Nur Kara

Law Review Article
Nur I. Kara, Screening Syndromes Out: Updating the International "Genocide" Vernacular for a Changing Technological Age, 45 N.C. J. Int'l L. 163 (2020).
Available for download at: https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/ncilj/vol45/iss1/3.

The United States government has been forcibly medicating migrant children with psychotropic drugs...Testimony has further revealed that, upon refusing to take drugs, children have been threatened with extended detention periods, physically restrained and forcibly injected, and transferred to secure psychiatric hospitals. The U.S., however, has strategically crafted its national and international human rights parameters to effectively skirt liability for its wrongdoings.

At Hacienda Healthcare, a nonprofit long-term care facility in Phoenix, Arizona, a female patient in a vegetative state recently gave birth.[i] Neither facility staff nor the patient’s family noticed the pregnancy until she exhibited physical distress during labor.[ii] Phoenix police arrested a male nurse, whose DNA matched that of the child, charging him with sexual assault and vulnerable adult abuse.[iii] A county prosecutor and independent expert are continually reviewing the facility’s op...

On July 9th, 2018, the Indian Supreme Court upheld the death penalty for three of the convicted men in the colloquially termed “2012 Delhi gang rape” case. While much of the Indian public and the victim’s parents have lauded the chief justices’ verdict, it is empirically unclear whether doling out the death sentence in cases of sexual assault truly serves the ideals of justice. Does India’s capital punishment deter the incidence of sexual assault? Does hanging a few “save” the lives of many? And is a cost-benefit analysis satisfied in favor of the death penalty?

The #MeToo movement has hit India, a country continuously crusading for enhanced women's rights, safety, and equality...Yet due and sustained justice cannot be achieved with the judicial presence of criminal defamation laws. Criminal defamation laws enable those accused to transfer liability onto grieving victims...Indian criminal defamation laws must be struck down for obstructing free speech.

To borrow from the wise Miley Cyrus: I hopped off the plane at DEL with my [menstrual hygiene] dreams and [definitely not] a cardigan. I had received a Fulbright-Nehru Student Research grant, sponsored by the United States Department of State and the Institute of International Education, to execute a personal, year-long project in India.
“You’re moving to India? Why?!”
“Why not?”
“But isn’t Delhi, like, really unsafe for women?”
Unfortunately, this was how many of my conversations went upon r...

In our present day, civil society, a commonly held definition for human rights consists of the words “inalienable,” “universal,” “egalitarian,” and “human being.” That being said, if basic human rights truly functioned upon any of the aforementioned terms, then there would be no need for human rights discourse. To ensure that all human beings, regardless of social and economic status, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of geographical location, are guaranteed due security and a voice, the af...

The protection granted by a nation to someone who has left his or her native country as a political refugee, to seek shelter or protection from danger, is a process known as asylum. The reasons to leave one’s own country are many, including fleeing war from ethnic strife, transnational human and sexual trafficking, violent political regimes, religious torture, and any other form of active discrimination. Although each reason falls under the larger umbrella of persecution, which is a concept u...

Sital Kalantry wears many hats as a distinguished professor, author, and scholar of law. She serves as a Clinical Professor of Law at Cornell University Law School, while simultaneously directing the International Human Rights Policy Advocacy Clinic and co-directing the Migration and Human Rights Program.

The 2016 United States presidential election will be the first I vote in. Although I’ve been old enough to vote for some years now, my political apathy and laziness always took priority. Seeing merely a sprinkle of Asians in the crowd at the Democratic National Convention this week, however, made me reflect not only on my own civic engagement (or lack thereof) as an American-born and raised Muslim South Asian woman, but also of my extended South Asian community.
While we’ve had the undying gr...

More than 600 million people in India—53 percent of the country’s population—defecate in the open, without using a toilet or a latrine. The effects of this action are numerous, including but not limited to: increased transmission of water-borne diseases resulting in mortality, limited cognitive capacity particularly for youth, environmental contamination of soil, water, and crops, a decrease in tourism, and a tarnished international image.
Resulting nationwide consequences also include higher...

All photos courtesy of the Nuance team.
Activists, Eleni Han, Emma Burgess, and Deepanjali Mensinkai, put their talents and passions together to found Nuance, an independent, online publication focused on diversifying and expanding the conversation surrounding sex, sexuality, relationships, and health. A platform for the underrepresented voices of young first and second generation immigrant and migrant people, Nuance represents how our intersectionality shapes our experiences.

It has become clear that India’s association with corruption, among police and policy efforts, is not simply a rendezvous, it is a dangerous slip at best. The country’s repeated instances of gender-based violence are strong examples of this continued and deliberate corruption. I am sure many of you have heard about India’s latest case, termed by popular news channels as the “Uber Delhi rape.”
Recap: A 26-year-old female financial executive used the Uber smartphone app to book a taxi home from...

Last week, 50 Muslim clerics associated with the Tanzeem Ittehad-i-Ummat religious law organization in Lahore, Pakistan issued a fatwa granting transgender people the right to marry under Islamic law. A transgender person with “visible signs of being male” may marry either a transgender woman with “visible signs of being female” or a non-transgender woman. The decree has further stipulated that transgender people must not be deprived of their rightful inheritance and funeral rituals as would ...