Santiago Uribe, the brother of ex-President Alvaro Uribe, is awaiting trial on charges that he commanded a death squad suspected in the murder of hundreds of people during the nation’s long civil war. But with the victory of ex-President Uribe’s hand-picked successor, Ivan Duque, in the presidential elections last month, some Colombians wonder whether the case will move forward. Duque has proposed replacing the three top courts with just one, which would eliminate the Supreme Court, the body investigating Santiago Uribe.

Human rights groups recently warned that Nepal’s efforts to deliver justice to victims of the civil war do not meet international standards and risk letting the worst offenders go unpunished. After the Supreme Court of Nepal ruled in 2015 that laws passed to remedy war-era grievances did not meet international scrutiny, the government began drafting and debating an amended law. However, in a recent joint statement Human Rights Watch and the International Commission of Jurists say the latest draft legislation still makes it difficult to prosecute serious crimes.

Doctors, lawyers, and activists in Syria are working to bring perpetrators of gender-based violence to justice, as well as to help rehabilitate victims. Syrian activists are working to break down the stigmas surrounding sexual violence, with the goals of documenting the abuses for future legal battles against those responsible in the Syrian government and military and helping victims deal with their trauma.

Mexico’s newly elected president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador ran on a platform calling for amnesty and reconciliation for nonviolent offenders in the country’s ongoing drug war. His team says they plan to pair low-level amnesty with intensified investigations into the most disturbing cases, with the goal of holding more powerful people accountable instead of vulnerable pawns. 

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The Nepali House of Representatives passed a bill extending the mandates of the Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappearances and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The two commissions have only just begun in-depth investigations into the tens of thousands of complaints they have received.

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Fatou Bensouda, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), accused the UN Security Council of not taking action against countries that have failed to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for charges of genocide in Darfur. She urged the council to take action against countries that refused to arrest al-Bashir and asked it for funding to continue ICC investigations.

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This collection of new articles about transitional justice efforts across Africa over the last year highlight efforts to create a global framework for transitional justice, how some countries are litigating the past domestically, and the application of the international law to transitional justice processes in ongoing conflicts.

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A Spanish court has begun the first trial related to thousands of suspected cases of babies stolen from their mothers during the Franco era. Former gynecologist Eduardo Vela is accused of stealing Ines Madrigal from her biological mother and giving her to another woman who he falsely certified as her birth mother. The policy of taking babies from poor families and those who opposed the regime and giving them to affluent, conservative, and devout Roman Catholic families was widespread during Franco era and afterwards.

Since ISIS’s defeat in Iraq tens of thousands of people accused of fighting for the group sit in Iraqi prisons waiting to face justice. However, accusations of torture to extract false testimony and ten-minute court sessions without evidence or witnesses are rife. Sunni families say Shi’a are using the judiciary to mete out collective retribution for ISIS’s crimes.

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On Monday the Myanmar military dismissed a general who is alleged to have led the campaign against Rohingya Muslims last year, which the UN described as ethnic cleansing. The military’s decision came soon after the EU and Canada announced sanctions against the general and six other military and police officers. In the government's statement, it said the general was not fired because of his campaign against the Rohyingya, instead the reason given was the general did not respond fast enough to the alleged threat of Rohyingya attacks.