You receive terrible news: someone in your family has just been shot dead while allegedly committing a violent crime. That is only starting to sink in when you learn that, in response to your relative’s reported crime, the authorities are coming to demolish your home...

What would you think?

You’d think: that doesn’t make any sense. Why are they punishing me and the rest of the family for something I had nothing to do with? Something someone else did?

You’d think: that’s wrong, it should be illegal.

And you’d be right. It is illegal.

Yet, this is what the Israeli authorities are doing right now. They have sealed the family homes in the occupied West Bank of two Palestinians suspected of attacks against Israelis. They have said they will follow this by demolishing the homes.

It’s a fundamental concept of law pretty much everywhere that one person shouldn’t be punished for another’s crime. In a conflict situation, blaming a group for the actions of an individual, or a few individuals, is called “collective punishment,” and it’s a war crime under international law.

The Israeli move comes amid a spike in violence in Israel/Palestine that has cost the lives of 35 Palestinians and 7 Israelis since January 1. It’s included Israeli army raids that unlawfully attack Palestinian cities and refugee camps, Palestinian attacks on Israelis, and attacks on Palestinians and their property by Israeli settlers. 

The crime that sparked the Israeli authorities’ move to destroy family homes was particularly heinous, it’s true. One of the alleged Palestinian assailants killed seven civilians, including a child, before he was fatally shot by Israeli security forces.

But to punish others for this crime? To throw families out on the street because something someone else did? To commit a war crime in response?

And, of course, this is not an isolated case. The Israeli authorities have used various types of collective punishment like family home demolitions against Palestinians for years.

And you’re right: it’s always wrong.

Saudi Arabia’s use of the death penalty has “drastically increased” since 2015, when King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) came to power.

According to a new report, the annual rate of executions has almost doubled under the two rulers

“Bloodshed and Lies,” published by the legal action group Reprieve and the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights, makes for grim reading. More than 1,000 people have been executed in Saudi Arabia since 2015.

March 12, 2022, saw the mass execution of 81 men in a single day, “a brutal show of its autocratic rule,” my expert colleague called it at the time.

This has all been unfolding despite Saudi promises to curtail the country’s use of the death penalty. And remember those international commentators in 2015 who gushed about how MBS would reform the country? Yeah, well...

Just so we’re clear: the death penalty is always wrong. Whether it’s in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Myanmar, China, the US, or elsewhere, it’s premeditated murder by the state. It’s uniquely cruel, inconsistent with human dignity, and irreversible if done in error.

And murdering more people, more often? It couldn’t be more wrong.

(written by Emily Palomo)  

500 days.  

That’s how long the Taliban have banned girls in Afghanistan from secondary school through their relentless crackdown on women’s rights. And there’s no end in sight.  

The Taliban have denied an education to hundreds of thousands of Afghan girls since their takeover in 2021. Girls were set to return to the classroom on March 23, 2022, but instead the Taliban announced a closure, “until [school] policies followed principles of Islamic law and Afghan culture.” 

The Taliban’s restrictions on girls’ education are the same as the ones they put in place when they were last in power from 1996 to 2001. The excuses this time for closing girls’ schools are just as disingenuous, and the goal is clearly to block girls from studying indefinitely.

And it's not just girls, in December they suspended university education for women as well. 

While some Afghan women are protesting, others are creating secret schools for the girls who are being denied their basic rights. It shouldn’t have to be this way.  

Let them learn.

(compiled by Emily Palomo)

• South Korea cancels plans to update definition of rape (HRW) 
• Nearly 14,000 Nigerians take Shell to court over devastating impact of pollution (The Guardian) 
• Connecticut bill would ban ‘Latinx’ term (AP News) 
• Jamaica willing to take part in military intervention in Haiti (Reuters) 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is all the rage, but few are talking about the real humans who are paying the price for it. Many tech companies that rely on AI are outsourcing human labor to the Global South and severely underpaying workers.

My colleague Casey McCracken offers a quick take on TikTok.