's women won abortion rights but its politicians won't accept that | Susan McKay

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orthern Ireland is no country for young women. Out of 87 members of the legislative assembly (MLAs) at Stormont last week, just 12 voted to allow women the right to choose abortion in line with international human rights standards.

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Abortion: UK government to compel Stormont to implement new laws

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The DUP, which opposed the changes to the abortion laws by Westminster, has proposed a piece of legislation at Stormont seeking to restrict abortions in cases of non-fatal disabilities.

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Abortion: UK government to compel Stormont to implement new laws

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The DUP, which opposed the changes to the abortion laws by Westminster, has proposed a piece of legislation at Stormont seeking to restrict abortions in cases of non-fatal disabilities.

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The severe cost of the world’s baby bust

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We are in a global baby bust of unprecedented proportions. It is far from over and its implications are gravely underestimated.

The worldwide fertility rate has already dropped more than 50 per cent in the past 50 years, from 5.1 births per woman in 1964 to 2.4 in 2018, according to the World Bank. In 2020, the 20 per cent shortfall below replacement rate in US fertility, together with low net immigration, produced the lowest population growth on record of 0.35 per cent, below even the flu pandemic of 1918.

Many countries, including Italy, South Korea and Japan, are predicted to see their populations drop by more than half by the end of this century.

The coronavirus pandemic is also having a profound incremental impact, with provisional fertility declines of 5-15 per cent in most developed countries. South Korea recently reported a 2020 fertility rate of 0.84, the lowest rate ever recorded for a major economy.

Lower population growth directly causes slower economic growth. A falling fertility rate also increases the proportion of older adults in the population. In China, for example, the percentage of people aged 60 or over has risen from 6 per cent in 1970 to 17 per cent today and is predicted to reach an astonishing 35 per cent in just 30 years.

This trend will result in a greatly increased burden on pension and medical systems as fewer workers struggle to look after a growing number of retirees. With the old taking up more resources, and the shortage of young workers requiring more capital spending to maintain productivity, the current era of excess savings is likely to end.

This is likely to lead to the higher inflation and real interest rates typical of the pre-2000 era. This would almost certainly be accompanied by a reversion towards the lower average levels of asset prices that characterised the 20th century.

From an environmental perspective, a smaller population is exactly what the climate and biosphere need. However, we must still fully decarbonise global industrial systems and reduce CO2 in the atmosphere to its pre-industrial level of 280 parts per million from its probable future peak of more than 550 parts.

To achieve this will require every biological and mechanical innovation of which we are capable. Unfortunately, lower economic growth caused by a shrinking and ageing population may weaken not only the necessary innovation and investment but also the resolve to do it. It will need significant fiscal and regulatory encouragement to get the job done.

The most frightening aspect of this baby bust is that it is not occurring entirely by choice. Social changes, particularly female empowerment, and economic constraints contribute to the falling birth rate.

But our actual capacity to have children is in steep decline, as evidenced by a shocking 50 per cent decline in sperm count since 1970 and an equally rapid increase in age-adjusted miscarriage rates.

The most likely cause of this is endocrine disruption, which is the hijacking of our body's hormonal system by environmental toxicants.

Infertility is beginning to rise rapidly and, combined with the increasing age at which women in developed countries are having children, is leading to greater difficulty conceiving.

The tens of thousands of artificial organic chemical compounds that we use in everyday life areundoubtedly contributing to these effects. The detrimental health effects of some, such as bisphenol A, phthalates and perfluorinated compounds, are already well known. More research is needed to discover other culprits.

The US is an outlier in this respect. For example, the benefit of doubt is given in the EU to human safety from chemicals. But in the US this is given to the intellectual capital of our corporations, in accordance with the so-called Kehoe rule, that suspicious chemicals should be assumed innocent until proven guilty. This kept lead in petrol for 50 years after its danger was first suspected.

Whereas the US has banned only 11 substances in cosmetics, the EU prohibits more than one thousand. Ultimately, a complete shift in our attitude towards regulation will be required, including the prevention of "regrettable substitution" which replaces banned chemicals with their chemically similar and equally dangerous relatives.

Known endocrine disrupters must be banned entirely, and far more stringent regulations are needed to oversee new chemicals that are being developed, to ensure that they are proven safe before they come to market.

As we did with leaded petrol and lead paint, we are poisoning ourselves and our environment. We have to stop now to protect both our health and our economic wellbeing. We are in a global baby bust of unprecedented proportions. It is far from over and its implications are gravely underestimated.

The writer is co-founder of GMO asset management. Shanna Swan of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and author of ": how Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperilling the Future of the Human Race", contributed.

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The severe cost of the world's baby bust

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We are in a global baby bust of unprecedented proportions. It is far from over and its implications are gravely underestimated. The worldwide fertility rate has already dropped more than 50 per cent in the past 50 years, from 5.1 births per woman in 1964 to 2.4 in 2018, according to the World Bank.

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Two decades ago, I got a tattoo of an Akua'ba statuette on my inner right ankle. A female fertility symbol in Ghana, the disc-headed figure comes from the Akan legend of Akua, a woman who went to a priest for advice because she was having trouble conceiving. He instructed her to have a small wooden statuette of a child carved and to care for that surrogate baby as though it were her own. She was soon pregnant.

Years later, as I was struggling to conceive, the irony was not lost on me that not only did I carry my infertility permanently around on my ankle but that I too needed a surrogate, albeit of a different kind, to help me become a mother.

Like countless other women across the globe, I put off having children while I focused on my career - journalism in Washington DC and London, with assignments taking me around the world. I had frozen five eggs right before my 40th birthday - jokingly calling them my "in case of emergency, break glass" eggs - and so, having married when I was 43, my husband and I tried IVF several times. We used both frozen and fresh embryo transfers, but nothing worked. We tried other assisted reproductive technology too - endless procedures, everything from flushing my Fallopian tubes with dye to being put through temporary menopause to recalibrate my cycle.

Nothing happened. Though we lived in London, I often travelled for work to Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, and it became tough to be home for the barrage of treatments while trying to fit in long-haul assignments. After yet another negative pregnancy test in July 2015, my gynaecologist told me I had unexplained infertility. She doubted I could ever carry a child to term. It was a devastating blow; it felt like the end of my road to motherhood.

Surrogacy was not something I had ever considered. The only people I had heard of doing it were celebrities such as Nicole Kidman, Elton John and Angela Bassett or those much richer than me and my husband. It is notoriously expensive in the US: upwards of $100,000, thanks to legal fees, fertility treatments, medical insurance, escrow funds and surrogacy compensation.

The Baby M controversy of the late 1980s, where a surrogate decided to keep the baby despite having signed a contract, gave the process a horrifying reputation and prompted many states to make surrogacy agreements illegal.

But things have begun to change. According to the US National Institutes of Health, infertility affects around 15 per cent of couples globally, which is no small group. Storylines in books, films and television, if often melodramatic, chart the arc of why couples may choose surrogacy.

Over the past decade, a number of US states have either updated or created surrogacy-friendly laws. Between 1999 and 2013, according to researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "the number of IVF cycles using gestational carriers in the United States has more than quadrupled ", accounting for more than 18,000 births.

So when a gay Israeli couple, close friends of mine, said they were working with a surrogate in Oregon to expand their family, I told them we wanted to learn more about it, especially how they were going to cover the costs. My friends had cobbled together their savings and done some refinancing; their argument was that instead of saving money to buy a bigger flat, they'd rather hear children's giggles bouncing around their current one.

If two of the most down-to-earth people I knew were opting for surrogacy, I thought maybe I could too.

Choosing where to have your surrogacy, let alone who should bear the child, has never been a simple matter. I'm American and my husband is from Serbia, and although we live in the UK we decided not to pursue surrogacy here because the waiting list for a gestational carrier at the time was about 18 months or longer. (A gestational surrogate is not biologically related to the child, unlike a traditional carrier, who is also the egg donor.) It would have been considerably cheaper, however, costing between £50,000 and £60,000.

In theory, UK surrogates are not supposed to be paid, but they can receive "reasonable expenses", which often are upwards of £25,000. In the US, however, surrogacy can be commercial, involving a for-profit third party that sets up the surrogacy and compensation for the surrogate. In the UK, the surrogate and her partner or husband are the legal parents until a parental order is granted by the courts, which can take more than nine months, whereas in some US states the intended parents are the legal parents from birth.

America, where (luckily) I had healthcare insurance even after being an expat for 20 years, made more sense to us, a couple without time to waste, but difficult decision after difficult decision still faced us. The first hurdle was that my home state of Michigan was, in 2015, one of a handful of states where surrogacy contracts were not only illegal but where we could face a fine of up to $10,000 or a year in jail if we pursued one.

Infertile women such as myself often choose not to get too involved in those early days: there has been so much loss that we can't run the risk of having hope

For a long time, the state had been a global pioneer in surrogacy. Not only was it the first place where a formal surrogacy contract was negotiated back in 1976 but it is where the world's first baby was born via a gestational carrier in 1985.

But Michigan's progressive reputation ended in 1988 when it became the first US state to make surrogacy a felony, following the Baby M backlash, and it has not significantly changed its rules since. We had to cast our net wider and ended up with a Boston-based agency.

The politics of choosing a surrogate are - perhaps justly - fraught. In the early days of surrogacy, radical feminists argued that it commodified the womb and exploited women based on their reproductive capabilities. They warned that poor women of colour would be taken advantage of by wealthy white heterosexual couples desperate to have a child.

"What we learn from experience today is that a lot of surrogates are white and tend to be lower middle class, so empirically this has not held true," says Cornell University law professor Sital Kalantry, who has written extensively on surrogacy in both the US and India.

"People who . . . have never spoken with a surrogate before have these deep assumptions about it," says Heather Jacobson, the author of Labor of Love: Gestational Surrogacy and the Work of Making Babies. "If the concern of so many people is the exploitation of women in surrogacy, well then talk to them."

It's not every day you ask someone to have your baby over Skype.

Before long our agency had matched us with Julie and Chad, a couple in Illinois who explained in a letter their reasons for wanting to be part of a surrogacy journey. They both have MBA degrees and work in management, and they have five children between them. Julie wrote that she had really enjoyed her three pregnancies and, since being a mom was the most important thing in her life, she wanted to share that with someone who could not otherwise have kids.

There are, of course, concerns that can't be covered in a letter or surrogacy contract. "The intended parent and surrogate relationship can be a sensitive one to navigate," says Ellen Trachman, a Colorado-based family formation attorney. What intended parents think of as giving the surrogate space, the surrogate might see as a lack of interest. Trachman adds that while there is a common fear that a gestational carrier may want to keep the child, most surrogates view the experience as the "equivalent of extreme babysitting".

Infertile women, such as myself, often choose not to get too involved in those early days: there has been so much loss that we can't run the risk of having hope.

Persistence is as important to surrogacy as to scaling Kilimanjaro or writing the Great American Novel

Our first attempt with my frozen eggs in June 2016 did not take, but by August Julie was pregnant from one of the frozen embryos we'd shipped from London to our clinic in California. At eight weeks, she miscarried. I was in Tanzania on a reporting trip when she texted me and I remember howling into the blustery wind blowing off the Indian Ocean. That was the last of our genetic material. We could not have felt more despondent.

But persistence is as important to surrogacy as to scaling Kilimanjaro or writing the Great American Novel. With the help of an egg donor, two healthy embryos were implanted into Julie in the early spring of 2017. Soon afterwards, Julie called to tell us that we were expecting twins.

Going through the trauma of infertility, you learn to temper your expectations quite quickly. While we were hopeful, my husband and I did not allow ourselves to get excited until that summer, when we met Julie and Chad for the first time at a Chicago Cubs game. As I watched her waddle down the concrete steps at Wrigley Field stadium, I was excited that she and the babies seemed to be thriving - but also melancholy that I was not the one who got to carry and grow them.

To the sounds of bats cracking and the crowd cheering, the four of us bonded over our families' varied reactions to the surrogacy. While mine were excited, I had to explain the more technical processes to them. One of Julie's in-laws, meanwhile, thought my kids were going to be her children's siblings.

"To say just 'surrogacy' is asking a lot of . . . people," says Karla Torres, senior human rights counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York. "Once you parse it out and explain to people what it actually entails, that is really helpful."

According to Judith Daar, author of The New Eugenics: Selective Breeding in an Era of Reproductive Technology, there is growing acceptance. "You see the legal landscape in the United States shifting," says Daar, "and that is a sign that the normalisation is well under way."

Part of that normalisation has come from the LGBT+ community, which in New York state helped finance and lobby for a surrogacy law that included a Surrogates' Bill of Rights, giving carriers the freedom to make their own healthcare decisions. "It's gay men that drove the issue at the end of the day," says Amy Paulin, the assemblywoman who worked for 14 years to get the legislation passed. This February, New York became the latest state to make surrogacy legal.

Michigan is the last full holdout. That's not necessarily because surrogacy is any more controversial there; in fact, a recent case of a Michigan couple having to adopt their biological twins from their carrier has caused local consternation and outrage. But there isn't yet much political will.

Organisations such as Resolve: The National Infertility Association have lobbied to create more surrogacy-friendly laws. This is not just about legality: only 19 states in the US currently mandate insurance coverage for infertility.

Given the expense, surrogacy needs not only political will but also social funding. Some of this comes from clinicians and agencies that now offer payment plans and discounts, while non-profits such as the Cade Foundation focus on awarding grants and stipends to intended parents who struggle to afford aspects of the process. Some grantmakers give to particular groups: Fertility for Colored Girls to black women and Men Having Babies to gay men.

I finally became a mother in January 2018, when Julie had a healthy boy and girl - now three-year-olds, my fiery and independent daughter and my cheeky and thoughtful little man. I always say that, on that day, Julie didn't just give birth to my twins, she also gave birth to me as a mother.
Ginanne Brownell is writing a book on cross-border surrogacy around the globe Follow on Twitter to find out about our latest stories first.

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Two decades ago, I got a tattoo of an Akua'ba statuette on my inner right ankle. A female fertility symbol in Ghana, the disc-headed figure comes from the Akan legend of Akua, a woman who went to a priest for advice because she was having trouble conceiving.

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Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

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Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

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Interesting developments on this bill and the consequences for the meaning of "public" space / access to certain spaces

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THE right to protest is "under threat" from proposed laws that could make it an offence to obstruct Parliament, campaigners warned today.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, announced in the Commons this week, aims to grant officers new powers against non-violent protests "that have a significant disruptive effect on the public or on access to Parliament."

Home Secretary Priti Patel is believed to be seeking to make the obstruction of Parliament, courts and newspaper distribution by protesters unlawful, as well as to impose restrictions on where demontrations can be held.

The Bill is thought to be an attempt to crack down on civil disobedience by Extinction Rebellion (XR), after the climate activist group brought central London to a standstill and blockaded printing presses last year.

Campaigners have warned that the proposals "threaten our right to protest" and are an attempt to extend current restrictions on protest beyond the pandemic.

"The Home Secretary's plans look, on the face of it, like a combination of defending business interests and petty vengeance against political and social movements she dislikes," police monitoring group Netpol said.

Liberty interim director Gracie Bradley told LBC radio that she was concerned about the proposals amid the use of coronavirus regulations to curb protest.

"We've seen nurses fined £10,000 at the weekend for protesting about their pay and it looks like these supposedly temporary measures are going to become permanent and our right to stand up to power ... will be reduced," she said.

Ms Patel's proposals are also thought to target Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, which she has previously described as "dreadful."

Black Protest Legal Support, a group set up to monitor policing of the BLM protests last summer, told the Morning Star that it is "vital we stand firmly against narrowing the space for civil disobedience, the attempted silencing of black voices and the chilling effect this will have on protest rights more broadly."

Netpol has launched a campaign against the Bill and is calling on groups to back its Charter for Freedom of Assembly Rights, which calls for greater protections for protesters. A Netpol petition has received more than 3,000 signatures so far.

On Tuesday, Justice Secretary Robert Buckland did not dispute that the legislation was a "direct response" to BLM and XR, claiming that the "huge inconvenience" caused made new restrictions necessary.

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New laws put right to protest 'under threat,' campaigners warn

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THE right to protest is "under threat" from proposed laws that could make it an offence to obstruct Parliament, campaigners warned today. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, announced in the Commons this week, aims to grant officers new powers against non-violent protests "that have a significant disruptive effect on the public or on access to Parliament."

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More strange circumstances in a remote court

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More strange circumstances in a remote court

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A doctor in Sacramento, California joined a traffic court hearing on Zoom while performing surgery on a patient.

Scott Green was dressed in surgical scrubs in an operating theatre when he appeared at his virtual trial on Thursday, the Sacramento Bee reported.

When questioned by the judge, Mr Green said he was happy to go ahead, and that he had "another surgeon right here who's doing the surgery with me".

The judge said that would not be "appropriate" and postponed the trial.

The Medical Board of California has now said in a statement that it would look into the incident, adding that it "expects physicians to follow the standard of care when treating their patients".

Before the Sacramento Superior Court hearing, which was livestreamed on YouTube, a court clerk asked the plastic surgeon: "Hello, Mr Green? Hi. Are you available for trial? It kind of looks like you're in an operating room."

Green responded: "I am, sir. Yes, I'm in an operating room right now. Yes, I'm available for trial. Go right ahead."

Judge: "Unless I'm mistaken, I'm seeing a defendant who's in the middle of an operating room appearing to be actively engaged in providing services to a patient. Is that correct, Mr. Green?"

Defendant: "Yes, sir."

Judge: "Or should I say, Dr. Green."

😳 pic.twitter.com/iKpWwKsFEg
- Ajit Pai (@AjitPai) February 28, 2021

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. View original tweet on Twitter

The clerk told Mr Green that the hearing was being livestreamed online, because traffic hearings are required by law to be open to the public. At the same time, an officer summoned to appear in court raised her eyebrows.

While waiting for the judge, Court Commissioner Gary Link, to enter the Zoom, Mr Green appeared to continue operating on the patient.

Once Mr Link had joined, he told the hearing: "So unless I'm mistaken, I'm seeing a defendant that's in the middle of an operating room appearing to be actively engaged in providing services to a patient. Is that correct, Mr Green? Or should I say Dr Green?"

After the surgeon confirmed he was in the middle of performing surgery, and that he would be happy to continue, Mr Link said: "I do not feel comfortable for the welfare of a patient if you're in the process of operating that I would put on a trial, notwithstanding the fact the officer is here today."

Mr Green then insisted he was able to go ahead, adding: "I have another surgeon right here who's doing the surgery with me, so I can stand here and allow them to do the surgery also."

Mr Link replied: "I don't think so, I don't think that's appropriate. I'm going to come up with a different date - when you're not actively involved or participating and attending to the needs of a patient."

BBC News has contacted Mr Green's office for comment.

The surgeon reportedly told NBC News: "That's not accurate and I have nothing to say. Thank you."

This isn't the first Zoom court mishap to go viral.

Earlier this month, a lawyer was unable to remove a cat filter from his screen, before telling the judge he was happy to go ahead anyway: "I'm here live, I'm not a cat."

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Doctor joins Zoom court hearing while operating on patient

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A doctor in Sacramento, California joined a traffic court hearing on Zoom while performing surgery on a patient. Scott Green was dressed in surgical scrubs in an operating theatre when he appeared at his virtual trial on Thursday, the Sacramento Bee reported.

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b050d2t9/the-eichmann-show

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At-home early medical abortions should be made permanent, say advocacy groups

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Temporary legislation allowing for early medical abortions (EMAs) to take place at home should be made permanent, reproductive healthcare groups have said.

In March, due to the coronavirus pandemic, temporary legislation was introduced that allowed patients within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy to take pills for early medical abortion in their own homes. This follows a phone call or e-consultation with a clinician, and means the patient does not need to physically attend a hospital or clinic.

A consultation, due to close on 26 February, is now under way by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to determine whether the temporary legislation should be made permanent.

Statistics by the DHSC have shown that between January and June 2020 86% of abortions were performed under 10 weeks. Between April and June 2020, 43% of medical abortions were administered at home.

Charities and advocacy groups, including the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), Abortion Rights UK, and MSI Reproductive Choices UK, have urged that, after the consultation, this legislation should be made permanent, arguing that it is safe and effective.

Katherine O'Brien of the BPAS said that the development of telemedical abortion care has been a silver lining of the coronavirus pandemic.

"While other healthcare services have been suspended, access to abortion has been maintained and waiting times for abortion care have fallen significantly. Telemedicine enables women to better combine their healthcare needs with other responsibilities in their lives, such as work and childcare commitments, and it means that women can end their pregnancies in the privacy and comfort of their own homes.

"For women who are in challenging circumstances which may restrict their ability to attend a clinic, such as women who are in an abusive or controlling relationship, this service has proved a lifeline. By allowing women to receive medication by post, it also protects women from having to face anti-abortion clinic protesters, who will no doubt be hoping that telemedicine is revoked so that they can harass and intimidate as many women as possible. This regulatory change should be retained so that BPAS and other providers can continue to provide this high standard of care in future."

Kerry Abel, the chair of Abortion Rights UK, said the case for at-home early medical abortions has been made by shorter waiting times and high patient satisfaction, but that it also has broken down other barriers to accessing abortion services in the UK.

"Barriers such as travel - the cost and the inconvenience for all, but particularly disabled women and those in rural communities not served by regular public transport. We know women have passed their abortions on the bus home - the previous restrictions weren't always humane.

"More than 50% of women who have an abortion have children already. Telemedicine avoids paying out for childcare and even missing potential work if someone has to give up a shift and they have a zero-hours contract.

"The benefit to women in domestic abuse scenarios who can't make out-of-the-ordinary appointments is clear."

A DHSC spokesperson said: "The current temporary measures allow eligible women to use both pills for early medical abortion - which goes up to 10 weeks of gestation - at home, and at the end of last year we launched a three-month consultation on whether to make this permanent.

"The consultation closes on 26 February and we welcome feedback from anyone with an interest or view on this subject, particularly from people who have been directly affected by the current temporary measure."

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At-home early medical abortions should be made permanent, say advocacy groups

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Temporary legislation allowing for early medical abortions (EMAs) to take place at home should be made permanent, reproductive healthcare groups have said. In March, due to the coronavirus pandemic, temporary legislation was introduced that allowed patients within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy to take pills for early medical abortion in their own homes.

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Interesting article on rationing forensic evidence in the UK - makes us think again about the obdurate materiality of law

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Police forces are having to ration forensic toxicology work, especially samples from suspected drug drivers, because there is not enough capacity in the system to handle the volume of work, the outgoing forensic science regulator has said.

Dr Gillian Tully, who steps down from her post after six years on Tuesday, said the service needed to be treated as critical national infrastructure and given the funding and regulatory powers necessary to maintain the integrity of the criminal justice system.

She warned that police forces were having to ration certain types of tests, which led to backlogs in cases, and parts of the sector remained in a precarious position due to the shortfalls.

"Essentially, road traffic toxicology work is having to be rationed because there isn't enough capacity for every police force to submit every sample that they'd like to submit," she said. "The inescapable conclusion is that offenders who are suspected of driving while under the influence of drugs are tolerated and allowed to present a continuing threat to communities."

She added that the high workload of staff working in these laboratories also risked undermining the quality of their analysis.

Tully also called for greater scrutiny of scientific evidence in court, including training lawyers and police officers on the limitations of forensic science - particularly digital evidence - as well as the need for greater training of medical examiners working with sexual assault victims, to ensure vital physical evidence was not missed.

The role of the regulator is to develop scientific quality standards for the various forensic disciplines and to ensure that police and private laboratories offering these services in England and Wales are meeting them. Tully took up the appointment in November 2014, having worked in forensic science for more than 25 years, specialising in DNA.

During her tenure, she warned of wide-ranging problems that threaten the justice system, with too few providers meeting the quality standards that are meant to prevent errors. She has also criticised the government for failing to give the regulator the necessary powers to enforce standards, despite committing to do so in 2016.

She said that progress had been made towards improving the reliability of scientific techniques and the implementation of quality standards by forensic labs. "But there is still a very long way to go to make sure we have a system that operates in a way that supports research and development, delivery of day-to-day services, alongside quality as well - and that it is not robbing Peter to pay Paul for one or other of those," she said.

She also warned that alongside toxicology labs there were similar capacity problems existing in digital labs, such as those recovering data from computer hard drives and mobile phones, resulting in a backlog of devices waiting to be processed.

"It means some cases will just be waiting and the investigations won't be proceeding until those devices eventually are reached," Tully said. Although these capacity problems had been known about for several years, little had been done to rectify the situation, she added.

Meanwhile, those working in the criminal justice system needed better training on how to interpret the evidence being presented in court and understand its limitations. This was particularly true of digital evidence such as cell site analysis, which is used to pinpoint where a mobile phone was used at the time of an incident.

Tully said: "I think there's a lot of accepting at face value. What I would like is more understanding, throughout the whole criminal justice system, of what the limitations are on all types of evidence.

"There is the potential for evidence to be misunderstood, misconstrued and given either more or less weight than it should be given. A miscarriage of justice is at the extreme end of what that can lead to, but it could just give more weight to a particular piece of evidence in the minds of jurors, that they perhaps ought to put less weight on, or vice versa."

She urged her successor to take a systematic approach to improving forensic science, and called on the government to prioritise the area. "Forensic science provision ought to be treated as an important national infrastructure and given the priority it deserves across government - including adequate funding to support quality and delivery and research. And there ought to be legislation to enable the regulator, when necessary, to prevent people from delivering services that pose a risk to the criminal justice system."

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Forensic science rationing is putting justice at risk, says outgoing regulator

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Police forces are having to ration forensic toxicology work, especially samples from suspected drug drivers, because there is not enough capacity in the system to handle the volume of work, the outgoing forensic science regulator has said.

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On the ambiguities of maritime jurisdiction

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On the ambiguities of maritime jurisdiction

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ourists are more accustomed to seeing kite surfers or kayaks off the idyllic coast of Umm Al Quwain, in the United Arab Emirates. But today they have gathered on sun loungers to sip coffee and gaze at the unusual sight of a 5,000-ton oil tanker grounded on the sand.

For the crew inside the Panama-flagged MT Iba, however, being grounded on the beach marks another harrowing chapter in an almost four-year ordeal at sea.

It is one of the worst cases of seafarer abandonment to come to light since that of Captain Ayyappan Swaminathan, whose 18-month plight on the MV Azraqmoiah cargo ship off the coast of the UAE was highlighted by the Guardian in 2019.

Abandoned by the vessel's owner, their wages unpaid for 32 months, the five-person crew of the $4m (£2.8 million) Iba are in limbo. If they leave the ship they will lose their claim to the hundreds of dollars owed to them.

Nay Win, the 53-year-old chief engineer from Myanmar, who was contracted to work on the ship for a year in 2017, says the crew have endured "terrible suffering" and are desperately worried about their families. "I cannot send wages to support my family, my children cannot study, they cannot eat, they have to borrow money."

Win, whose wife Naing Naing Maw, daughter Eyi Myat Mon, 17, and son, Lwin Moe Aung, 21, live in a country in the midst of a military coup, says: "I am worried for my family, about Covid-19 and the political situation. I told them, stay at home, don't go outside."

What began as a normal seafaring job turned into a "living hell", the men say, after the tanker's owner, Alco Shipping, once one of the UAE's largest shipping firms, ran into financial difficulty and stopped paying salaries almost three years ago. Since then they have been forced to rely on charities for food and water.

Nay Win, left, and other crew members of MT Iba look out to sea in Umm Al Quwain. Photograph: Abdel Hadi Ramahi/Reuters

Speaking to the Guardian via WhatsApp, Win says he has had to cancel university education for his children and cannot afford medical bills for his daughter, who has heart problems.

Win and Riasat Ali, 52, a second engineer from Pakistan, have been on board since July 2017. Monchand Sheikh, 26, a cook from India, joined in late 2018, while Vinay Kumar, 31, another second engineer, and Nirmal Singh-Bora, 22, both from India, joined in late 2019.

In January, the vessel, which is almost out of fuel, broke two anchors in rough seas in Al Hamriya Port, just north of Dubai. The crew spent a terrifying 12 hours as the Iba listed at an angle of 45 degrees and began drifting in the busy waters of the Gulf, before finally running aground on the sand, metres from the beach.

"I informed the owner the anchor chain could break anytime, but he does not care," says Win.

Every day on this voyage we have prayed. It was our only hope

Vinay Kumar, engineer

"We've seen hell during this voyage," Kumar, a father of two, says. "Every day we prayed, it was our only hope," he told the National, a UAE newspaper.

The crew are owed $230,000 (£170,000) in unpaid wages, the seafarers say. Alco Shipping was blacklisted by the Indian government in 2018 due to abandonment cases.

If the crew set foot on land, they risk being detained for not having the right documents. Win's passport, which expired while he has been at sea, remains with his former employer. And with a military coup at home, it is unclear how he will get a new one. Furthermore, international law prohibits "ghost ships" at sea without crew because they are a safety hazard.

Cases of seafarer abandonment are at a record high, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has said. Hotspots for abandonment are the Middle East and Asia, with the UAE top of the list in 2020, followed by China, Taiwan, Turkey and Italy. Liberia, Malta and Panama were the flag states with the most cases last year, IMO and International Labour Organization data showed.

Mohamed Arrachedi, Arab world and Iran network coordinator for the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF), says that while many abandonment cases can be resolved quickly, some take longer for a variety of reasons, including a lack of cooperation from owners and no insurance on board to cover the seafarers.

"It is unacceptable that seafarers are kept as hostages on ships for such a long time, and their wellbeing and rights are ignored," Arrachedi says. "The seafarers should be at the heart and centre of action in abandonment cases."

The MT Iba ran aground after breaking two anchors. Photograph: Abdel Hadi Ramahi/Reuters

The Mission to Seafarers, which dropped food to the men last month, hopes negotiations to repatriate the crew can be concluded soon. The Rev Andy Bowerman, the charity's regional director in the Middle East and south Asia, says the contrast between the tourists on the beach and the crew is stark. "People go and sit on deckchairs on the beach and take coffee and look at them. It's a bizarre situation. But these are real people in a real situation."

People sit on deckchairs on the beach and look at them. It is a bizarre situation

Andy Bowerman, Mission to Seafarers

"We were hoping that once they got beached, [this] would be resolved more quickly," says Bowerman, who is helping to mediate negotiations between Alco and the crew.

"But it's been two and a half weeks. The authorities need to think very carefully about how this is perceived by the wider world. These men have had to stay on a ship, unpaid, relying on charities for food and water. If there was strong maritime legislation in place this ship would be arrested and put out to auction almost immediately."

Following another abandonment case highlighted by the Guardian in 2019, the UAE said a law to seize abandoned ships was under discussion. In 2018, the country brought in regulations similar to a maritime labour convention amendment, which require vessels to carry insurance, so that abandoned seafarers get paid up to four months' wages. But it came too late for the Iba seafarers, who were abandoned in 2017.

The tanker and its crew have become a curiosity for tourists. Photograph: Christopher Pike/Reuters

Syed Waqar Hasan has taken over operations of Alco Shipping, in the absence of his brother, the ship's owner Syed Ijaz Hasan, who was imprisoned in 2017 for financial crimes.

"I'm trying to solve the problem," Waqar Hasan tells the Guardian. "I feel sympathy for the crew but my hands are tied. There is no money in Alco Shipping. It was made bankrupt."

He says: "It's complicated. The Iba is mortgaged to the bank. There are so many outstanding debts. The crew, the salaries are piling up. But we have one buyer for the Iba."

The buyer is willing to pay the crew $142,000 in owed salaries, plus $8,000 in repatriation costs, he says. But it is unclear if the seafarers will accept. The vessel is worth $4m, Waqar Hasan says, but its debts to the port authority, banks and others amount to $1.95m.

The Guardian has approached the UAE's Federal Transport Authority for comment.

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Four years at sea, now just metres from shore: 'living hell' of stranded UAE ship

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ourists are more accustomed to seeing kite surfers or kayaks off the idyllic coast of Umm Al Quwain, in the United Arab Emirates. But today they have gathered on sun loungers to sip coffee and gaze at the unusual sight of a 5,000-ton oil tanker grounded on the sand.

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Wondering how to get this into my next essay?

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A Texas lawyer accidentally left a kitten filter on during a video conference call with a judge and was unable to change it, eventually responding to a judge's query about why he was being addressed by a digital feline by saying: "I'm here live. I am not a cat."

The coronavirus has prompted many computer mishaps, as many of the world's workers adapt to working from home in the face of the pandemic. They have ranged from the inadvertently hilarious to the career-ending.

But lawyer Rod Ponton's accidental morphing into a wide-eyed baby cat appears destined to achieve viral immortality.

Faced with hearing legal debate from the kitten's cute but worried face, Judge Roy Ferguson of Texas's 394th judicial district told Ponton: "I believe you have a filter turned on in the video settings. You might want to ..."

The Ponton/kitten entity then interrupts Ferguson in a panicked drawl: "Can you hear me, judge?"

Ferguson responds: "I can hear you. I think it's a filter ..."

"It is," the cat-faced Ponton responds. "And I don't know how to remove it. I've got my assistant here, she's trying to, but I'm prepared to go forward with it ... I'm here live. I'm not a cat."

Ferguson deadpans: "I can see that."

In the manner of good judges everywhere, Ferguson sought to use the example of human/feline fallibility as a teachable moment. He tweeted: "If a child used your computer, before you join a virtual hearing check the 'Zoom video options' to be sure filters are off."

He added: "These fun moments are a byproduct of the legal profession's dedication to ensuring that the justice system continues to function in these tough times. Everyone involved handled it with dignity, and the filtered lawyer showed incredible grace. True professionalism all around!"

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Texas lawyer, trapped by cat filter on Zoom call, informs judge he is not a cat

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A Texas lawyer accidentally left a kitten filter on during a video conference call with a judge and was unable to change it, eventually responding to a judge's query about why he was being addressed by a digital feline by saying: "I'm here live. I am not a cat."

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"I am here live, I am not a cat" Brilliant zoom filter situation in remote court hearing 

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"I am here live, I am not a cat" Brilliant zoom filter situation in remote court hearing 

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“I’m here live, I’m not a cat,” says lawyer after Zoom filter mishap

“I can see that,” responds judge

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“I’m here live, I’m not a cat,” says lawyer after Zoom filter mishap

“I can see that,” responds judge https://t.co/HclKlAUwbM

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Something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot.

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“I’m here live, I’m not a cat,” says lawyer after Zoom filter mishap

“I can see that,” responds judge pic.twitter.com/HclKlAUwbM
— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley) February 9, 2021

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“I’m here live, I’m not a cat,” says lawyer after Zoom filter mishap

“I can see that,” responds judge https://t.co/HclKlAUwbM

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“I’m here live, I’m not a cat,” says lawyer after Zoom filter mishap

“I can see that,” responds judge https://t.co/HclKlAUwbM

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“I’m here live, I’m not a cat,” says lawyer after Zoom filter mishap

“I can see that,” responds judge

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Kate Herrity's blog 'Sensory Criminology' - perhaps more relevant to the material on carceral spaces

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This blog is managed by Kate Herrity, Bethany Schmidt and Jason Warr; editors of the forthcoming "sensory penalities".

We take an expansive view of what constitutes criminology. We understand criminology as interdisciplinary, innovative and creative; in some senses a "post discipline" (Richard Sparks). We have a corresponding interest in approaches which explore the edges of criminology, where it meets other fields and disciplines, aspects of our field which are echoed in explorations of the sensory.

We are similarly open to focus of interest. While we are prisons researchers primarily we wish to broaden academic conversations both in terms of focus and inclusion. If your interest deals in any way with the construction of crime and/or harm, our understanding of crime, the study/research of crime and its consequences, the nature and experience of punishment or why we punish we're interested in hearing from you. This includes more peripheral and experimental areas of our field, as well as ideas and perspectives from people who identify somewhere beyond its blurred boundaries. That it centres sensory experience as a source of knowledge and understanding of the above areas is the central point, and that it is written in a creative, experimental, reflective style. For those of you more established in the ways of academia: our hope is that this presents the opportunity to explore those parts of your fieldnotes otherwise consigned to a drawer as not academic enough, too personal, too unpolished.

Sensory Criminology:

Sensory: Relating to sensation or the physical senses; transmitted or perceived by the senses. A focus on sensory experience as a source of knowledge with the aim of offsetting and undermining our ocular-centric way of thinking about the criminological world. By doing so we move closer to the way the world is experienced, not as discrete packages of information but as a constant deluge of sensory input which we sift and prioritise to make manageable. In so doing we construct our objects of knowledge in the 'image' of our cultural expectations, academically and socially.

Criminology: the scientific study of 'criminal' behaviour, what causes it or how it comes to be so defined and our responses to it.

Sensory criminology: studying criminological issues with a focus on sensory aspects of social experience.

Sensory penalities: exploring the experience of places and processes of punishment in a way which privileges the sensory

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This blog is managed by Kate Herrity, Bethany Schmidt and Jason Warr; editors of the forthcoming "sensory penalities". We take an expansive view of what constitutes criminology. We understand criminology as interdisciplinary, innovative and creative; in some senses a "post discipline" (Richard Sparks). We have a corresponding interest in approaches which explore the edges of...

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Poland to implement near-total ban on abortion imminently

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A controversial ruling that imposes a near total-ban on abortion in Poland will come into effect imminently, the government has announced, three months after the original ruling prompted the biggest protests in the country's recent history.

The announcement led protesters to gather again in Warsaw and other cities on Wednesday evening. "We are inviting everyone, please, go out, be motivated, so we can walk together, make a mark," said protest group leader Marta Lempart.

The ruling, handed down by the constitutional tribunal in October, found that terminating pregnancies due to severe foetal abnormalities is unconstitutional. Poland already has some of the strictest abortion laws in Europe, and most of the small number of legal abortions that take place in the country are cases of foetal defects.

Once the ruling goes into effect, abortion will only be permitted in cases of rape, incest or when the woman's life is in danger.

More than 400,000 people protested in hundreds of towns and cities across the country as part of a "women's strike" after the ruling. Theoretically, the rulings of the court should come into effect immediately, but there have been a number of cases where there have been long delays for apparently political reasons, and there was a sense that the government had been alarmed by the size of the protests and wanted to back away from the ruling.

"It would be good to take some time for dialogue and for finding a new position in this situation, which is difficult and stirs high emotions," Michał Dworczyk, the head of the prime minister's office, told Polish media in early November.

However, on Wednesday, the court's justification for the ruling was published, and the government said it expected to publish the ruling itself on Wednesday too, which would officially make it law.

Poland's ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has been accused of politicising the constitutional tribunal and using it to push through its ultra-conservative agenda on abortion.

The delay in publishing the ruling led to an uneasy situation over the past three months where doctors performing abortions were unsure from one day to the next whether the procedures would remain legal. Many Polish women take pills for medical abortions at home, while thousands of others are forced to travel abroad to seek abortion.

Five of the court's 15 judges dissented from the majority opinion, although some of them only took issue with the justification, not with the substance of the ruling. The court's ruling framed the issue as being about defending the life of an unborn child, and told Polish legislators they should use the words "child" and "mother" when talking about abortions rather than "foetus" and "pregnant woman".

"No law-abiding government should respect this ruling," said Borys Budka, the leader of Poland's largest opposition party, the centrist Civic Platform, Reuters reported.

* This article was amended on 28 January 2021. An earlier version, describing the effect of the ruling, said that "abortion will only be permitted in cases of rape, incest or when the mother's life is in danger". This has been changed to refer to "when the woman's life is in danger".

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Poland to implement near-total ban on abortion imminently

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A controversial ruling that imposes a near total-ban on abortion in Poland will come into effect imminently, the government has announced, three months after the original ruling prompted the biggest protests in the country's recent history. The announcement led protesters to gather again in Warsaw and other cities on Wednesday evening.

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By Sinead Wilson
BBC News

Labour is calling for juries to be cut from 12 members to seven, to stem the "gravest crisis" in the justice system since World War Two.

Shadow justice secretary David Lammy said action was needed to clear the backlog of thousands of cases.

He argued that smaller juries and the use of more temporary courts would allow socially distanced trials.

The government has not ruled out such a move but insists measures it is taking to clear the backlog are working.

Last week four criminal justice watchdogs warned that courts in England and Wales were straining under pressure from the coronavirus pandemic.

Jury trials ground to a halt at the start of the first lockdown, when people were advised to stay at home except in limited circumstances.

When they resumed, there were severe delays and numerous cancellations due to social-distancing requirements.

Recent figures revealed that the number of unheard cases in crown courts had reached a record 54,000.

The backlog means some from last year may not go before a jury until 2022, and it could be years before the courts get back on track.

'Nightingale courts'

Labour wants the temporary return of so-called "wartime juries" of seven rather than 12 members to speed up the process.

"Victims of rape, murder, domestic abuse, robbery and assault are facing delays of up to four years because of the government's failure to act," Mr Lammy said.

He also urged the government to speed up the rollout of temporary "Nightingale courts" to hear civil, family and tribunals work, as well as non-custodial crime cases.

Ten of these were announced in July 2020 to help deal with the backlog in court proceedings, and 20 are now in operation across England and Wales.

Leading lawyers are sceptical about Labour's proposal to reach back into wartime history.

The Criminal Bar Association - representing barristers who prosecute and defend trials - says a panel of seven may allow more courtrooms to be used, but it wouldn't solve what it says is chronic underfunding - and potentially undermines one of the most important safeguards in our society.

The Law Society, for solicitors, wants to see evidence that smaller panels would ease backlogs without risking injustices.

The Ministry of Justice's internal modelling calculated last year that reduced juries would lead to a 10% increase in cases - but that was before courtrooms received new Covid-proof screens that have allowed more trials to run.

Scotland's courts are using cinemas to host juries - and while that is not being actively discussed in England, it's not been ruled out either.

Even if juries were slimmed, courts would still need to tightly control the number of defendants who can use their cells and courtroom docks to meet Public Health England's guidelines.

In April last year, the head of judiciary in England and Wales, Lord Burnett, backed the idea of reducing the number of jurors if social distancing continued.

In June, Justice Secretary Robert Buckland told the BBC he was "very attracted" by the idea of smaller juries, as had happened in wartime, and judge-only trials in less serious cases.

The Ministry of Justice says it has now installed plastic screens in more than 450 courtrooms and jury deliberation rooms to reduce Covid risks.

It says the safety measures are designed for 12-person juries and that the impact of lowering the number of jurors would be negligible.

However, a spokesman said nothing was being ruled out and ministers were continuing to consider every option available to ensure courts recover quickly.

"This approach is already delivering results, with magistrates' backlogs falling significantly and the number of cases being dealt with in the crown courts reaching pre-Covid levels last month," he added.

The spokesman also said: "We know more must be done and are investing £110m into a range of measures to drive this recovery further, including opening more Nightingale courts."

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Coronavirus: Cut jury size to clear courts backlog - Labour

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By Sinead Wilson BBC News Labour is calling for juries to be cut from 12 members to seven, to stem the "gravest crisis" in the justice system since World War Two. Shadow justice secretary David Lammy said action was needed to clear the backlog of thousands of cases.

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Brilliant Open Access Book on Courts and Participation

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Brilliant Open Access Book on Courts and Participation

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Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence

Effective participation in court and tribunal hearings is regarded as essential to justice, yet many barriers limit the capacity of defendants, parties and witnesses to participate.

Featuring policy analysis, courtroom observations and practitioners' voices, this significant study reveals how participation is supported in the courts and tribunals of England and Wales. Including reflections on changes to the justice system as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, it also details the socio-structural, environmental, procedural, cultural and personal factors which constrain participation.

This is an invaluable resource that makes a compelling case for a principled, explicit commitment to supporting participation across the justice system of England and Wales and beyond.

"This book provides an insightful analysis of what it means for people to participate in the justice system. It presents a novel way of looking at this important question that will be of great use to scholars, practitioners and policymakers alike." Joe Tomlinson, University of York

"An engaging, accessible and much-needed exploration of the multifaceted nature of participation in courts and tribunals." Abenaa Owusu-Bempah, London School of Economics

"Ensuring people can participate meaningfully in the justice system has become increasingly important over the past decade with court modernisation initiatives, cuts to legal aid, and an increase in litigants without legal representation. In addition, the COVID-19 crisis has accelerated moves towards remote justice. In this period of change, we warmly welcome this new study which, through its careful consideration of what effective participation in justice really means, has the potential to improve people's access to and experiences of the justice system." Rob Street, Nuffield Foundation

Jessica Jacobson is Director of the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR) and Professor of Criminal Justice at Birkbeck, University of London.

Penny Cooper is Visiting Professor at the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR) at Birkbeck, University of London.

Chapter authors:

Gillian Hunter is Senior Research Fellow the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR) at Birkbeck, University of London.

Amy Kirby is Lecturer in Criminology the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR) at Birkbeck, University of London.

Introduction ~ Jessica Jacobson

Policy and Practice Supporting Lay Participation ~ Gillian Hunter

Conceptualising Participation: Practitioner Accounts ~ Amy Kirby

Observed Realities of Participation ~ Jessica Jacobson

Looking Ahead: Towards a Principled Approach to Supporting Participation ~ Penny Cooper

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participation in courts and tribunals - concepts

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Bristol University Press | Participation in Courts and Tribunals - Concepts, Realities and Aspirations, Edited by Jessica Jacobson and Penny Cooper

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Participation in Courts and Tribunals - Concepts, Realities and Aspirations;This significant study reveals how participation is supported in the courts and tribunals of England and Wales. Including reflections on changes to the justice system as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, it details the socio-structural, environmental, procedural, cultural and personal factors which constrain it.

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Urgent action is needed to tackle an "unprecedented backlog" of court cases built up in England and Wales during the pandemic that has "severe implications" for victims, the four justice chief inspectors have warned.

The plight of prisoners locked up for most of the day because of Covid-19 and disruption to services for young offenders were also highlighted in a report by the inspectors of probation, police, prisons and the Crown Prosecution Service.

They expressed "grave concern" in particular about the situation in courts - already struggling with a "chronic backlog" of cases - which they said constituted the greatest threat to the proper operation of the criminal justice system.

"Delays mean victims must wait longer for cases to be heard; some will withdraw support for prosecutions because they have lost faith in the process," said Justin Russell, the chief inspector of probation, speaking on behalf all four inspectors.

"Witnesses will find it difficult to recall events that took place many months ago, and prosecutors waste significant periods of time preparing for cases that do not go ahead."

Those accused of crimes also faced delays in their opportunities to defend themselves while defendants were kept on remand for longer periods.

The number of ongoing cases in crown courts was 44% higher in December 2020 compared with February, while the latest figures show more than 53,000 cases are waiting to come before crown courts. Some of these cases have been scheduled for 2022.

While inspectors said they were heartened the criminal justice system (CJS) had coped "reasonably well" with the immediate challenges of the pandemic, court closures and social distancing had added to the pressures.

While the recorded numbers of most types of crime fell in March last year, they rose to pre-pandemic levels during the summer.

The four chief inspectors, who will give evidence to the House of Commons' justice committee on Tuesday, have called on the government to provide additional funding and direction to agencies.

Pressure for more funding to help Covid-stricken courts also came from the Bar Council, which called separately for the creation of dozens of additional "Nightingale courts" to help with demand during the pandemic, investment of £55m to recruit and retain staff, and for non-means-tested legal aid to be made available for all domestic abuse cases.

A government spokesperson said the chief inspectors had recognised the swift and unprecedented work that had kept the justice system moving.

"These efforts have allowed us to rapidly increase the use of video technology, establish 36 'Nightingale' courtrooms and prioritise urgent cases to protect the public from dangerous criminals, while we were one of the first countries in the world to resume jury trials," the spokesperson said.

An investment of £450m to boost recovery in the courts was already yielding results as the backlog in magistrates courts continued to fall and crown court cases reached pre-pandemic levels last month, they added.

* This article was amended on 19 January 2021. It incorrectly referred to the criminal justice system in the UK, rather than England and Wales. This has been corrected.

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Case backlog threatens criminal justice system in England and Wales, say inspectors

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Urgent action is needed to tackle an "unprecedented backlog" of court cases built up in England and Wales during the pandemic that has "severe implications" for victims, the four justice chief inspectors have warned.

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UK ministers face legal action over lack of abortion services in Northern Ireland

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Northern Ireland's human rights commission (NIHRC) has launched a landmark legal action against the UK government for its failure to commission safe and accessible abortion services more than a year after abortion was made legal in the country, the Guardian can reveal.

The Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, is accused of unlawfully denying the rights of women in the country, who experts warn are being forced to use unregulated services and to travel to high-risk areas during the pandemic. The NIHRC is also taking action against the Northern Ireland Executive and the country's Department of Health.

The situation for women seeking an abortion could considerably worsen in 2021, as medics who formed an ad-hoc early abortion service in the early days of the pandemic have warned the unfunded service is on the brink of collapse, as the small number of health professionals running it return to their pre-pandemic roles.

One of Northern Ireland's five trusts, the South Eastern trust, currently has no early medical abortion (EMA) service after a doctor went on maternity leave. Another, the Northern trust, ceased all services in October because of a lack of resources but resumed on 4 January. While it was closed other trusts were not taking referrals because of a lack of capacity - leaving women with no choice but to travel for an abortion or order abortion pills online and take them unsupervised.

Les Allamby, the head of the NIHRC, said the body was taking legal action after the secretary of state, the Northern Ireland Executive and the Department of Health refused to take responsibility for creating services.

"We have entered a Kafkaesque world where the NIO [Northern Ireland Office] claims it is taking all reasonable steps to enable a service, the Department of Health claims it cannot get agreement to commission and fund a service through the NI Executive, and the NI Executive says it is a matter for the Department of Health," he said. "It is a game of 'pass the parcel' where the music never stops, except it is not a game but an issue of women's health and wellbeing. In addition, forcing women to travel raises wider public health issues."

Abortion was legalised in Northern Ireland in October 2019 after a Westminster vote led by the Labour MP Stella Creasy took advantage of a paralysed Stormont, despite an 11th-hour attempt by the region's assembly to block change. Officials confirmed termination could go ahead in April 2020 after the threat of legal action by pro-choice campaigners.

But the Northern Irish health minister, Robin Swann, has said commissioning services is a "controversial issue" and must be referred to the country's executive committee.

Creasy, whose amendment paved the way for the change in the law, said the blame for the fact that women were still being forced to travel to England to access abortion or order abortion pills online lay "squarely with the secretary of state", who in December said he was "proud" the UK government had delivered the right to abortion.

"Those whose rights are being denied are rightly asking why Brandon Lewis won't accept a hard border in the Irish Sea when it comes to goods and services but he will with women's rights," she said.

As a result of the deadlock trusts have established unfunded services led by a group of fewer than a dozen committed medics, the Guardian understands. Between April and the end of November 2020 they facilitated 719 terminations, compared with only eight the year earlier, according to DoH figures.

Dr Laura McLaughlin, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist from Doctors for Choice NI who works with just one nurse to provide the service in her trust, said the system was unsustainable. Since going on maternity leave she has not been replaced. "The fact we have a service at all is 100% down to clinicians' hard work, sheer commitment, dedication, and desire to help women," she said. "We feel very isolated, exhausted and ultimately really disappointed."

Another clinician single-handedly providing the service in a different trust had taken two days of annual leave since the pandemic began so the service would not grind to a halt.

"Women's healthcare should not be dependent on their location or ability to board a plane," said Ruairi Rowan, the director of advocacy and policy at Informing Choices NI (ICNI), which directs all calls from women wanting an abortion to relevant services. "Travel carries stigma. It adds to secrecy and it can take away privacy."

Abortion is legal in Northern Ireland up to 12 weeks (compared with 24 weeks in England) but four of the five trusts are only providing abortion pills up to 10 weeks, and none between 10 and 12 weeks. Abortion up to 24 weeks is legal if a woman's mental or physical health is at risk, and up to term if there is threat to life, but currently no surgical abortions are taking place.

The women most likely to need later abortions are the most vulnerable, young women or those in abusive relationships for whom travelling may be impossible, said Goretti Horgan, a social policy lecturer at Ulster University and a longtime pro-choice activist.

"Women here no longer have to fear being criminalised, and that is a huge advance," she said. "But for women who are watched all the time, who are under coercive control - they have very little choice."

A UK government spokesperson said the health and safety of women accessing abortion remained "paramount". The government would continue to engage with Northern Ireland's DoH in commissioning "full abortion services, consistent with the regulations we made, as soon as possible", they added.

A spokesperson for the DoH said it had "advised that [it] is not required to commission the relevant services". Asked by the Guardian if there were plans to commission services in 2021, the department said any matter that was "significant or controversial" had to be put before the executive and as proposals remained under consideration it was "not possible at present to give a timescale for the introduction of a fully commissioned abortion service".

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UK ministers face legal action over lack of abortion services in Northern Ireland

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Northern Ireland's human rights commission (NIHRC) has launched a landmark legal action against the UK government for its failure to commission safe and accessible abortion services more than a year after abortion was made legal in the country, the Guardian can reveal.

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Argentina legalises abortion in landmark moment for women's rights

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Argentina has become the largest Latin American country to legalise abortion after its senate approved the historic law change by 38 votes in favour to 29 against, with one abstention.

Elated pro-choice campaigners who had been keeping vigil outside Buenos Aires's neoclassical congressional palace erupted in celebration as the result was announced in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

"The struggle for women's rights is always arduous, and this time we even had to contend with a pandemic, so I am overjoyed with this result," said the journalist and campaigner Ingrid Beck.

The bill, which legalises terminations in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy, was approved by Argentina's lower house earlier this month after being put to congress by the country's leftwing president Alberto Fernández.

"There is this hypocritical Argentina that denies abortion, just as it used to deny homosexuality," Fernández said on the eve of this week's vote, calling abortion a "public health problem" not a police matter.

Fernández said that since the return of democracy in 1983 more than 3,000 women had died as a result of unsafe, underground abortions in Argentina.

The landmark decision means Argentina will become only the third South American country to permit elective abortions alongside Uruguay, which decriminalised the practice in 2012, and Guyana, where it has been legal since 1995.

The Caribbean island of Cuba legalised the practice in 1965 while Mexico City and the Mexican state of Oaxaca also allow terminations.

Giselle Carino, an Argentinian feminist activist, said she believed the achievement in the home country of Pope Francis would reverberate across a region that is home to powerful Catholic and evangelical churches and some of the harshest abortion laws in the world.

In most countries, such as Brazil, abortions are only permitted in extremely limited circumstances such as rape or risk to the mother's life, while in some, such as the Dominican Republic and El Salvador, they are banned altogether.

"I feel incredibly proud of what we've been able to achieve. This is a historic moment for the country, without a doubt," said Carino, the regional head of the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

"It shows how, in spite of all the obstacles, change and progress are possible. Argentinian women and what's happening right now will have an enormous impact on the region and the world," Carino added, pointing to parallel struggles in Brazil, Chile and Colombia.

Colombian activists recently filed a lawsuit with the constitutional court asking it to remove abortion from the country's criminal code while campaigners in Chile hope a new constitution might open the door to expanded women's rights.

In the region's most populous nation, Brazil, activists are waiting for the supreme court to rule on a 2018 legal challenge that would decriminalise abortion in the first weeks of pregnancy.

Mariela Belski, Amnesty International's executive director in Argentina, said: "Both the law passed by the Argentine congress today and the enormous effort of the women's movement to achieve this are an inspiration to the Americas."

"Argentina has sent a strong message of hope to our entire continent: that we can change course against the criminalisation of abortion and against clandestine abortions, which pose serious risks to the health and lives of millions of people," she added.

The senate vote is the result of five long years of mass protest marches by Argentina's grassroots women's movement, which began as a Twitter campaign against gender violence that used the hashtag #NiUnaMenos ("Not one less" - meaning no more women lost to gender violence).

The first spontaneous march came on 3 June 2015, in reaction to the murder of 14-year-old Chiara Páez, found buried underneath her boyfriend's house after being beaten to death and a few months pregnant.

"Are we not going to raise our voices? THEY ARE KILLING US," the radio journalist Marcela Ojeda tweeted at the time. After that call to arms, a group of female journalists began tweeting under the #NiUnaMenos hashtag, resulting in the first of many marches that brought tens of thousands of women to gather at the congressional square in Buenos Aires.

The following year Argentinian feminists held a mass strike in response to the rape, murder and impalement of 16-year-old Lucía Pérez in the coastal city of Mar del Plata.

It was after the 2015 #NiUnaMenos march that pro-choice campaigners realised the fight against "femicide" could also encompass demands for access to legal abortion.

They adopted a green scarf - worn as a bandana, head-scarf, or around the wrist - as a symbol of their movement, a trend that quickly spread to other Latin American
countries where green has come to symbolise the broader fight for women's rights.

That green scarf was an allusion to the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo activists who wore white headscarves as they confronted Argentina's vicious 1976-83 dictatorship over the disappearance of their children.

Pro-choice campaigners initially saw their hopes of change dashed in August 2018 when the senate, under pressure from the Catholic church, rejected a similar bill.

Fernández's election the following year brought fresh hope, as he promised to throw his weight behind the push for change. "The criminalisation of abortion has achieved nothing," he said in November as he put the legislation to congress.

Carino said the leftward shift in Argentinian politics that brought Fernández to power had undoubtedly boosted the pro-choice campaign after the previous year's setback. Among those who helped Fernández win office were many young women who had taken part in the #NiUnaMenos protests and were voting for the first time.

But Carino believed the real credit lay with Argentina's indefatigable women "who never stopped occupying the streets and the social networks - not even against the backdrop of the pandemic - and kept up their struggle, without haste but without rest".

"If anything made the difference, it was this."

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Argentina legalises abortion in landmark moment for women's rights

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Argentina has become the largest Latin American country to legalise abortion after its senate approved the historic law change by 38 votes in favour to 29 against, with one abstention. Elated pro-choice campaigners who had been keeping vigil outside Buenos Aires's neoclassical congressional palace erupted in celebration as the result was announced in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

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Polish women travel abroad for abortions ahead of law change

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Polish women are increasingly being forced to travel abroad to seek abortions even though a court ruling to tighten the country's already strict laws has not yet coming into force, activists have said.

The constitutional court ruled in October that abortion was illegal even in cases where there were severe foetal abnormalities. Around 1,000 abortions a year - almost all of the country's legal abortion procedures - are carried out for this reason.

Justyna Wydrzyńska, of the NGO Abortion Dream Team, which runs an advice hotline, said the group could already feel the chilling effect of the ruling. Calls to the hotline have increased, including from women who awaiting the results of tests on foetal abnormalities, and from many who are not pregnant yet but are alarmed by the ruling.

"They want to find out what choices they would have if they do get pregnant and find themselves in a situation of foetal abnormalities," she said. The number of calls has gone up from 20 or 30 per day to around 100, with confusion over the ruling and the logistical difficulties of travelling during the coronavirus pandemic on people's minds.

Surveys show that few Poles support tighter abortion restrictions, but ultra-conservative elements in the ruling coalition have long wanted such a move. The chairman of the Law and Justice party (PiS), Jarosław Kaczyński, said in 2016: "We will strive to ensure that even cases of very difficult pregnancies, when the child is certain to die, very deformed, still end up in a birth, so that the child can be baptised, buried, have a name."

The PiS chairman, Jarosław Kaczyński. Photograph: Jacek Domiński/REX/Shutterstock

The ruling prompted huge protests in Warsaw and other cities, the scale of which surprised the government and possibly made it think twice about implementing the ruling of the tribunal, which has fallen under political influence under the PiS. The government is meant to publish tribunal rulings and pass them into law immediately, but nearly two months after the abortion ruling, this has not yet happened.

This uncertainty has also caused a headache for medical professionals. Many hospitals were already unwilling to perform even those abortions that were legal, and now access has become even harder.

"I heard a story about a medical doctor who was performing an abortion, and he was checking during the day whether the judgment had been published or not. The moment the judgment is published, you are committing a crime if you perform an abortion," said Adam Bodnar, Poland's human rights ombudsman.

The Abortion Dream Team together with several other NGOs launched a fund last year to help Polish women travel abroad, and since then it has helped more than 250 women travel to receive abortions, mainly to Germany, the Netherlands and Britain, where second trimester abortions are possible.

The recent tribunal decision has also prompted people in other neighbouring countries to take action.

"There was this energy in the air, we wanted to transform it into something real instead of just complaining by writing messages on cardboard," said Jolanta Nowaczyk, a 28-year-old artist based in Prague. Nowaczyk and 10 others founded an organisation to provide safe abortion access to Polish women, inspired by the atmosphere at protests outside the country's embassies.

Dutch women show their support outside the Polish embassy in The Hague. Photograph: Robin van Lonkhuijsen/EPA

Taking inspiration from Ciocia Basia, a Berlin-based collective helping Polish women access abortions in Germany, Ciocia Czesia has already provided access to 10 Poles in the five weeks since its founding, and more arrangements are being made every day.

Besides cooperating with clinics, the organisation also offers translation services, general funding, and transport across the border. "Each case is different: someone might need advice about which clinic to turn to, while others need financing and help with arranging the entire procedure," said Nowaczyk.

Taking pills for a medical abortion, which can be done during the first trimester of pregnancy, is legal in Poland and is often seen as a better option than travelling for a surgical procedure. But this option is not always available. "Many do not have a safe place to take the pill, and for some the pill does not work," said Nowaczyk.

Clinics in the Czech Republic have reported an increase in phone calls from Polish women enquiring about the logistics of receiving abortions there, despite the logistical difficulties of travelling at the moment. Some clinics reject Poles based on a law dating back to the communist period which states that only permanent residents can receive abortions, even though the government has said EU citizens should have the same rights.

At clinics that do provide the services to Polish women, most employees did not wish to speak publicly, both because of the legal ambiguity and for security reasons. "We have heard rumours about Polish pro-life groups attacking clinics which enable Poles to get abortions," said a nurse from one such facility.

"Those who come to us are people who are often scared to undergo this procedure in Poland, and often don't even tell their family. Some have already been rejected from Polish hospitals," said Nowaczyk.

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Polish women travel abroad for abortions ahead of law change

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Polish women are increasingly being forced to travel abroad to seek abortions even though a court ruling to tighten the country's already strict laws has not yet coming into force, activists have said. The constitutional court ruled in October that abortion was illegal even in cases where there were severe foetal abnormalities.

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Interesting article on Human Rights contestation in Russia

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Interesting article on Human Rights contestation in Russia

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A prominent US human rights activist faces expulsion from Russia as it ratchets up pressure on non-governmental organisations fighting abuses, particularly those who receive financial support from abroad.

Vanessa Kogan, director of the Justice Initiative project, told the Guardian that Russian migration officials had revoked her residency permit under a statute that indicates she is a threat to Russia's national security.

Kogan has lived in Russia for over a decade and is married to a Russian man with whom she has two children.. She has been given two weeks to leave the country, she said.

Justice Initiative provides legal support to Russians seeking justice for human rights abuses in both local courts and the European court of human rights in Strasbourg.

The organisation's work in Russia's North Caucasus region, targeting abuses by law enforcement and the military as well as gender discrimination, has angered Russia's security services and powerful local leaders like Chechnya's Ramzan Kadyrov.

"They saw their chance to get rid of me, essentially," Kogan told the Guardian after learning of the government's intention to revoke her residency permit. "I think that it's purely connected to the work that I do and my organisation does."

Justice Initiative has been under intense government scrutiny, Kogan said, including pressure from security services for "cooperation" in their investigations (she has always declined).

Kogan said she was approached by FSB officers shortly after receiving residency in Russia in 2017 and felt the two events may have been connected. "It was almost like an ultimatum: either you cooperate with us or we won't let you stay in Russia."

Kogan learned that she would be expelled from the country on Wednesday when she met migration officials to discuss her application for citizenship. She said the family is now considering what to do next. "Most of the borders are closed and we're also faced with the prospect of family separation," she said.

Kogan said the decision also targets her husband, Grigor Avetisyan, a human rights lawyer who serves as Justice Initiative's advocacy director. Avetisyan was forced out of Uzbekistan in 2006 for his human rights work, and Kogan said this would be his "second forced emigration". "They're killing two birds with one stone," Kogan said.

Vanessa Kogan, the director of Justice Initiative, with her husband, Grigor Avetisyan, the organisation's advocacy director, and their children Photograph: Vanessa Kogan

The expulsion comes amid growing pressure on Justice Initiative and its partners. An affiliate based in Ingushetia in the North Caucasus was labelled a foreign agent last year, and the group's offices in Dagestan, Moscow, and Nazran have been raided since 2019.

"We've been a thorn in the authorities' side for years," Kogan said, noting the organisation's success at winning cases, including the first judgment on domestic violence in Russia at the ECHR last year.

"Since the organisation's founding, we've secured €25,000,000 for our clients. Many of them are from the North Caucasus, many of them have been accused of terrorism offences. Of course, in the eyes of the security services, we defend terrorists," she said.

Justice Initiative, a partner of the Netherlands-based Stichting Justice Initiative, is one of a dwindling number of foreign-backed human rights organisations still operating in Russia. The last decade has seen growing restrictions on human rights organisations and their funding, including the expulsion of USAID in 2012, and the institution of aggressive laws on foreign agents and "undesirable" organisations, which can be banned outright. Russian lawmakers are seeking to expand the foreign agent law to include individuals, potentially including foreign journalists.

Another American human rights activist, Jennifer Gaspar, was expelled from Russia in 2014 in a case similar to Kogan's. In 2018, the ECHR ruled that Russia had illegally revoked Gaspar's residency. Gaspar is married to a prominent human rights lawyer, Ivan Pavlov.

Justice Initiative's original founding mission was to seek accountability for grave human rights abuses during the second war in Chechnya beginning in 2001, and later expanded its work into the rest of the North Caucasus, and into the area of gender discrimination.

Asked about the organisation's future in Russia, Kogan said: "The organisation has withstood the test of time for a very long time. This is pretty extreme, but it's not the first time we've face these kinds of difficulties. I feel cautiously optimistic that the organisation will survive, although of course this is going to be a very difficult time."

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Russia moves to expel American human rights activist

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A prominent US human rights activist faces expulsion from Russia as it ratchets up pressure on non-governmental organisations fighting abuses, particularly those who receive financial support from abroad. Vanessa Kogan, director of the Justice Initiative project, told the Guardian that Russian migration officials had revoked her residency permit under a statute that indicates she is a threat to Russia's national security.

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Marta Lempart on leading Poland’s abortion rights protests

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Poland is in the middle of a civic rebellion led by women.

In late October, the constitutional court - whose political appointees have undermined its legitimacy - attempted to ban abortion here by ruling it illegal even in the case of serious foetal abnormalities, provoking the biggest protests the country has seen since communist times. They have involved more than 400,000 people and have been going on for weeks now, across 500 towns and cities. The Polish Women's Strike, which I co-founded in 2016, has been a vital organising force.

Before all the protests started, I was a person with a life and a job. An activist, of course - since the conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) came to power in Poland in 2015, I had been involved with the Committee for the Defence of Democracy, fighting for human rights and the rule of law. I was a law-abiding citizen who trusted the state and the police.

But now, in the wake of the recent protests across the country, I have been charged with more than 40 offences for my role. Some are laughably trivial matters - destroying the environment by using a megaphone in public, for example. Neither I nor any of the protesters will, however, be deterred.

This is not the first time that anti-abortion measures have moved me to action or brought the women of Poland to the streets. In 2016, when a near-total ban on abortion was proceeding through parliament, I publicly called for national mobilisation against it.

The next week of organising the protest - designing a guide to demonstration and communicating with people from around the country - was a blur. We spoke to those who needed to find the courage, support and advice to put their lives on the line in places where the government did not expect any resistance.

On a rainy Monday in October, the Polish Women's Strike, a so-called Black Protest, happened in 150 towns and cities, and a few days later the rightwing populist ruling majority decided to let the barbaric bill, initially put forward by an anti-abortion group, fail in committee stage.

The bill would have allowed abortion only if the woman actually started dying in a doctor's presence and would have put women in jail for miscarriages. It was PiS's biggest climbdown since it had come to power in 2015.

The struggle for freedom in Poland started with abortion and still has abortion as a symbol of the fight

But neither the government nor the Catholic Churc h was able to take defeat gracefully, attacking us with a full-blown smear campaign. That is when the Polish Women's Strike transitioned from a one-time protest action to a civic resistance movement.

In the four years since then, we have organised more than 1,500 actions, protesting for women's rights, human rights (including LGBT+ rights), judicial independence, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, and against fascism.

The protests of the past month and more, however, have evolved into an anti-government movement, with a clear, omnipresent demand: wypierdalać - fuck off. It is the demand of basically all those on the streets now - angry about the collapsing healthcare system, the human rights crisis, government corruption and a lack of action in the pandemic that leaves people to die in their homes and the "lucky" ones without businesses, jobs or accommodation.

They are angry about the religious and political agenda in Polish education, about state TV's propaganda and about state campaigns against LGBT+ people, women, teachers, doctors . . . anyone who resists the authoritarian, populist regime. Personally, as a feminist, I could not be happier that the national struggle for freedom in Poland in 2020 started with the issue of abortion and still has abortion as a symbol of the fight that is raging.

Women of the Year 2020

From politicians and novelists to scientists and activists, the FT profiles this year's game-changing women. Here are some to watch out for:

December 2: Jane Fraser, next Citigroup CEO

December 3: Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission

December 3: Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan

December 3: Prof. Sarah Gilbert, Oxford vaccinologist

December 4: Hilary Mantel, author of the Wolf Hall trilogy

December 4: Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter

The cost to me is high. I am under permanent surveillance and investigation. After attacks from rightwing thugs, our office has needed 24-hour security. We all receive hate mail and death threats.

I am actually not writing this from my home - I have not been there for three weeks, as my address and phone number were published by neo-fascist groups, along with calls to violence. I am - as an enemy of the state - on the covers of pro-government newspapers and magazines, while publicly owned TV is running a campaign to discredit me.

As scared as I am, as anyone in my position would be, I do feel peace of mind. I am not the only enemy of the citizen-hating Polish state. We all are. We, the people. We live with that and we will win, because no matter how many policemen, soldiers or mercenaries they have, we - people demanding freedom - outnumber them. I know that, they know that and the thousands of young people dancing and singing in the Polish streets know that. That is why they dance.
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Marta Lempart on leading Poland's abortion rights protests

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Poland is in the middle of a civic rebellion led by women. In late October, the constitutional court - whose political appointees have undermined its legitimacy - attempted to ban abortion here by ruling it illegal even in the case of serious foetal abnormalities, provoking the biggest protests the country has seen since communist times.

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'A mass imprisonment crisis': why more women are doing time

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Seven years ago, Rhonda Davis went to a party with her partner. She fell asleep at the wheel on the drive home. He died, and she was sentenced to five years in prison, half of which had to be served as hard time.

The Kamillaroi woman was part of the fastest-growing subset of Australia's prison population. She is one of six women to write about her experience behind bars for a new series by Guardian Australia.

It comes as a new report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found that women in prison have experienced disproportionately high rates of homelessness and insecure housing, mental health issues, drug and alcohol addiction, chronic illness, and physical trauma. And just 17% of female prisoners have finished year 12.

Although women and girls make up just 8% of the total prison population in Australia, the female prison population increased 64% between 2009 and 2019, while the male prison population grew by 45%.

Like Davis, 33% of the women and girls in jail in Australia are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, compared with 28% of the male prison population.
'I fell asleep at the wheel': my life changed the day my partner died | Rhonda Davis
"Australia is in the midst of a mass imprisonment crisis," says Monique Hurley, the legal director for the Human Rights Law Centre. "Too often, discriminatory laws and excessive police powers form a toxic combination that results in more and more women being separated from their families and funnelled into the prison system."

The numbers of women in prison are growing worldwide. Between 2000 and 2016 the number of women in prison increased by 53%, growing at twice the rate of the total prison population and more than twice the rate of the general population.

In Australia, researchers have identified two possible causes for the increase: either women are suddenly committing more serious crimes and therefore getting more jail time, or laws and policing practices have shifted so that minor crimes are now met with more severe penalties.

The tightening of bail laws, use of mandatory sentencing, and a shift for longer sentences for drug offences are among the reasons that the female prison population may be increasing, says the president of the Australian Law Council, Pauline Wright.

Hurley says that is the case in Victoria, where an "onerous, dangerous and discriminatory bail system" that was intended to target violent men has instead disproportionately impacted impoverished women.

Anna Ritson, the head of justice and education at the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), says it is possible that policy changes intended to increase community safety, like tighter bail laws, have resulted in more women being imprisoned.

"Whenever policy parameters are changed, whether they are at a national or state level, it's only when those policies are enacted, despite all and every effort being made to understand the impact of those changes, that you can see some of the perverse impacts that they may have," Ritson says. "So while there might be favourable outcomes for most people, there will always be some who are disproportionately negatively impacted and I think that absolutely can contribute to women being incarcerated at a higher rate than they have been before".

The AIHW report is based on interviews with 20% of all women who entered or exited prisons in every Australian jurisdiction except New South Wales during a two-week period in 2018.

It found that women in prison overwhelmingly came from disadvantaged backgrounds and had histories of poverty, domestic violence, social deprivation and childhood trauma.

"It's really rare that imprisonment, experiences of violence, insecure housing, and those kinds of things happen alone," says Ritson. "They often happen in tandem. And so what we've tried to do by putting out this report is to shed a light on just how many of these vulnerabilities these women experience."

Responses collated from 117 women found that the highest level of education most women had attained was year 10 or a trade certificate. One in four were unemployed and looking for work in the 30 days prior to being incarcerated, and just 15% were in full or part-time work or study. Some 27% were in short-term or emergency accomodation in the month before entering prison, and 7% were sleeping rough or in a squat.

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'I had a stereotypical view of prisoners before I became one. But I since realised that the majority of these women had broken lives. Who was I to judge?' Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

The number of people presenting at homelessness services who have been recently released from prison has also increased, says Ritson.

"So there's an issue at intake and there is also an issue at exit," she says. "It's important to consider a custodial setting as part of the community because people are often incarcerated for quite short periods of time, and they will be released back into the community at some point. It's important that the needs of those people, particularly women, are considered upon release."

Women entering prison often already had complex health needs, says Ritson. Almost half of all women surveyed described their mental health on entry to prison as fair or poor, and 40% described their physical health as fair or poor. More than a third had been diagnosed with a chronic condition, 86% smoked, and 74% had used illicit drugs in the past 12 months - particularly methamphetamines. Just 1% of the general population has tried methamphetamine, but 61% of prison entrants reported using it.

More than a third reported having a head injury that resulted in them being knocked unconscious at some point in their lives, and 15% experienced ongoing symptoms related to that head injury.

"That can be as a result of their own experiences of violence through their life," says Ritson. "It's a really worrying and troubling finding."

Davis says she turned her time into a positive experience, but still experiences daily "feelings of self-hate and guilt" over the death of her partner. She received permission for her five-month old son to stay with her at Emu Plains correctional centre in NSW, and used her time in jail to qualify as an alcohol and drugs counsellor, and to grieve the loss of three siblings to suicide - two died before she entered jail, and her brother died while she was incarcerated. She was not allowed to attend the funeral.

'A chance to be more than a number': the female inmates podcasting from a Darwin prison

"I can honestly say that prison saved my life and I took every opportunity it threw at me," she says. "It was important that I bonded with my son, and I am thankful for the programs and education they offered."

According to the AIHW report, 114 women were pregnant when they were checked in to prison in 2017, and 25 gave birth while in custody. Sixty-nine children were living in custody with their parents. Of the women surveyed in 2018, 54% had at least one dependant child.

Sydney woman Frances Drake began using methamphetamine after the deaths of her son and her husband. "Friends would come over and we would take ice together but I was the one who could get the best quality so I ended up getting it for all of us," she says. "That was a mistake, it made me a drug dealer."

Drake spent three years on remand at Silverwater correctional centre. According to the AIHW, 40% of women in jail in Australia are on remand, meaning they have not been found or pleaded guilty to a crime. In an account written for Guardian Australia, Drake says she was released to a "barely appropriate halfway house" immediately on being sentenced.

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Rhonda Davis says she turned her time in prison into a positive experience by studying to qualify as a drug counsellor, but she still experiences daily 'feelings of self-hate and guilt' over the death of her partner. Photograph: Russell Shakespeare/The Guardian

"I was given $50, a bag of underwear that had been sent into me during my incarceration and told to go and see Centrelink and report to parole within 24 hours," she says. She still gets anxiety attacks about the time she spent in a windowless isolation cell, and has since been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Jenna Hughes, a former police officer, spent three months of her 12-month sentence in an isolation cell in an effort to protect her from the other prisoners. "Five years on I still struggle, I still have anxiety and I think about prison every day," she says.

'It's harder for them than it is for me': when a mother does time, her children do too

Another woman, who remained anonymous, was jailed for 11 months for aggravated sexual assault for sleeping with a 15-year-old male student, following the breakdown of a marriage in which she was abused.

"I had a stereotypical view of prisoners before I became one. But I since realised that the majority of these women had broken lives. Who was I to judge?"

Deb Killroy, the founder of Sister's Inside, an advocacy group supporting women and girls in prison, says the prison system is itself a source of trauma for already vulnerable women. She is an advocate for prison abolition.

"I always talk to women about it's not their shame, it's the state's shame," she says. "We are so much more than the worst thing we have ever done. They keep us stuck with the label that we are given: an offender. But everyone else is given the opportunity to transform."
* Crisis support services can be reached 24 hours a day: Lifeline 13 11 14; Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78; Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636 Topics

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'A mass imprisonment crisis': why more women are doing time

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Seven years ago, Rhonda Davis went to a party with her partner. She fell asleep at the wheel on the drive home. He died, and she was sentenced to five years in prison, half of which had to be served as hard time. The Kamillaroi woman was part of the fastest-growing subset of Australia's prison population.

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Can Spain fix its worst ecological crisis by making a lagoon a legal person?

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"At least we know it is alive," says a fisherman, walking back down the pier to the muddy beach at Los Urrutias, in the south-east Spanish province of Murcia, where he's been fishing all day. He doesn't mean his catch, but rather the water in the Mar Menor, one of the largest seawater lagoons in Europe.

Los Urrutias may look idyllic, with flamingos, great cormorants and grey herons flocking to the waters around the volcanic islands off the coast, separated from the Mediterranean by a 22km (13-mile) stretch of sand.

But the wind tells a different story. It has a putrid smell that reveals what the Murcia government has described as a "grave ecological unbalance", and what activists are calling "ecocide": a crime against an ecosystem and the species - including humans - that live within it.

In 2016, an extreme eutrophication - a massive growth of algae caused by a discharge of nutrients, mainly from agriculture - turned the water here green and killed 85% of the seagrass. Thousands of fish were beached on the shore, unable to breathe because of a lack of oxygen resulting from the degradation of excessive algae and changes to salinity.

Spanish fishing boats land only a tenth of normal catch of octopus

The lagoon stank. House prices plummeted, tourist numbers fell and the economy suffered.

Now local people are furious. Experts point the finger at the agriculture industry - exporting mostly vegetables to European countries such as the UK, Germany and France - as the main polluter. The problem is nitrates from the intensive irrigation of crops, as well as poor sewage systems in towns surrounding the lagoon, which have grown dramatically since the 1960s, and discharge from mining activities. More than two decades of lax regulations have not helped.

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The southerly spit of La Manga separates the lagoon of Mar Menor from the Mediterranean. Photograph: Jorge Guerrero/AFP/Getty

"With our model of development we broke the ecological balance," says Teresa Vicente Giménez, 58, a professor of philosophy of law at Murcia University, who has put her weight behind a new idea - to grant legal rights to the Mar Menor by recognising it as a legal "person".

"They would say in our legal system there is no space [for protecting the rights of an ecosystem]", she says. "So we have created a new model of justice."

The ambitious proposal recognises the right of the lagoon to "exist as an ecosystem" and to be protected and preserved by the government and residents. If the proposal is approved, the lagoon would be represented by three groups: legal guardians, a monitoring committee of "protectors", and a scientific advisory board. Moreover, any citizen or legal entity would be able to file a lawsuit on behalf of the Mar Menor.

This model is not entirely new: countries including New Zealand, Ecuador and India are home to bodies of water or ecosystems that have been granted legal privileges. In Colombia in 2016 the constitutional court recognised the Atrato River as a legal entity. The ministry of environment and sustainable development became its legal guardian and a commission of "protectors" was established to look after the river.

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A woman carries her laundry in the Atrato river, Colombia, which has been recognised as a legal entity. Photograph: Martin Garcia/EPA

Perhaps the case most similar to the Mar Menor is that of Lake Erie, one of the Great Lakes that straddles the US-Canada border. Like the Mar Menor, Lake Erie was polluted by fertilisers from agriculture. In 2019, after a referendum of the citizens of Toledo, Ohio, the lake was granted the status of a legal entity.

For a few hours at least, citizens could file lawsuits on behalf of the lake without depending on state government or regulatory agencies - but the breakthrough was short-lived. An agribusiness company sued the city the following day, freezing the "legal person" law. Last February, a federal judge declared it unconstitutional.

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A catfish appears on the shoreline in the algae-filled waters of Lake Erie in Toledo, Ohio. Photograph: Andy Morrison/AP

Nevertheless, Vicente Giménez was inspired to follow the same path after returning from Reading University in 2018, where she had been studying attempts in other countries to grant rights to nature. Her students proposed their own study about the legal rights of the Mar Menor. "Then they said, 'Professor, why don't we publish this in a newspaper so the people know this is possible?'"

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A concentrated sample of algae and bacteria from Lake Erie in Toledo, Ohio. Photograph: Tribune Content Agency LLC/Alamy

The idea was picked up by local newspaper La Opinión de Murcia, in which Vicente Giménez wrote a piece arguing that the most feasible way to give rights to the lagoon was by a "popular legislative initiative", which allows citizens to propose a law.

Backed by NGOs that campaign for the preservation of the Mar Menor, Vicente Giménez presented the initiative in the Spanish parliament in July. Now Vicente Giménez and other activists from diverse professional backgrounds are preparing for the near impossible. They have nine months to gather half a million signatures in order for the initiative to be voted on in parliament.

"I hope they can help us with the Mar Menor, and we can recover all of it, not only the lagoon," says Nicolas Lozano Sánchez, 34, who owns a restaurant in the town of Los Alcázares, now home to hundreds of fluttering black flags with the emblem of the seahorse - the creature for which the Mar Menor is well known. "The lagoon is our economy."

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Can Spain fix its worst ecological crisis by making a lagoon a legal person?

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"At least we know it is alive," says a fisherman, walking back down the pier to the muddy beach at Los Urrutias, in the south-east Spanish province of Murcia, where he's been fishing all day. He doesn't mean his catch, but rather the water in the Mar Menor, one of the largest seawater lagoons in Europe.

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China’s ‘recolonisation’ of Hong Kong could soon be complete

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As Prince Charles sailed out of Hong Kong's harbour in the early hours of July 1 1997, he lamented the symbolic end of British empire after 156 years of colonial rule in the city. "Whatever may be thought about colonisation nowadays, Hong Kong was a pretty remarkable example of how to do it well," he wrote in his journal aboard the soon-to-be-decommissioned royal yacht Britannia.

The British empire had ended long before that night. But in many respects, decolonisation in Hong Kong was not fully realised until July 1 2020, when Beijing unilaterally imposed a national security law on the territory, essentially outlawing all forms of dissent.

The law has mostly achieved its short-term goal of quashing the biggest eruption of unrest on Chinese soil since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The collateral damage to Hong Kong's role as a global financial centre is hard to quantify, but is likely to be extensive.

Beijing's belated decolonisation - perhaps recolonisation is more apt - of the territory provides a fresh reminder of the UK's much-diminished place in the world. The Chinese Communist party has made clear it has no intention of honouring the international treaty it signed with the UK in 1984, which promised a high degree of autonomy to Hong Kong for at least 50 years.

The most important aspect of this affront to the former colonists is what it tells us about the kind of power a rising Chinese Communist party intends to be in the world.

For all his anachronistic pomposity, Prince Charles was right about the UK's role in Hong Kong's success. To quote Chris Patten, the 28th and final governor of the territory, Britain provided the scaffolding - clean government, the rule of law and freedom of speech - that enabled the people of Hong Kong, most of them refugees from China, to ascend.

These are the very things China's current rulers blame for the turmoil of the past 18 months. The formerly free press is under assault, with broad but vague clauses in the new law outlawing "incitement" of crimes including the barely-defined "collusion with foreign forces". Described by party cadres as a "sharp sword" hanging over the city, the law explicitly requires the education system to instil "love of the motherland" in young hearts. Politicisation of the relatively independent courts has begun, as Beijing and its agents pursue enemies and "unreliable" judges are sidelined.

The Hong Kong administration has delayed elections on Beijing's orders. It has tied itself in knots trying to explain how the "separation of powers" between the judicial, executive and legislative branches of government does not exist in the city. As one member of the Chinese rubber-stamp parliament put it: "You can still go on dancing, you can still go horseracing, you can innovate, you can trade . . . but just stay away from [politics]."

Last week's scrapping of what would have been the world's biggest initial public offering, of Ant Financial, obliterates the assertion of optimistic financiers that nothing has changed in the city.

The sweeping changes in the territory indicate that President Xi Jinping really does believe China is engaged in a bitter ideological struggle with the "extremely malicious", "western" ideas of liberalism and democracy. For his party it makes sense to crush the things former colonists think made Hong Kong so successful.

But that does not change the reality. More than two decades after the handover, the territory is administered by British-trained bureaucrats. Foreign financial firms dominate capital flows and one of the biggest landlords in central Hong Kong is the former opium merchant Jardine Matheson. Add to this the steady stream of criticism from local and international media, and the open rebellion that broke out on the streets last year, and it is easy to see why Beijing decided the time for recolonisation had come.

The party of Mao Zedong once spoke of exporting revolution. Today's party is intent on merely making the world safe for its brand of ethno-nationalist authoritarianism. After a dozen protesters set fire to a national flag outside the Chinese embassy in London in early October, party officials condemned their "abominable acts" of "secession and treason" for allegedly violating the new national security law.

Since that law explicitly covers "crimes" committed anywhere on the planet, the embassy called on UK authorities to "bring the perpetrators to justice at an early date". Less than 25 years after Prince Charles sailed out of Hong Kong harbour, China is now asserting its jurisdiction on British soil.

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China's 'recolonisation' of Hong Kong could soon be complete

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As Prince Charles sailed out of Hong Kong's harbour in the early hours of July 1 1997, he lamented the symbolic end of British empire after 156 years of colonial rule in the city. "Whatever may be thought about colonisation nowadays, Hong Kong was a pretty remarkable example of how to do it well," he wrote in his journal aboard the soon-to-be-decommissioned royal yacht Britannia.

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The top FT stories read by the legal world

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Whatever the result of the US presidential election, the legal profession will be paying close attention to what the legal implications might be - including how it will affect lawyers and international law.

The appointment of Amy Coney Barrett as a justice of the US Supreme Court at the end of October established a conservative supermajority on the bench, in a move that will have a lasting legal impact regardless of who becomes president. But what is the future of the Supreme Court?

While we wait to hear the outcome of the election, this week's Full Disclosure newsletter looks at how the world's biggest accountancy firms are building up their legal services.

In case you missed it last month, have a look at our FT Innovative Lawyers Europe special report. You can also still watch sessions from the FT Live awards event for free on demand .
The following stories are taken from our Full Disclosure email briefing, sent to FT subscribers in the industry each week, sharing what has been most popular with legal readers on FT.com.
First, a warm welcome to any Full Disclosure readers experiencing a sense of déjà vu. At the time of writing, the US presidential election hangs in the balance and, once again, we all wonder why we ever trust polls.

In the UK, Full Disclosure will be distracting itself with legal news. First up, Deloitte has acquired UK law firm Kemp Little, including 29 partners and 57 lawyers.

The Big Four accountancy firms' march into legal services shows no sign of abating and with this deal to buy the tech-focused £16.5m revenue group - its first law firm acquisition - Deloitte has almost doubled its legal headcount in the UK.

The Big Four now employ more lawyers than most law firms - PwC boasts around 3,500 - and are competing with many of them in the mid-tier UK market. There remains a gulf between the rates charged by top-tier firms and the margins the Big Four can earn but there is no doubt that their access to large technology platforms and teams of accountants and other executives is proving disruptive.

This week I am interested in two topics. First, I want to hear your thoughts on - what else - the US election. How will it affect lawyers and international law? What are your thoughts on the direction of the Supreme Court? Second, I want to hear your thoughts on the legal tech market. How scalable is it? Are you a sceptic or a cheerleader? And what are the problems with nascent legal tech firms from a user's perspective? Get in touch at kate.beioley@ft.com.

City charter pushes business to bring through senior black executives

Law firms including Allen & Overy and Herbert Smith Freehills have signed up to a charter that pushes for greater representation of black people in senior positions in financial and professional services companies in the UK.
"The charter has been modelled on a similar Women in Finance initiative that was launched four years ago by the Treasury, with the emphasis on measurable data against which firms can assess progress, clear action plans, accountability at the top level of each firm, and independent monitoring."
Garrick tweaks club rules to take advantage of lockdown loophole

Exclusive London gentlemen's club the Garrick has updated a rule that bans members from discussing work matters over lunch to make use of an exemption in the city's coronavirus restrictions. Members can discuss "club business", though other business deliberations remained barred.
"The new guidance enables the 189-year-old establishment - among the last remaining clubs in the UK where women are banned from becoming members - to exploit an exception to coronavirus restrictions for business meetings without breaking its own long-held rule on work discussions." Johnny Depp loses high-profile libel case

On Monday the actor Johnny Depp lost his high-profile - and often lurid - libel lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers over claims he was a "wifebeater" in what lawyers called the libel trial of the century. Mr Depp claimed he suffered "significant reputational damage".
"In his ruling on Monday Mr Justice Nicol dismissed Mr Depp's claim and said he accepted 'the great majority of alleged assaults of Ms Heard by Mr Depp have been proved' to the standard of proof required by Britain's civil courts. The judge said he concluded what The Sun wrote was 'substantially true'." UK faces legal action over refusal to hold Russia probe

The UK government is facing a legal challenge over its refusal to launch an independent inquiry into possible Russian interference in UK elections as recommended by parliament's intelligence and security committee.
"Six MPs and peers lodged a judicial review challenge on Thursday [last week] alleging that the government's inaction breaches its legal obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantee citizens' rights to free and fair elections." Deloitte acquires Kemp Little in UK legal services push

Deloitte UK has acquired its first law firm in the latest sign of expansion of a Big Four firm into the UK legal market.
"Deloitte's tax and legal department made revenues of £910m in the 12 months to May 31 2020, making it the UK firm's largest division ahead of its audit and consulting practices. However, the firm has refused to disclose how much of that figure was generated purely from legal work, and how much from tax advice."
If you've found yourself shouting at the TV as US election results come in, or uttering phrases like "I don't understand", the historian Simon Schama is here to help with his essential guide to understanding the "two Americas" that make up the polarised nation. This is a contest between two tribes, he writes, but also a test for American democracy itself. Sombre reading, whatever your politics.
"More than any election in living memory, this one is not so much a choice between opposed policies as a totalising and bitter fight to the death between two mutually exclusive visions of what America is meant to be. In the way of such battles of beliefs (more akin to a war of religion), each side is convinced that the victory of the other spells the end of the republic, so the contest turns into a competition of terminal nightmares."

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The top FT stories read by the legal world

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Whatever the result of the US presidential election, the legal profession will be paying close attention to what the legal implications might be - including how it will affect lawyers and international law.

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The top FT stories read by the legal world 

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Two things will be front of mind for the legal profession this week: reactions to Boris Johnson's proposal to break international law over the Brexit treaty; and his U-turn on the government's push for workers to return to offices.

Next week the FT's 15th annual "Innovative Lawyers" Special Report on Europe will look at how the profession has responded to a turbulent year of events, including the pandemic, Brexit and the death of George Floyd in police custody in the US.

The following stories are taken from our Full Disclosure email briefing, sent to FT subscribers in the industry each week, sharing what has been most popular with legal readers on FT.com.
The law - and what constitutes the breaking of it - is the hottest topic in Europe at the moment, thanks to the British government.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson's plan to break international law over the Brexit withdrawal agreement triggered the resignation of the UK government's legal department head Jonathan Jones QC and caused consternation across parliament.

Meanwhile, Brexit negotiations are in a log jam. Now a group of the UK's most senior state aid lawyers have written to Boris Johnson offering to help design a post-Brexit subsidy regime for the UK to break the deadlock.

The lawyers, including pro-Brexit voices, such as Martin Howe QC, as well as Brexit sceptics, including George Peretz QC, have offered to set up an advisory group to "massively accelerate" the policy design process. We can only hope the government plans to listen more carefully to legal arguments in the form of this group of heavyweights than it does its own advisers.
Lawyers offer Johnson help to break state aid impasse in EU talks
What are your thoughts on the government's plans and their legality? How worrying is the exit of Jonathan Jones - and do you have tip-offs for further news stories? Do let me know at kate.beioley@ft.com.
"The question of how the UK can achieve a new, independent subsidy regime after Brexit while giving Brussels sufficient confidence to grant a 'zero tariff, zero quota' free trade agreement remains a fundamental sticking point in EU-UK negotiations." When lawmakers approve lawbreaking
Legal experts from across the political spectrum say they can help the UK design a post-Brexit subsidy regime in order to break the Brexit impasse.
"A government is proposing to act unlawfully, and a legislature is endorsing the proposal. A more fundamental deliberate subversion of the rule of law is difficult to imagine. It is almost as if a fanciful question in a law examination has jumped from the page and is rampaging in real life." Companies scramble to reverse back-to-office plans
FT contributing editor David Allen Green last week wrote his own searing take on the government's plans to breach international obligations, calling it a "surreal constitutional moment, even if the proposal is not yet law".
"A survey by the FT of some of the largest office employers last week showed that thousands had returned since the start of the month. Professional services firms such as EY and Allen & Overy opened offices this month again for all staff who wanted to return for the first time since the start of the pandemic." Donald Trump steps up fight over Supreme Court nominee
Companies across Britain have been rushing to U-turn on plans to bring thousands of staff back to offices this week after the government said workers should instead stay home if they were able.
"Ginsburg in her final days dictated a statement saying her 'most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed', according to National Public Radio." Directors to face ID checks in anti-fraud crackdown
Following the death of Supreme Court judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the US president is pushing to fill the seat and cement conservative control of the Supreme Court with a 6-3 majority. Such a deal could provide an enduring victory for Republicans even if they lose the presidential election.
"At the moment, the Companies House register includes almost 4.5m UK businesses but it operates in much the same way it did 150 years ago - meaning criminals have been able to set up seemingly legitimate shell companies without the most basic identity checks."
The government is moving forward with a plan for a radical shake-up of the UK company registrar Companies House in order to crack down on its use by scammers as a means of washing dirty money.
"A waitress had warned me that he had pre-ordered. I express disappointment that despite going off menu, the choice is unimaginative. 'Pasta?,' he says as we sit down at a white-linened table. 'I need energy. Carbs. Seriously.' Yet, when I select grilled hake, he returns to the menu: 'Wait, they do salmon?'"
Closing argument Multimillionaire Manchester United striker Marcus Rashford has become one of the Covid pandemic's unlikely heroes as a result of a food poverty campaign that forced Boris Johnson to U-turn on plans to restrict free school meals for children during the holidays. The 22-year old footballer has also been the target of vile racial abuse. The FT's sports editor Murad Ahmed meets the young player for lunch at The Gilbert Scott restaurant in London.

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The top FT stories read by the legal world

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Two things will be front of mind for the legal profession this week: reactions to Boris Johnson's proposal to break international law over the Brexit treaty; and his U-turn on the government's push for workers to return to offices.

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Danish mink cull descends into political chaos over legality

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Denmark's plan to cull its entire mink population to stop the spread of a mutated form of coronavirus has sparked political chaos following revelations that the government lacks the legal basis for the order.

The Social Democrat-led minority government in Copenhagen plans to introduce emergency legislation on Tuesday to kill up to 17m mink, including those that are healthy. But it lacks parliamentary backing to pass the measure after the country's centre-right contingent said it would block the measure.

Mette Frederiksen, prime minister, announced last Wednesday that a mutated form of coronavirus had passed from mink to 12 people in Denmark and could threaten the effectiveness of a future vaccine against Covid-19.

But some international scientists have questioned that claim, and opposition politicians and mink farmers are now sounding the alarm as more than 2m mink having already been culled.

"The government is gambling with Danish democracy and they must stop," Jakob Ellemann-Jensen, head of the largest centre-right opposition group the Liberals, told broadcaster TV2 as he said his party would not back the emergency law.

The government's website still calls for all mink in the country to be killed. But Mogens Jensen, minister for food, agriculture and fisheries, apologised late on Monday for the confusion and said the government should have been clearer on which actions had a legal basis and which did not.

Under Danish law, any infected mink and those within an 8km security zone can be killed, but not healthy mink outside these limits.

Due to a lack of capacity at incineration plants, mass graves for the animals have been dug on land belonging to the Danish military.

Recommended

Emergency legislation requires a two-thirds majority in Denmark's parliament, which the government does not have in support of the measure. The law could still pass with more time for debate or if the government introduces normal legislation, which requires only a simple majority.

Mr Jensen insisted that there had been "no time to waste" after health authorities warned of a risk to public health. "We are in a global health crisis, and therefore the government chose to take a resolute decision," he said.

Troels Mylenberg, political editor of TV2, called the admission that the cull has no legal basis "a scandal of dimensions, and quite simply sensational".

The UK has closed its borders to non-British citizens from Denmark, while Norway toughened its quarantine rules for Danish arrivals following news of the virus mutation. Danish health authorities said the mutated virus could already have died out.

Tage Pedersen, head of the Danish mink breeders' association, said he was "shaken" by the "completely insane handling" of the affair for an industry that accounts for more than €1bn in annual exports for Denmark.

Amid reports of mink farmers halting the cull, Mr Pedersen added that they should continue as "it will still eventually result in the closure of the entire industry".

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Danish mink cull descends into political chaos over legality

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Denmark's plan to cull its entire mink population to stop the spread of a mutated form of coronavirus has sparked a political clash following revelations that the government lacks the legal basis for the order. The Social Democrat-led minority government in Copenhagen plans to introduce emergency legislation on Tuesday to kill up to 17m mink, including those that are healthy.

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'A backlash against a patriarchal culture': How Polish protests go beyond abortion rights

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or 14 nights they have marched, enraged by a near-total ban on abortion that has stirred a generation to stage the largest mass demonstrations that Poland has seen since Solidarność toppled the communist regime in the 1980s.

Until soaring coronavirus numbers and a looming national lockdown made it almost impossible, up to a million people nightly defied a government ban on protests, taking to the streets from Warsaw to Łódź, Poznań to Wrocław, Gdańsk to Kraków.

The protests, led by the grassroots women's movement Ogólnopolski Strajk Kobiet (OSK, or All-Polish Women's Strike), have shocked the ruling conservatives and created a new political faultline that, analysts say, could spell more serious problems for the party.

"I think it is a whole backlash against a patriarchal culture, against the patriarchal state, against the fundamentalist religious state, against the state that treats women really badly," said Marta Lempart, a 41-year-old lawyer and one of OSK's leaders.

The group has outlined areas extending far beyond abortion rights where it says urgent change is needed: stronger and wider women's and LGBTQ+ rights in general; the separation of church and state; more support for healthcare, small businesses and education; full judicial independence.

The ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) "should be protecting us, the citizens of Poland", Lampert told the media this week. "They are turning their backs on us, talking just to the Polish government. They should be talking to us."

Predominantly Catholic Poland already had one of Europe's strictest abortion laws when, on 22 October, its constitutional tribunal ruled that terminations in instances of severe foetal anomalies, which accounted for all but about 30 of the 1,110 abortions performed legally in Poland last year, were "incompatible" with the constitution.

The decision by the court's 15 pro-PiS judges, many of them appointed unlawfully, would allow terminations only in instances of rape, incest and when the mother's life is at risk - a tiny fraction of cases. Women's groups estimate an additional 200,000 Polish women have abortions either illegally or abroad each year.

The ruling sparked an immediate reaction. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, mainly women and young people, took to the streets with banners proclaiming "I wish I could abort my government", "This is war" and "Women's hell".

On Tuesday - apparently in response to the protests - the government indefinitely postponed publishing the court's decision in the official journal, preventing it from coming into effect (and raising major constitutional questions if it tries to do so later).

But the genie may be out of the bottle.

While surveys show more than 60% of Poles support the status quo on abortion, barely 15% back the proposed changes. This has mobilised a generation not previously engaged with politics and stoked existing, wider anger at what many see as the steady erosion of democratic norms since PiS came to power in 2015.

Maria Kowalczyk, 38, a beauty journalist, said at a protest in Warsaw that Poland was "years behind. In this country, because of the politics and doctrine of the government and the religious fanatics, someone who is different is worse. The way they treat LGBT people, migrants, all minorities - and now women ... Society has had enough."

Julia Estera, 30, a performance and makeup artist from Łódź, said Poland was no longer a free country. "We are a religious state where we are all demanded to think in one possible way." Bianka, 15, and Maja, 16, said Poland's youth would not back down. "We don't want to live in a country where we don't have a choice, where everything is decided for us."

Andrzej Kompa, a historian and university researcher, said on another march in the capital that he was protesting "not just against this hell for women, decided by this so-called constitutional court, but against this government, against church involvement in political affairs, for minority rights. Simply for freedom."

Support for the PiS, who were re-elected last year, and its founder, Jarosław Kaczyński, 71, has plunged by almost 10 points to 30.9% in a month, according to one poll. Another showed 70% of Poles would like Kaczyński - widely seen as the country's true powerbroker - to step down as PiS leader.

Breaking long-held taboos, the protests have also challenged the Catholic church and its influence on Polish policy, education and culture, with some demonstrators disrupting services and defacing churches. Support for the church has fallen eight points to 49% since March, one poll showed.

Kaczyński last week urged the party faithful to call for a defence of the Catholic church "at all costs". He also said the protests were "intended to destroy Poland", and urged his supporters to fight for "Poland and patriotism" in order to avert "the end of ... the Polish nation as we know it".

The protests could hardly have come at a worse time for PiS. As Covid-19 infections and death tolls break new records, the government - which warned this week of a new national lockdown within 10 days unless things improve - is coming under increasingly heavy fire for its handling of the pandemic.

It now appears to have few easy ways out. Many Poles view the court ruling as a tactical play by Kaczyński to bolster support on the traditionalist right while bypassing parliament, where the ruling coalition has only a slender majority. It has sparked an explosion of popular fury unlike any PiS has seen.

"It certainly feels different," said Adam Mrozowicki, a sociologist at the University of Wrocław. "We need to study it properly, but the heart of this does seem to be young people. Anecdotally, I've never seen this level of engagement among my students - in my faculty, maybe 70-80% of students have taken part in some kind of protest."

The scale and nature of the protests was new, Mrozowicki said: "They are led by young women. This is decentralised, locally based, grassroots. And personally, in 20 years, I've never seen anything like these numbers. To have 65,000 people on the streets of Wrocław ..."

Ben Stanley, a political scientist at the SWPS university in Warsaw, said the protests felt "qualitatively different". Previous anti-PiS demonstrations over the rule of law mainly drew "Solidarność-era protesters, people in their 50s and 60s. It wasn't an issue that resonated so much with young people."

Women's rights are "a lot more tangible for 25-year-olds; they really mean something concrete. This ruling has animated many more people by personalising the culture war PiS has declared: its chosen narrative of a Poland whose authentic identity and traditions are at threat from rootless cosmopolitanism."

The protests had "blown a hole in the idea that Kaczyński is always three steps ahead, that PiS always has its finger on the pulse of what Poland really feels", Stanley said, "at the same time as Covid has blown a hole in their reputation for competence".

The party could salvage the situation in the short term, he said, but "processes are accelerating that will make the nationalist, clericalist PiS narrative more difficult to sustain longer term. All this may not bring PiS down immediately, but it could make things a lot more difficult in future."

Mrozowicki said it was unclear how the protests would immediately affect Poland's politics because the protesters had no clear links to parliamentary politics, and their leaders have said they do not want to become a political movement. "But it feels like something, definitely, is shifting," he said.

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'A backlash against a patriarchal culture': How Polish protests go beyond abortion rights

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or 14 nights they have marched, enraged by a near-total ban on abortion that has stirred a generation to stage the largest mass demonstrations that Poland has seen since Solidarność toppled the communist regime in the 1980s.

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Poland delays abortion ban as nationwide protests continue

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Poland's rightwing government has delayed implementation of a controversial court ruling that would outlaw almost all abortion after it prompted the largest protests since the fall of communism.

"There is a discussion going on, and it would be good to take some time for dialogue and for finding a new position in this situation, which is difficult and stirs high emotions," Michał Dworczyk, the head of the prime minister's office, told Polish media on Tuesday.

The decision by the country's constitutional tribunal promised to further tighten Poland's abortion laws, which were already some of the strictest in Europe. The tribunal ruled that terminations should be illegal even in cases where a foetus is diagnosed with a serious and irreversible birth defect. This kind of abortion accounts for almost all of the small number of abortions performed legally in the country.
Poland's abortion ban is a cynical attempt to exploit religion by a failing leader | Karolina Wigura
The decision has still not been published, despite a Monday deadline, and as such has not entered into force. "It's clearly a political decision," said Anna Wójcik, a researcher at the law studies institute at the Polish Academy of Sciences. "Judgments are meant to be published with no delay. It's a legal trick to withhold publishing."

The tribunal's decision, which was in response to a challenge from a group of rightwing MPs, has focused anger on the Law and Justice (PiS) party. PiS has ruled Poland since 2015 and has been accused of eroding democratic norms during its time in power, including by packing the constitutional tribunal with its supporters.

The abortion ruling has caused anger beyond the usual groups of PiS opponents, and the scale of the protests appears to have taken the government by surprise. The more extreme wing of the party supports the constitutional ruling, but surveys show that much of the party's voter base does not support tighter abortion restrictions, so the PiS hierarchy finds itself in a difficult spot.

The prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, has called for talks with protesters and opposition MPs, while the PiS-aligned president, Andrzej Duda, suggested a new proposal that would allow abortion in cases of life-threatening birth defects but not for conditions such as Down's syndrome.

Duda's proposal is likely to be criticised from both sides - as too weak by the extreme right of the ruling coalition, and as not going far enough by those leading the street protests.

The protesters have ignored a ban on gatherings of more than five people, intended to slow the spread of coronavirus, and have come out in force. More than 100,000 people gathered in the streets of Warsaw on Friday evening for the largest gathering so far. They shouted pro-choice and anti-PiS slogans.

There has also been violence in which far-right groups have attacked protesters, and government figures appeared to stoke the tensions. The PiS leader and deputy prime minister, Jarosław Kaczyński, told people they should "defend churches" from the protesters after some were defaced. Senior figures in the country's powerful Catholic church have spoken out in favour of the constitutional ruling.
Topics

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Poland delays abortion ban as nationwide protests continue

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Poland's rightwing government has delayed implementation of a controversial court ruling that would outlaw almost all abortion after it prompted the largest protests since the fall of communism.

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Polish protesters are aghast at abortion ban’s moral hypocrisy

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Under the cover of the Covid-19 pandemic, and circumventing the Polish parliament, Poland's constitutional tribunal has passed a near total ban on abortion in a country that already had one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. Any woman who discovers she is carrying a foetus with severe abnormalities will now have to give birth, even if the child has no chance of surviving.

If Poland's rightwing establishment was calculating that the ban would slip through unnoticed while the pandemic raged, it has made a bad mistake. The ruling, on October 22, provoked the widest protests since the fall of communism in 1989, mostly by young people.

Demonstrations have continued daily across cities and towns, even in conservative rural areas. The Law and Justice party, which heads the ruling coalition and governs in the name of conservatism and religion, might have just sparked the moral revolution Poland never had, if young people now abandon the Church.

The ban has its origins in Poland's transition from communism in 1989, when new governments sought to re-establish the pre-communist order. Religion was reintroduced into schools and the symbol of the crown was restored to the head of the eagle in the national emblem.

One of the casualties of that shift was abortion freedoms. Under communism, which (superficially at least) protected women's rights, abortion had been legal since 1956. In the post-communist era, these rights began to be eroded. In 1993, a new law was passed preserving the right to an abortion only in cases of rape and incest, if the mother's life was endangered or in case of serious foetal abnormalities. Abortion for social considerations, however - the most common reason women had sought a termination - was banned.

The rolling back of women's freedoms was a side-effect of the anti-communist moral revolution. Now, out of the 100,000-150,000 abortions that women's organisations estimate Polish women have each year, only about 1,000 are legally performed in Poland. Underground abortions and trips abroad are common.

Previous attempts to tighten abortion laws still further have been defeated in parliament. But, this time, the government has used the Constitutional Tribunal, which it has been packing with loyal judges since 2015. Americans should take note.

There have been big steps towards greater individual liberty since 1989. New ideas of individual liberty have arrived and the Polish Church's moral authority is eroding. Religious leaders have tried to paint the Church as an underdog, besieged by dark forces of gender fluidity, the LGBTQ movement and western "nihilism".

But that story does not wash with many Poles. Over the past year and a half, two documentary films about paedophilia in the Church, and Hide and Seek, made revelations that shocked viewers. Allegations about cover-ups by bishops and other authorities have shaken public trust. Nor does the narrative of a poor Church swamped by western capitalism ring true.

Opinion polls last year showed Poles rejected tightening the abortion law. The ruling coalition went ahead anyway. Now women from small towns who might have never dreamt of political rebellion have been confronted with the question: do I want clergymen, who have been covering up the rape of children, to decide such an intimate moral issue as the outcome of my pregnancy?

A political awakening is under way. People who have never been involved in civic unrest are joining the protests. Apostasy - the formal renunciation of religion - has become the word of the moment. Polish streets now have the atmosphere of the May 1968 student uprisings in Paris: festive, furious and transgressive. In scenes that last year would have seemed shocking, young people routinely chant abuse at sclerotic ministers, at the clergy and against the propaganda that is rife in the national television media.

The author of this mess, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the Law and Justice party, once said that the way to de-Christianise Poland was to allow radical Catholicism to dominate. He is now fulfilling his own prophecy. Most Poles are not religious fanatics. They don't like it when the Church strays too far into politics, as it has been doing for years. Now, finally, it is paying the price.
The writer is a Polish novelist and playwright

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Polish protesters are aghast at abortion ban's moral hypocrisy

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Under the cover of the Covid-19 pandemic, and circumventing the Polish parliament, Poland's constitutional tribunal has passed a near total ban on abortion in a country that already had one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.

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Norms about how women should behave at work in public reaction to domestic violence as part of Johnny Depp vs newspaper in libel case

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Norms about how women should behave at work in public reaction to domestic violence as part of Johnny Depp vs newspaper in libel case

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Heard lost public sympathy for standing up against Depp assaults, says QC

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Amber Heard's stand against Johnny Depp's assaults should not have deprived her of public sympathy for suffering the ordeal of domestic violence, a leading human rights lawyer has said.

Heard was subjected to death threats and misogynistic attacks on social media during the libel trial that left her feeling "down and beleaguered", according Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, who met Heard while the case was before the high court.

"There are still these pervasive myths about the kind of woman who deserves the protection of the law," Baroness Kennedy told the Guardian. "Battered women have to [seem] meek and subservient to have our sympathy.

"I have represented women who have put up with this but when they do resist they somehow [are deemed to] lose their right to [compassion]. There's no doubt that Amber Heard did ... resist but that does not make her certifiable."

On Monday, the high court found the Sun newspaper was justified in describing Depp as a "wife beater" after the judge said 12 of 14 allegations she made of being attacked were proved on the balance of probabilities.

Kennedy met Heard at a dinner party in the north London home of the novelist Kathy Lette during the trial. Others present were the TV presenter Sandi Toksvig and Heard's lawyer, Jennifer Robinson.

"[Heard] was brought by Jen in the middle of the trial when there was a small dinner taking place. Jen asked if she could bring Amber Heard along because she was feeling pretty down and beleaguered.

"She had been receiving threats all the way through the hearing and that was one of the reasons she was feeling low ... This is the other thing that women have to contend with, the misogyny of online attacks."

Kennedy said it would be very difficult to appeal against the judgment. Any decision to do so, she suggested, might at least mean that when Depp's separate defamation case in Virginia starts next spring it can be said that the high court judgment is under appeal.

The London ruling "won't provide a precedent", Kennedy added, "but you can be sure that the judge knows that this decision was made."

The Labour MP Jess Phillips, the shadow minister for domestic violence, also complained at the time about the "character assassination" that Amber Heard suffered in the media. "Abused women," Phillips observed, "are not all one type of perfect picture of victimhood who would incite sympathy from everyone they met."

While Heard endured anonymous death threats on social media and sometimes had a police escort, Depp enjoyed the adulation of fans who gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice at the end of each day during the trial.

Depp also received more highprofile support than Heard from fellow actors and celebrities.

As recently as last weekend, Helena Bonham Carter said: "There's something quite old-fashioned about Johnny, with these manners - none of it makes sense. But the man's not stupid. He wouldn't have gone to this length if he thought he was in the wrong." Depp is godfather to her two children with ex-husband, the film director Tim Burton.

In 2017 when allegations of abuse surfaced, the author JK Rowling issued a statement defending the casting of Johnny Depp in her film series Fantastic Beasts. Her agent, Neil Blair, was reported to have attended some of the high court case.

Depp is due to reprise his role as Gellert Grindelwald in the third Fantastic Beasts film, which co-stars Eddie Redmayne. Depp has not yet filmed his scenes for the high profile fantasy adventure, which is due to be released in November 2021. The two previous Fantastic Beasts films together grossed over $1.4bn at the worldwide box office, making Depp's removal from the current production a substantial commercial risk.

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Heard lost public sympathy for standing up against Depp assaults, says QC

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Amber Heard's stand against Johnny Depp's assaults should not have deprived her of public sympathy for suffering the ordeal of domestic violence, a leading human rights lawyer has said. Heard was subjected to death threats and misogynistic attacks on social media during the libel trial that left her feeling "down and beleaguered", according Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, who met Heard while the case was before the high court.

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The Observer view on Poland's draconian abortion ban

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Last week's flawed ruling by a constitutional tribunal in Warsaw drastically restricting the right to abortion is a grim reminder that women's rights and, more broadly, the rule of law are under serious threat in Poland. This oppressive decision is part of a slide towards authoritarianism that began in earnest after the rightwing populist Law and Justice party (PiS) of Jarosław Kaczyński won an absolute majority in 2015. It must not be allowed to continue.

Halting this deterioration is, first, a matter for the people of Poland. Although this predominantly Catholic, socially conservative country already has some of the strictest abortion prohibitions in Europe, surveys suggest that only a small minority supports additional curbs. Not for the first time, Kaczyński and PiS are deliberately ignoring the democratic consensus to advance a narrow ideological and religious agenda.

Pro-choice supporters have reacted quickly. Angry crowds besieged streets around Kaczyński's home in Warsaw waving signs that read "You are building women's hell". More demonstrations are planned this weekend in a nationwide upsurge of protest reminiscent of 2016, when tens of thousands of women dressed in black marched against earlier anti-abortion legislation.

The new restrictions ban terminations in the case of severe foetal impairment, currently the reason given for most legal abortions. In future, abortion in Poland will be allowed only in cases of rape, incest or where there is a threat to the mother's life. Such cases account for only 2% of legal terminations. Each year, thousands of Polish women seeking abortions are forced to travel abroad.

The ruling is a direct assault on women's rights and a moral obscenity. It is also legally flawed, in the sense that the PiS packed the tribunal with loyalists who delivered the result it wanted. Sadly, this is not unusual in Poland, whose government is locked in a long-running dispute with the EU commission over its repeated attacks on judicial independence, free media and LGBT rights.

Past attempts by Brussels to impose penalties have been ineffective, owing to a lack of solidarity and, more recently, to Polish threats to block the new EU budget and pandemic recovery fund. Last month, the commission singled out Poland (and Hungary) for criticism in its first rule-of-law audit of EU states. Some MEPs and governments want to withhold EU financial aid, from which Poland benefits hugely, unless or until the PiS shifts ground. A poll last week showed overwhelming public support for linking EU funding to the rule of law.

Those who doubt the Europe-wide relevance of Poland's assault on women's rights and the wider dispute with Warsaw should study Kaczyński's recent remarks: they are the typical distortions of a populist-nationalist politician disdainful of democratic and legal norms. He vowed not to succumb to "threats and blackmail" from Brussels. "Those who want to take away our sovereignty based on their own whims are headed for a fall," he said.

"Today, the EU institutions, their officials, some politicians that the Polish people have never elected, demand that we verify our whole culture, reject everything that is very important for us, just because they like it," Kaczyński told the Gazeta Polska Codziennie newspaper. His words could equally have been spoken by Italian, French or Brexit-touting British ultra-nationalists.

For the sake of women's rights and its own integrity, the EU must stop pulling its punches and crack down on governments that mock its core beliefs. And it should be clear eyed about the universality of this fight. Last week, the Trump administration promulgated a " global anti-abortion declaration" along with 31 like-minded illiberal or authoritarian regimes. Poland is a signatory.

What do these governments have in common? They are run by men and they oppress women.
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The Observer view on Poland's draconian abortion ban | Observer editorial

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Last week's flawed ruling by a constitutional tribunal in Warsaw drastically restricting the right to abortion is a grim reminder that women's rights and, more broadly, the rule of law are under serious threat in Poland.

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Poland’s abortion protests bring city streets to standstill
Resistance to law

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Thousands of Poles took to the streets across the country on Monday for the fifth day of protests against a court ruling that paves the way for an almost total ban on abortion.

Carrying placards with messages such as "You have blood on your hands" and "Fight the virus, not women", crowds of mainly young protesters blocked roads and roundabouts, bringing parts of several cities, including the capital Warsaw, Krakow, Wroclaw and Szczecin, to a standstill.

"Every woman should have a choice, and it's just outrageous that one person, or even five, should have the right to decide for all of us," said Patrycja, who had come to the protest in central Warsaw with her father, holding a placard reading "I am not an incubator".

"I actually cried when I heard the ruling. I cannot imagine that I or my child would not have the right to decide about their child. It's tragic."

The protests were ignited last week when Poland's Constitutional Tribunal ruled that a 1993 law allowing abortions in cases of severe foetal disabilities was unconstitutional, paving the way for a dramatic tightening of Poland's abortion laws, which were already among the strictest in the EU.

Once the ruling comes into force, terminations will be allowed only in cases of rape, incest or when the mother's health or life is under threat. Such cases accounted for just 2.4 per cent of the 1,100 legal abortions that took place in Polish hospitals in 2019.

Since coming to power in 2015, the conservative-nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS) has made promoting traditional, Catholic values a central plank of its political platform.

Over the past 18 months, the party has ratcheted up its rhetoric against LGBT rights movements, and backed away from a previous attempt to tighten Poland's abortion laws in 2016 only after huge street protests.

Patryk Jaki, an MEP from the ruling camp who has a child with Down syndrome, said that under the existing rules there was a chance of "healthy children" being aborted because "there is rarely 100 per cent certainty" about a foetus's condition.

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"Both healthy and disabled children, apart from their duties, give a lot of joy and build family strength. And through that, a strong Poland," he wrote on Twitter.

However, women's rights groups say that the court ruling means that women would be forced to give birth to babies with severe and lethal conditions and no chance of survival.

Others, such as Iwona Hartwich, an opposition MP with a disabled child, who led a campaign for greater support for disabled people and their families, accuse PiS of failing the disabled. "[PiS] just promises and does not live up to those promises," she wrote in an article on Sunday.

As well as inflaming political tensions, the ruling has led to an outpouring of anger against the Catholic church. Over the weekend, pro-abortion slogans and even telephone numbers for abortion helplines were daubed on churches, and some services were disrupted by protesters, an almost unprecedented occurrence in what remains one of Europe's most Catholic countries.

In central Warsaw on Monday night, as protests continued despite a ban on public gatherings introduced to stem the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, groups of nationalists and women's rights protesters had to be separated by police after a tense stand-off and fights outside a church.

Nearby, the air filled with the blare of car horns and sirens as protesters blocked streets with cars or simply by sitting or lying down on the tarmac.

"I hope it will have an effect, but it seems to me that our government is spitting in our faces anyway, so I don't know if it will work," said Claudia, who joined the march through central Warsaw. "But we have to fight for our rights."

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Poland's abortion protests bring city streets to standstill

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Thousands of Poles took to the streets across the country on Monday for the fifth day of protests against a court ruling that paves the way for an almost total ban on abortion.

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Is it time to strike back at empire?
Relationship between law and empire

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In a phrase that has echoed down the generations, the Victorian historian John Robert Seeley wrote in his 1883 book The Expansion of England that the British had "conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind".

Modern historians do not let the British and other European empires get off so lightly. True, even in the 19th and 20th centuries there were liberal and radical critics of empire. But the more commonly accepted, more comforting story told of an imperfect but essentially praiseworthy extension of European civilisation into far-flung parts of the world. This version of history is now under attack as never before.

In Britain's case, the trend reflects to some extent the availability of material in once-closed national archives that sheds a new, harsh light on the violence of decolonisation in former British possessions such as Cyprus, Kenya and Malaya. In Time's Monster, one of the four books under review, Stanford University historian Priya Satia goes further and suggests that the historical discipline itself has evolved into "an instrument of redemption for the victims of modern history".

There is the "planetary crisis produced by dominance of the European tradition . . . The inclusion of scholars of diverse backgrounds has transformed our knowledge of race, gender and culture, undermining the narratives that underpinned empire and other forms of racial inequality," writes Satia, author of a 2018 article, "The Whitesplaining of History Is Over". Historians of the British empire, she says, should draw attention to the "abysmal history of looting and pillage, policy-driven famines, brutal crushing of rebellion, torture, concentration camps, aerial policing, and everyday racism and humiliation".

Satia delivers volley after volley of ferocious attacks on "the self-pitying liberal view of empire". Philosophers, political thinkers and authors of the 18th and 19th centuries who criticised aspects of British imperialism, including Edmund Burke, Lord Byron and John Stuart Mill, may have thought they were defending decency and the rule of law - but in practice they condoned inequality, exploitation and authoritarianism, she writes. "The liberals screwed their eyes shut and put their fingers in their ears, muttering 'progress'," she says.

Satia's book raises an important question about whether historians are prosecutors and history is a court in which judgments should be passed on accused individuals. In her concluding chapter, she observes that historians of the Middle Ages allow people of that time "to tell us their stories on their own terms". It would indeed be missing the point to condemn people living in 12th-century Europe for religious intolerance or enforcement of brutal laws. The age of imperialism is closer to our own times, but one task facing historians, as opposed to polemicists, is surely to explain why the creators, supporters and critics of Europe's empires thought and acted as they did.

One observation about the British empire is how little most Britons know about it. There is a collective amnesia, fuelled partly by the reluctance of many schools to teach the subject in depth

The passions aroused by imperialism make it hardly surprising that the question of how Britain and other post-imperial societies should assess their history has become increasingly divisive. It shapes the Black Lives Matter movement, stokes arguments over Brexit, affects debates over Islam in Europe and flows into many other controversies.

A recent example flared up in August, when the BBC considered cutting out the singing of the choruses of "Land of Hope and Glory" and "Rule Britannia!" at the annual Last Night of the Proms concert. The move was apparently prompted by health precautions during the pandemic. However, Boris Johnson seized the opportunity to make a political point: "I think it's time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history," the UK prime minister declared.

Arguably, a more pertinent observation about the British empire is how little most Britons know about it. There is a kind of collective amnesia, fuelled partly by the reluctance of many British schools to teach the subject in depth. Samir Puri writes in The Great Imperial Hangover that one consequence is an unconscious imperial mindset that expresses itself in "the confidence that borders on arrogance of some of its contemporary elites". He is careful not to mention names.

A lecturer at King's College, London and a former UK diplomat, Puri has many penetrating insights into the way the legacies of empire still affect the behaviour of states and the international climate. His book looks in turn at the US, Britain, the EU, Russia, China, India, the Middle East and Africa. He is particularly good on what he calls "the tragedy of America's informal empire".

A country defined in many ways by its 18th-century experience of throwing off imperial chains, the US found itself after 1945 in the unaccustomed role of running an informal "empire by invitation" in the name of democracy, free trade and anti-communism. There was a genuine idealism to these efforts, but it sat awkwardly with friendliness to some authoritarian regimes - not to mention the resort to war in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s and Iraq in 2003. "The early signs are that the habits of informal empire have not at all prepared America for a world in which it may no longer be top of the global pecking order," Puri writes.

Some of his other judgments require a little more nuance, such as his view that in the 1990s, after the collapse of communism, "westernising modernisers tried - and ultimately failed - to untether Russia from its autocratic imperial legacies". In fact, the concept of a rightful Russian sphere of influence in the "near abroad" - the newly independent former Soviet republics - took shape in official circles soon after the demise of the USSR in 1991. Likewise some readers will think Puri goes too far in suggesting that the EU's commitment to closer integration and enlargement shows that the 27-nation bloc "has acquired quasi-imperial habits and characteristics".

In his chapter on India, Puri quotes Jawaharlal Nehru, its first post-independence leader, as writing in his 1946 book The Discovery of India: "Which of these two Englands came to India? The England of Shakespeare and Milton . . . or the England of the savage penal code and brutal behaviours, of entrenched feudalism and reaction?"

In his fascinating Waves Across the South, Sujit Sivasundaram shows that some among the colonised peoples of the Indian and Pacific oceans were thinking along the same lines as Nehru long before the Indian statesman.

In Mauritius, which the British seized from the French in 1810 during the Napoleonic wars, a political activist and journalist named Rémy Ollier wrote in the 1840s: "We are English today, we are not a conquered people . . . Why do we not possess the institutions of England?" There was similar discontent in Cape Town in 1848-49 when the British tried to settle penal convicts in the former Dutch colony.

Waves Across the South is an ambitious attempt to tell world history from roughly 1770 to 1850 not from an Atlantic perspective, with the usual emphasis on America's war of independence, the French Revolution and other events in Europe, but from the viewpoint of the south, the "forgotten quarter" of the planet.

Sivasundaram, a history professor at the University of Cambridge, brings to life the "surge of indigenous politics" that marked this era in the South Pacific islands, the Bay of Bengal, the Gulf and the south-western Indian Ocean - all places that gradually fell under British control.

His core argument is not kind to the British. They expanded their reach with "scientific data-gathering, the use of costly armies, new technology and aristocratic militarism disguised with a language of liberation and free trade", he writes. In Australasia, "colonial norms of gender and race were used to reorganise Aboriginal Australian senses of self". In the Gulf, British "militarism, uncontrolled violence, treaty-making and wars that would not cease . . . altered the political scene, creating a counter-revolutionary imperialism".

Yet the story the British told and still tell about themselves - that the 19th century, at least at home, was an era of progress and largely peaceful liberal reform - was one which some colonial visitors to London recognised. Jehangir Naoroji and Hirjibhoy Meherwanji, two Parsi shipwrights who dropped in at the House of Commons in 1838, concluded that "the British constitution is acknowledged to be the best in the known world, and a perfect model to be imitated by others for the legislation of their countries". They disapproved, however, of the bribery that scarred parliamentary elections.

As Tim Harper shows in Underground Asia, a magnificent, sweeping history of Asian revolutionary movements from 1905 to 1927, political liberalism and social reform in western Europe formed a stark contrast to the repressive methods of rule employed in the British, Dutch, French - and Japanese - colonies of Asia. Harper, a Cambridge historian, makes the intriguing point that as imperialism fostered globalisation, drawing together Aden, Alexandria and Bombay with Calcutta, Hong Kong, Penang and Singapore, so this same process allowed Asia's anti-colonial activists to establish connections with each other.

There was an internationalist spirit among the revolutionaries that found expression, for example, in the fact that Shanghai was an early centre of Esperanto, the language in which much anarchist literature was distributed across south-east Asia. Yet the Chinese city also inspired the English author and foreign correspondent Arthur Ransome to write a coruscating 1927 article for The Manchester Guardian about the "Shanghai mind" - the expatriate British who "seemed to have lived in a comfortable but hermetically sealed and isolated glass case since 1901".

Harper has a fine eye for the telling detail. Asia's revolutionaries were almost always under police surveillance and on the move, he says. Yet MN Roy, the Indian communist, and his American-born wife Evelyn Trent dined in the finest restaurants and stayed in luxury hotels. Mikhail Borodin, a Soviet Comintern agent, who was to die in 1951 in Stalin's Gulag, thought it essential to live the high life: "If you wanted to hide revolutionary connections . . . you had better travel first class."

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It was in the period covered by Harper's book that the foundations of western imperialism in Asia were fatally undermined. Few modern historians would dispute his argument that "white violence across colonial Asia often undermined the very rule of law from which the west claimed its legitimacy".

However, there is far less agreement, especially among politicians, about how postcolonial European societies should view and be educated about their past. As Puri observes, the struggle to come to terms with the consequences of empire is far from over. "Civilisations don't clash," he writes. "Imperial legacies collide."

Time's Monster: History, Conscience and Britain's Empire, by Priya Satia, Allen Lane, RRP£25, 384 pages

The Great Imperial Hangover: How Empires Have Shaped the World, by Samir Puri, Atlantic Books, RRP£20, 384 pages

Waves Across the South: A New History of Revolution and Empire, by Sujit Sivasundaram, William Collins, RRP£25, 496 pages

Underground Asia: Global Revolutionaries and the Assault on Empire, by Tim Harper, Allen Lane, RRP£35, 864 pages
Tony Barber Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café is the FT's European affairs commentator

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In a phrase that has echoed down the generations, the Victorian historian John Robert Seeley wrote in his 1883 book The Expansion of England that the British had "conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind". Modern historians do not let the British and other European empires get off so lightly.

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Christensen & Mortensen (2018) speak of the linguistic parameter 'modality' (p. 130). Could you briefly illuminate what they mean by this, and what it practically looks like in linguistic analysis?

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The Internationalisation of Black Lives Matter at the Human Rights Council

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'Black Lives Matter' resonated at the Human Rights Council on 17 June during the urgent debate on the 'current racially inspired human rights violations, systemic racism, police brutality and violence against peaceful protests'. The stirring words of Philonise Floyd, George Floyd's brother, the speech of Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and [...]

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Priti Patel asked officials to explore the construction of an asylum processing centre on Ascension Island, a British overseas territory more than 4,000 miles from the UK in the south Atlantic, for migrants coming to Britain.

The home secretary's officials also looked at the possibility of building an asylum centre on St Helena, part of the same island group.

But the idea of transferring asylum seekers to remote volcanic outcrops appears to have been dropped by Ms Patel. The Foreign Office was consulted on the plan and provided an assessment of the practicality of shipping asylum seekers to the remote locations.

Ms Patel is expected to address migration across the English Channel in a speech to the "virtual" Conservative party conference on Sunday.

Channel crossings make up only a small proportion of the more than 34,000 people who registered asylum claims in the UK in the year to June, but unofficial estimates suggest the numbers using the route have grown.

By the end of August about 5,000 people had arrived in dinghies, more than twice the 1,890 seen in the whole of 2019. The issue has become a campaigning issue for rightwing politicians, notably Brexit party leader Nigel Farage.

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Several Whitehall officials told the Financial Times that Ms Patel had ordered work on how other countries dealt with what Home Office ministers have called "illegal" migration - including the approach in Australia, which runs several offshore asylum centres.

Allies of Ms Patel insisted the idea was not going to happen. "The home secretary would not want something like this." But individuals close to her confirmed an offshore asylum centre had been considered.

"We have been looking at how other countries have been dealing with this issue," said one well-placed individual. "We have been scoping everything. No decisions have been made by ministers."

Ascension Island, used as a staging post to supply and defend the Falkland Islands, has an RAF base and a population of less than 1,000; moving asylum seekers there after they had arrived in the UK would pose a major logistical challenge.

Australia has used offshore processing and detention centres for asylum seekers since the late 1980s.

The proposal is further evidence of the influence of Tony Abbott's ideas on the Johnson government. The former Australian prime minister, who is known for his tough stance on immigration, was appointed as a trade adviser to the Johnson government and recently met with Ms Patel.

Ms Patel's team also looked at the idea, considered by the EU, of creating a centre for processing asylum claims in north Africa so that migrants could be screened before making the hazardous trip to Britain. The plan echoes proposals put forward by Brussels when the UK was still a member.

A Home Office official said: "The UK has a long and proud history of offering refuge to those who need protection. Tens of thousands of people have rebuilt their lives in the UK and we will continue to provide safe and legal routes in the future.

"As ministers have said we are developing plans to reform policies and laws around illegal migration and asylum to ensure we are able to provide protection to those who need it, while preventing abuse of the system and the criminality associated with it."
Additional reporting by Robert Wright

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Priti Patel looked at shipping UK asylum seekers to south Atlantic

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Priti Patel asked officials to explore the construction of an asylum processing centre on Ascension Island, a British overseas territory more than 4,000 miles from the UK in the south Atlantic, for migrants coming to Britain. The home secretary's officials also looked at the possibility of building an asylum centre on St Helena, part of the same island group.

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Proposals to hold newly arrived asylum seekers on disused ferries or overseas have been branded "illegal, expensive and illogical" by immigration experts, former civil servants and politicians.

Leaked reports have shown Priti Patel's Home Office considered plans to process migrants off the UK mainland and also looked at floating walls to block asylum seekers crossing the Channel from Calais.

Matthew Rycroft, permanent secretary at the Home Office, told MPs on Thursday that "all options were on the table".

But the plans were branded "inhumane" by Labour leader Keir Starmer, who said: "This isn't creative thinking, this is lurching from one ridiculous proposition to the next."

Ex-civil servants and prominent lawyers told The Independent the proposals were "unrealistic" and rooted in an attempt to "look tough" on the issue of immigration, when in fact they would do nothing to solve any problem - instead generating higher costs and more legal and moral issues for ministers.

Dave Wood, who was head of immigration enforcement under Theresa May, said the idea of processing asylum seekers on a disused ferry or remote islands would be "illegal, impractical, expensive and illogical" - and born only out of ministers "trying to sound like they've got a very tough response" to the rise in Channel crossings.

He said: "Once it's been thought through I'm sure they wont implement it because as they think it through they'll see it's mad. More importantly, it doesn't solve any of the problems they're trying to solve. At the end of the day, what would it solve? Absolutely nothing.

"It's party politics and trying to sound tough to the public, but they can't answer the important questions."

The former civil servant also said it was unlikely to deter people from coming to the UK to seek asylum: "Whether they think immigrants wont come here because they know they will be put on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic, I don't think that will wash. People will still come. Ultimately, many won't be returned home."

Tony Gray, a former Border Force employee who left five years ago, said he believed the ideas indicated the "mindset of the government and the home secretary at the moment".

"They've made lots of promises and lots of tough statements about sending people back, but it's very difficult for them to actually achieve that, and they knew that from the start."

Mr Gray added that some of the asylum seekers he saw arriving in Kent during his time with Border Force were "extremely vulnerable" and would not cope well in a far-flung centre: "Many of them have gone through incredibly a lot, from those who have been bombed out of their homes, to those forced out by armed groups."

According to The Times, Number 10 is considering buying retired ferries and converting the vessels into processing centres to house asylum seekers off the UK coast, and also discussed moving migrants to decommissioned oil platforms in the North Sea for processing, but the idea was rejected.

The Guardian reported that the government was considering sending asylum seekers could to detention centres in Papua New Guinea, Moldova, or Morocco, in a version of the Australian "offshore" model.

It claimed leaked documents had revealed Downing Street had asked officials to look into the matter, but was met with "pushback" from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

The ideas echo those floated by the Labour government in 2003, which included establishing a "protection zone" in a country such as Russia or Albania, and a potential processing centre in Tanzania, but were quickly concluded to be unfeasible.

Jonathan Portes, professor of economics and public policy at King's College London and former senior civil servant of more than 20 years, was chief economist at the Cabinet Office when those ideas were floated.

"The motivation for this now is the same as it was then," he said. "The idea that we can somehow convince people that if they get here they'll be shipped offshore and they'll be in camps and their claims will probably be denied and they'll be shipped back home.

"And the objections then were the same as what you've seen now - which is on the humane side, the legal side and the practical and cost side. It'll cost a lot, they'll end up with a lot of legal challenges and many of the people will end up staying here anyway."

He said that in order to resolve the issue of large numbers of people in the asylum system, the government must invest more resources in processing asylum claims "quickly and humanely", referring to the growing backlog in the waiting times for asylum decisions.

Official figures show the number of asylum seekers waiting longer than half a year for their claim to be decided hit a record high this year after surging by 76 per cent in 12 months. Meanwhile, the number of people granted asylum reached its highest level in 16 years, with more than half of claimants granted protection at the initial decision stage, compared with only a third the previous year.

Mr Portes added: "What's the humanity in shipping people more than likely to be genuine asylum seekers off to some offshore processing centre where they may languish for years? This government has done some bizarre things so it's not impossible. But would it actually achieve very much, probably not."

Immigration barrister Colin Yeo said the proposals were "very unrealistic" and were an attempt to confront a problem that was not really there.

"There are huge practical obstacles to it, not just around the cost and logistics but the moral consequences on what happens when you detain people in that way in foreign countries," he said.

"The one idea that does seem potentially doable and is probably lawful is putting people on a ferry. But why would you do that? There aren't that many of them. If you're going to detain them, why not have them on-land?

"Most of these people are genuine refugees, the numbers reaching the UK are much smaller than other EU countries, and the numbers are actually falling on previous years. The idea that you need extreme measures to deal with a problem that is not really a problem at all seems unreal."

Yvette Cooper, chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, wrote a letter to the home secretary on Thursday saying the proposals seemed to be "both extremely inappropriate" in terms of the UK's commitments to human rights and to asylum, and an "incredibly impractical and expensive" way of doing so.

Adam Holloway, the Tory MP for Gravesham, said it was "completely right" for the Home Office to look at ways of deterring asylum seekers from coming to the UK, but called for any solution to be "civilised".

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Thursday, he said: "Talk of oil rigs and Moldova and Papua New Guinea, to me, is somewhat bizarre. You're determined for me to say it is a great idea to put people on islands - I'm not saying that.

"The Home Office is completely right to look at other options so there is some sort of deterrent, but not the Australian model where you have poor welfare standards and everything else. We've got to find a civilised version of that."

Sonia Lenegan, legal director at the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association, said the timing of the proposals was "remarkable" given that it came a day after the response to the Lessons Learned report was published, in which the Home Secretary spoke of building a better Home Office.

"Australia's offshore processing policies are absolutely not a system to be admired or emulated, they have received international condemnation because of the levels of human cruelty involved," she added.

Kate Allen, Amnesty international UK director, described the proposals as "entirely immoral and inhumane", adding: "It is a dismal reflection upon Home Office Ministers that this idea to effectively exile people seeking asylum to far-flung and isolated places has been given any consideration at all.

Home Office to carry out review of hostile environment following Windrush says Priti Patel

"For too long the Home Office has done its worst business behind closed doors, with little consideration of the needs, rights and welfare of women, men and children affected by it."

Stephen Hale, chief executive of Refugee Action, said the government's speculative plans were "inhumane and morally bankrupt" and "steeped in racism", adding that they would expose vulnerable people to "horrendous human rights abuse and trauma"

The Home Office has been approached for comment.

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Proposals to hold newly arrived asylum seekers on disused ferries or overseas have been branded 'illegal, expensive and illogical'

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Proposals to hold newly arrived asylum seekers on disused ferries or overseas have been branded "illegal, expensive and illogical" by immigration experts, former civil servants and politicians. Leaked reports have shown Priti Patel's Home Office considered plans to process migrants off the UK mainland and also looked at floating walls to block asylum seekers crossing the Channel from Calais.

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Poland abortion: Top court bans almost all terminations

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"It's inhuman, it's despicable honestly to make anyone carry a pregnancy to term, especially if the foetus is malformed, and 98% of legal abortions carried out in Poland are due to foetal malformations," she said.

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Poland abortion: Top court bans almost all terminations

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"It's inhuman, it's despicable honestly to make anyone carry a pregnancy to term, especially if the foetus is malformed, and 98% of legal abortions carried out in Poland are due to foetal malformations," she said.

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Unsettling Anthropocentric Legal Systems: Reconciliation, Indigenous Laws, and Animal Personhood

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Unsettling Anthropocentric Legal Systems: Reconciliation, Indigenous Laws, and Animal Personhood

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https://www-tandfonline-com.ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/doi/full/10.1080/07256868.2019.1704229

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New Zealand river granted same legal rights as human being | New Zealand | The Guardian

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In a world-first a New Zealand river has been granted the same legal rights as a human being.

The local Māori tribe of Whanganui in the North Island has fought for the recognition of their river - the third-largest in New Zealand - as an ancestor for 140 years.

On Wednesday, hundreds of tribal representatives wept with joy when their bid to have their kin awarded legal status as a living entity was passed into law.

"The reason we have taken this approach is because we consider the river an ancestor and always have," said Gerrard Albert, the lead negotiator for the Whanganui iwi [tribe].

"We have fought to find an approximation in law so that all others can understand that from our perspective treating the river as a living entity is the correct way to approach it, as in indivisible whole, instead of the traditional model for the last 100 years of treating it from a perspective of ownership and management."

The new status of the river means if someone abused or harmed it the law now sees no differentiation between harming the tribe or harming the river because they are one and the same.

Chris Finlayson, the minister for the treaty of Waitangi negotiations, said the decision brought the longest-running litigation in New Zealand's history to an end. "Te Awa Tupua will have its own legal identity with all the corresponding rights, duties and liabilities of a legal person," said Finlayson in a statement.

"The approach of granting legal personality to a river is unique ... it responds to the view of the iwi of the Whanganui river which has long recognised Te Awa Tupua through its traditions, customs and practice."

Two guardians will be appointed to act on behalf of the Whanganui river, one from the crown and one from the Whanganui iwi.

Albert said all Māori tribes regarded themselves as part of the universe, at one with and equal to the mountains, the rivers and the seas.

The new law now honoured and reflected their worldview, he said, and could set a precedent for other Māori tribes in New Zealand to follow in Whanganui's footsteps.

"We can trace our genealogy to the origins of the universe," said Albert. "And therefore rather than us being masters of the natural world, we are part of it. We want to live like that as our starting point. And that is not an anti-development, or anti-economic use of the river but to begin with the view that it is a living being, and then consider its future from that central belief."

Financial redress of NZ$80m is included in the settlement, as well as an additional NZ$1m contribution towards establishing the legal framework for the river.

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New Zealand river granted same legal rights as human being

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In a world-first a New Zealand river has been granted the same legal rights as a human being. The local Māori tribe of Whanganui in the North Island has fought for the recognition of their river - the third-largest in New Zealand - as an ancestor for 140 years.

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New article on settler colonialism and resource extraction 

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New article on settler colonialism and resource extraction 

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Fantastic new article in Political Geography on the relationship between the extraction of natural resources (Bitumen) and the creation of a settler colonial state (Canada) see here: https://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/permalink/f/1nb04c1/TN_cdi_crossref_primary_10_1016_j_polgeo_2019_102044

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Priti Patel looked at idea of sending asylum seekers to South Atlantic

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A Whitehall brainstorming session prompted by Priti Patel led to the idea being floated of sending asylum seekers to a volcanic island in the South Atlantic, the Guardian understands.

The Financial Times reported that the home secretary had asked officials to look into the idea of processing asylum seekers on Ascension Island, an isolated volcanic British territory, and on St Helena, which is part of the same island group but 800 miles away.

However, according to Home Office sources, the proposal only arose after Patel sought advice on how other countries deal with asylum applications. Australia, for example, keeps them on overseas islands while it processes claims.

The source said Patel asked the Foreign Office for ideas, and among those raised were "implausible ones" such as the use of Ascension or St Helena.

Patel is expected to address the issue of Channel crossings by migrants in a speech to the Conservative party conference on Sunday, and has repeatedly vowed to stop those arriving in the country by boat.

She has called on the Royal Navy to help tackle the growing number of small boats and appointed a former Royal Marine, Dan O'Mahoney, to the role of "clandestine Channel threat commander".

In August she said the number of crossings was "appalling and unacceptably high", adding: "I am working to make this route unviable."

The UK is dealing with record levels of arrivals across the Channel, and - according to PA Media analysis - nearly 7,000 people have landed in the UK by small boats this year.

New plans drawn up by the Home Office show that people could be housed in a detention centre criticised for inhumane conditions, and Conservative MPs in Kent have raised concerns about the housing of migrants in nearby hotels and army barracks.

Ascension Island, which has a population of less than 1,000, is home to a Royal Air Force station and was used extensively as a staging point by the British military during the Falklands conflict in 1982.

St Helena is also one of the most isolated islands in the world, lying 1,210 miles off the west coast of Africa.

It is part of the British Overseas Territory of St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha.

A Home Office source said: "The UK has a long and proud history of offering refuge to those who need protection. Tens of thousands of people have rebuilt their lives in the UK and we will continue to provide safe and legal routes in the future.

"As ministers have said, we are developing plans to reform policies and laws around illegal migration and asylum to ensure we are able to provide protection to those who need it, while preventing abuse of the system and the criminality associated with it."

Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow home secretary, said: "This ludicrous idea is inhumane, completely impractical and wildly expensive. So it seems entirely plausible this Tory government came up with it."

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Priti Patel looked at idea of sending asylum seekers to South Atlantic

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A Whitehall brainstorming session prompted by Priti Patel led to the idea being floated of sending asylum seekers to a volcanic island in the South Atlantic, the Guardian understands.

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British plans to 'offshore' asylum seekers have a long and grubby history

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he home secretary, Priti Patel, has reportedly been exploring a range of outlandish plans for sending refugees who arrive on British shores to very faraway places.

The week began with a Whitehall leak that revealed officials had been asked to consider setting up an immigration centre on Ascension Island, over 4,000 miles away in the South Atlantic. When that idea was kiboshed, further leaks identified other territories being considered for extraterritorial processing, including Moldova, Morocco and Papua New Guinea.

Britain has a long and rather grubby history of sending people to faraway territories in order to solve political problems. The principle that out of sight is out of mind first underpinned the establishment of penal colonies where hundreds of thousands of criminals and other "undesirables" were banished throughout the British empire.

Other European states have followed suit, the most famous example of such a place being Devil's Island, in French Guiana. More recently, in 2002, the United States started using Guantánamo Bay, a US naval base on the southern tip of Cuba, as a detention centre for handling hundreds of "unlawful combatants" that it refused to put on trial in the US.

In the past two decades governments have toyed with this extraterritorial solution to try to "look tough" in the face of small numbers of desperate people arriving in Britain. In so doing, asylum seekers - who share with you and me the legal right to seek refuge - are being treated as criminals.

It was a Labour government in 2003 that first came up with the idea of using offshore immigration processing centres. The context was a rise in asylum applications to the UK, which had seen a 20-fold increase over 15 years. Having already considered both harsh clampdowns and amnesties for deterring asylum seekers, the then home secretary, David Blunkett, enthusiastically supported by Tony Blair, floated a number of proposals for immigration centres outside the UK.

He suggested creating "regional protection zones", which would be in, or next to, areas witnessing major flows of people. These zones would offer a safe haven to those fleeing persecution but keep them within touch of their home countries.

His second proposal was to create "transit centres" on the fringes of the European Union, which would hold all applicants heading west and handle applications for those seeking to enter the UK. The list of proposed sites for these centres has a rather familiar ring, and included nations on the major transit routes such as Turkey, Somalia and Morocco.

Blunkett's ideas received the welcome backing of a number of thinktanks, including Demos. But, not to be outdone by New Labour, the Tories followed up a few months later with their own proposals.

The then shadow home secretary, Oliver Letwin, went to the Conservative party conference in October 2003 promising that all asylum seekers arriving in Britain would be immediately deported to a "far-offshore processing" island. Letwin told the conference in Blackpool: "We will replace the present asylum system, in its entirety, with a system of quotas for genuine refugees and the offshore processing of all claims, to deter all but genuine claims for protection from persecution."

And he made clear that under this policy all asylum seekers who reached Britain would find the door closed firmly in their faces. "There will be no applications in the United Kingdom," he said.

Asylum welfare groups reacted to the plan with horror ,and there followed an instant chorus of disapproval on human rights grounds. The Refugee Council said it was "unlawful, inhumane and ridiculous". Its deputy chief executive, Margaret Lally, said: "The UK is committed under international law to providing a safe haven for those fleeing persecution." Others compared the policy to plans more associated with wartime emergencies

But the Tory idea turned out to be half-baked when Letwin admitted that he did not "have the slightest idea" where the island would be.

However, it is the immigration policy of a former British colony that has given new life to the current home secretary's offshoring designs. Asylum seekers stopped in boats in Australian waters are held in facilities on the offshore islands of Nauru and Manus Island under a policy called Operation Sovereign Borders. There is another one, on Christmas Island. The government seems to believe that if this can work for Australia, there is no reason to stop Britain doing the same.

But these notorious facilities have been a source of much controversy during their time of operation. There have been a number of riots and escapes, as well as accusations of human rights abuses from organisations including Amnesty International, the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations.

The British government's reliance on the Australian "solution" to a refugee crisis risks once again dangerously muddling refugees' rights with those of people convicted of criminal offences. This is a slippery constitutional slope that could cast us adrift from well-established international law. Instead of adopting humane policies for the processing of asylum seekers, the government seems keen to create legal black holes for people who have the right to a fair hearing on British soil.

* Robert Verkaik is an author and journalist specialising in extremism and education

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British plans to 'offshore' asylum seekers have a long and grubby history | Robert Verkaik

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The home secretary, Priti Patel, has reportedly been exploring a range of outlandish plans for sending refugees who arrive on British shores to very faraway places. The week began with a Whitehall leak that revealed officials had been asked to consider setting up an immigration centre on Ascension Island, over 4,000 miles away in the South Atlantic.

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Human rights lawyers sue Trump administration for 'silencing' them

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Prominent US human rights lawyers are suing the Trump administration over an executive order they say has gagged them and halted their work pursuing justice on behalf of war crimes victims around the world.

As a result of the order in June threatening "serious consequences" for anyone giving support to the work of the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague, the lawyers say they have had to cancel speeches and presentations, end research, abandon writing ICC-related articles and dispensing advice and assistance to victims of atrocities.

The effect, according to the plaintiffs, has been an unprecedented infringement of their constitutional right to free speech and a chill that has pervaded the world of international humanitarian law.

"This is just a wallop, a gut punch, silencing the activities that really have been my life's work," said Diane Marie Amann, professor of international law at the University of Georgia and one of the plaintiffs.

She argued Donald Trump's order was a betrayal of an American tradition of global leadership on human rights, including the creation of the Nuremberg Tribunal and a leading role in the establishment of the ICC.

"It is so sad to think that the country in which I was born, in a city called Libertyville, Illinois, is prohibiting me from doing that work," Amann said.

The executive order was followed in September by the imposition of sanctions - originally designed to be used for drug traffickers and terrorists - against the ICC chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, and another senior ICC official.

Amann has served as an unpaid special adviser to Bensouda on children in conflict since 2012.

"I work on behalf of children who are affected by armed conflict, who are killed, tortured, sexually abused, forced to become child soldiers, and trafficked," Amann said, adding that she has had to curtail her work as a result of the US targeting of Bensouda, or face the risk of personal sanctions possibly including the seizure of her family's assets.

"Since the designation of Prosecutor Bensouda, I have refrained from giving her any advice," Amann said. "I have withdrawn from public presentations to which I had already committed, out of fear that public discussion of the work of the ICC might be construed to violate the sanctions regime. I have refrained from engaging student research assistants to assist me in work in the subject area, out of fear of exposing them in some way."

The lawsuit was filed on Wednesday morning in a federal court in New York by Amann, three other US-based law professors, all acting in their private capacities, and the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI). It is directed against Trump, secretary of state Mike Pompeo, treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin, attorney general William Barr, the director of the office of foreign assets control, Andrea Gacki, and their respective departments.

It calls for the enforcement of the executive order to be halted while the court considers its constitutionality.

The administration has presented the sanctions against the ICC as a response to the court's decision to investigate suspected war crimes by all parties in Afghanistan, including US forces. Pompeo also assailed the ICC for investigating Israel for its actions in the Palestinian territories.

"This is a targeted sanctions authority directed at persons determined to have engaged in specific activity that threatens the foreign policy and national security of the United States or to have materially supported such persons," a state department spokesperson said.

The sanctions, the spokesperson added, "apply to individuals who have directly engaged in ICC efforts to investigate US personnel without the consent of the United States, or have materially supported individuals who are designated for such actions".

The lawsuit argues that the executive order is so vaguely worded that it threatens a far broader range of cooperation with the ICC by lawyers, human rights groups and the others. The OSJI argued that it could affect a casual giver of advice or even the airline transporting sanctioned ICC officials, or the hotels where they stay.

"We spend lots of time in many places around the world meeting with victims to help them understand how the court works ... how they can provide evidence to the court," James Goldston, OSJI's executive director, said.

"And all of that is essentially put on hold now because it may well be prohibited by this order. That's the fear, and it's such a broad order, that it's hard to tell."

The four law professors suing the administration are all dual nationals, which they say makes them more vulnerable to the executive order, but say it could be used against any Americans.

Andrew Loewenstein, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, described the Trump executive order as "entirely exceptional".

"Historically, the powers vested in the president to issue economic sanctions of this type have been used in relation to terrorist groups or drug kingpins or in relation to serious violations of human rights," Loewenstein, an attorney at the firm Foley Hoag, said.

"It's never been used in a circumstance like this, where the ultimate target of the sanctions are the the prosecutor and others of senior officials of the international criminal court, who are engaged in wide-ranging efforts to prosecute and investigate international crimes including crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide."

The plaintiffs say the order will have repercussions around the world, inhibiting non-US human rights lawyers and activists who fear being barred entry or having US assets confiscated.

Goldston said: "It is I think a threat to the notion that the United States stands for human rights, and on ability to say anything to anybody about human rights in the world."

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Human rights lawyers sue Trump administration for 'silencing' them

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Prominent US human rights lawyers are suing the Trump administration over an executive order they say has gagged them and halted their work pursuing justice on behalf of war crimes victims around the world.

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Courtroom drama: Salford's Lowry theatre to become Nightingale court | Law | The Guardian

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There are many barristers who like to imagine they could have succeeded on the stage, hamming it up in their wigs and gowns and addressing the jury like Laurence Olivier doing Richard III.

On Monday, a select group of lawyers will have their chance to perform at the theatre for real, when one of the biggest arts venues in the north-west of England transforms into a "Nightingale court".

The Lowry in Salford is the latest building to be repurposed by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to help tackle what the director of public prosecutions has called "corrosive" delays in the court system.

Four court rooms will be in operation on Salford Quays from next week as the MoJ rushes to get through its 46,467-strong backlog of crown court cases. Three will hear crown court cases and the last, normally a conference room, will host tribunals.

The hot ticket for silks with thespian ambitions will undoubtedly be courtroom one in the Quays Theatre, the smaller of the Lowry's two stages.

There, the judge will appear from the wings, administering justice below a huge coat of arms suspended in the air by the sort of strings which usually make Tinkerbell fly in the Christmas pantomime. They will be given their own dressing room in the bowels of the building. Jurors, meanwhile, get the best seats in the house, each allocated a box designed for six.

The defendant(s) sit at the back in what would often be the sound booth. Unlike in a real crown court, there is no bullet-proof dock: the Nightingale courts will only try defendants not judged a flight risk and accused of less serious crimes.

Most will walk through the front door and the hastily assembled airport scanners, having been granted bail at an earlier hearing. No one will go straight from the Lowry to prison, all sentencing will be adjourned to the real crown court at a later date.

Julia Fawcett, the Lowry's chief executive takes centre-stage amid the temporary court room. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Julia Fawcett, the Lowry's chief executive, insists the theatre's lighting will be at its most sober, no spotlights for QCs delivering their opening speeches, no sudden cuts to black when the prosecution produces a smoking gun.

"Coming to court is a serious business," she said on Tuesday, as an army of MoJ employees busied about testing video-links and learning their way around the labyrinthine building. "It is very important that there is dignity and accountability."

It has been a torrid six months for an organisation which receives just 6% of its turnover from public funds. Though it was able to furlough most of its 250 staff and received £1.2m from the Arts Council in summer, the Lowry didn't qualify for many of the government's Covid business grants.

The MoJ deal is a "crucial lifeline" for the Lowry, said Fawcett. Without it, the venue would end the year £20m down, having lost 95% of its usual £22m annual income. By keeping its biggest theatre free of trials, the venue hopes to welcome audiences again at the end of November with a socially distant version of Six, a musical about Henry VIII's wives.

Fawcett wouldn't reveal how much the MoJ deal is worth, saying only that it was a "significant" sum but "not even remotely enough" to cover the Lowry's losses. The MoJ said the figure was confidential while the government worked to secure other venues in Chester, Liverpool, Bristol, Winchester and Cirencester.

Two other Nightingale courts will open on Monday - the Hilton Hotel in York, which will hear family cases, and the Jurys Inn in Middlesbrough, which will hear both civil and family cases.

They bring the total number of Nightingale courts to 17, providing 32 court rooms, the MoJ said, with the existing sites operating at 80% capacity, which is higher than the average court prior to the pandemic.

In February there were 101,000 live Crown Prosecution Service cases, according to Max Hill, the director of public prosecutions. But by the start of this month the figure had jumped by 75% to almost 180,000.

"What comes with any backlog is the necessity for the participants in cases to wait, and that can be very corrosive," he said, "particularly when you've got a vulnerable victim of an appalling crime who is made to wait because they can tell their truth in court".

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Courtroom drama: Salford's Lowry theatre to become Nightingale court

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There are many barristers who like to imagine they could have succeeded on the stage, hamming it up in their wigs and gowns and addressing the jury like Laurence Olivier doing Richard III.

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In 2015, JUSTICE launched a Working Party of our membership looking at What is a Court?, challenging long-held notions of what is required of a court or tribunal, and intended to inform the HMCTS Reform Programme as it is designed and implemented. The Working Party was chaired by Alexandra Marks.

The report of the Working Party was launched in May 2016. It recommends:

The reconception of court and tribunal rooms as 'justice spaces'. This new model is defined by its inherent flexibility and rejection of the over-standardisation prevalent in existing courts and tribunals. Justice spaces are designed to adapt to the particular dispute resolution process taking place within them, and the needs of users, rather than the other way around.

A flexible and responsive court and tribunal estate, made up of a number of dynamic parts. The Working Party suggests a portfolio of Flagship Justice Centres; Local Justice Centres; 'Pop-up courts'; remote access justice facilities; and digital justice spaces.

The Working Party emphasises the importance of technology, and its potential to meet user needs and maximise access to justice. All of the Working Party's proposals are anchored in a commitment to a core set of principled considerations. Finally, the report makes practical recommendations aimed at ensuring the effective implementation of the HMCTS Reform Programme.

Alexandra Marks was joined on the Working Party by Sir Louis Blom-Cooper QC, His Honour Nicholas Coleman, Andrea Coomber, Amanda Finlay CBE, Andrew Lockley, George Lubega, Professor Linda Mulcahy, Nadia O'Mara (Rapporteur), Professor Martin Partington CBE QC, Her Honour Isobel Plumstead, HHJ Daniel Pierce-Higgins, Pat Thomas OBE, Karamjit Singh CBE and Caroline Sheppard. Their work was kindly supported by Nabarro.

JUSTICE views this report as the beginning of a conversation on our courts and tribunals. We look forward to more work on this subject in the future and welcome contributions to this end.

Read a summary and highlights from the report in our press release.

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In 2015, JUSTICE launched a Working Party of our membership looking at What is a Court?, challenging long-held notions of what is required of a court or tribunal, and intended to inform the HMCTS Reform Programme as it is designed and implemented. The Working Party was chaired by Alexandra Marks.