The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) adopted General Recommendation No. 36 on Preventing and Combating Racial Profiling by Law Enforcement Officials at its 102nd session, which took place from November to December 2020.

On August 2, 2021, the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted Resolution 75/314, establishing a Permanent Forum of People of African Descent to serve as “a consultative mechanism” to advise the UN Human Rights Council on barriers to, and means of achieving, the “full and effective realization and enjoyment” by Afro-descended persons “of all their human rights and fundamental freedoms.” The Permanent Forum constitutes one outcome of the International Decade for People of African Descent declared by the UN General Assembly to commence on January 1, 2015 and conclude on December 31, 2024. It joins a host of institutional initiatives undertaken in the UN human rights system to elaborate a comprehensive framework for combating “the scourges of racism” and realizing the “full political, economic and social inclusion of people of African descent in the societies in which they live.”

Only parties to the ACHR may elect judges to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (the Court) and participate in the development of the jurisprudence of the Court, which to date comprises approximately 450 judgments. An unintended consequence of the lack of English-speaking judges on the Court, given the Court's limited resources, is a time lag in the translation of the Court's judgments into English. The Court's press release of October 6, 2021 indicated that, thanks to the assistance of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Court was able to have seven of its judgments translated into English. The judgment in the case of Paola Guzmán Albarracín et al. v. Ecuador, issued on June 24, 2020, the subject matter of this introductory note, is one of the seven cases recently translated.

On June 13, 2021, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered a judgment in Fedotova and Others v. Russia. The ECtHR found that Russia was in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) for not allowing same-sex couples to have their partnerships legally recognized. The decision reflects the ECtHR's firm position: the formal recognition of partnership shall not depend on the partners' sex, and the complete exclusion of same-sex couples cannot be justified with opposing public sentiments or the need to protect traditional families. While the Fedotova ruling is the first judgment that challenged the discriminatory legislative framework in a country belonging to the Eastern Bloc of the Council of Europe, it is not unprecedented. In its judgment, the ECtHR applied the standards entrenched in the case law on the rights of same-sex partners and, although it did not address the issue of marriage equality under Article 12 of the ECHR, it did conclude that the applicants' rights under Article 8 had been violated.

Since its inception, the internet has challenged many basic principles of international copyright law. While some key “digital copyright” issues have been addressed in multilateral treaties, one of the most vexing issues with the global digital network remains—the question of the responsibility of third-party intermediaries for copyright infringements by internet users.

On January 28, 2021, the German Federal Court of Justice, or Bundesgerichtshof (BGH), Germany's highest court of ordinary jurisdiction, delivered its judgment in Case 3 StR 564/19 pertaining to questions of universal jurisdiction over international crimes and the extent to which foreign soldiers would be barred from prosecution in Germany based on claims of (functional) immunity for war crimes committed abroad. The decision strikes at the heart of a debate where such exceptions to immunity (ratione materiae) are yet to be uniformly agreed upon at an international level; it also comes on the verge of a number of related judgments that are pending both in German and other European courts. In the present case, the BGH held that according to the general rules of international law, criminal prosecution in Germany for war crimes committed abroad would not be precluded based on the notion of functional immunity, “when the acts have been committed by a foreign, lower-ranking defendant in the exercise of foreign sovereign activity.” Neither the BGH nor Germany's supreme guardian of the “Basic Law,” the Federal Constitutional Court, or Bundesverfassungsgericht (BVerfG), has previously pronounced itself on questions of functional immunity in criminal proceedings.

On July 6, 2021, the Third Section of the European Court of Human Rights issued its judgment in the above case concerning a trans woman's Article 8 right to family life and Article 14 right to non-discrimination on gender identity grounds. The Applicant (divorced) in the case was prevented from seeing her children by their biological mother on the grounds that her gender transition had caused irreparable harm to the mental health and morals of the children. During the dispute, an “expert report” had confirmed the Applicant's diagnosis of “transsexualism,” noting the applicant's “principled inability to preserve a male appearance” and her “insufficient consideration […] of the age-related specificities of the children's development,” and that report was relied upon by a district court in Moscow to prevent the Applicant from seeing her children. After several other unsuccessful appeals, the Applicant brought the case to the ECtHR, arguing under Article 8 that the restriction of her parental rights had not been necessary in a democratic society and was therefore a violation of her right to respect for family life. In reviewing the domestic courts' decisions, the Court criticized their reliance on the expert report, in particular its failure to actually explain how the Applicant's gender transition represented a risk to her children. According to the Court, this was even more concerning given that the report itself acknowledged that there is no real scientific evidence on this issue. Moreover, available international material “is unanimous that domestic courts deciding on the restriction of parental rights and contact should aim to (1) keep children together with their parents and, in the event of their separation, maintain direct contact between them on a regular basis, (2) take the child's best interests as a primary consideration, and (3) assess the entire family situation through close and individualised scrutiny.” The Court concluded that the domestic courts had failed to consider the Applicant's specific family situation and that a complete deprivation of parental rights should be reserved for only the most extreme circumstances, which were not present in this case. Therefore, the Court found a violation of Article 8.