Mapping of human rights abuses and international crimes is an increasingly common tool to evidence, preserve and visualise information. This paper asks, what does rights-informed mapping in the context of mass graves look like? What are the rights concerned and allied goals, and how might these practicably apply during a pilot study? The study offers an analysis of the goals and benefits espoused to accrue to mapping and documentation efforts, as well as an explication of rights arising when engaging with mass graves. Our findings underscore the imperative of understanding the full ramifications of the applicable context, in our case the life-cycle of mass graves. This will bring to the fore the rights engaged with the subject as well as the challenges with data points, collation and reporting as experienced in a pilot (Ukraine) where realities on the ground are not static but remain in flux.

The recent history of the Ukrainian authoritarian far right is one of paradoxes. If one looks at the polls, it has performed poorly; its modest successes have been regional and short-lived. On the other hand, it has been highly successful in terms of shaping memory politics in the country. It has had a disproportional influence on history writing, having invested significant efforts into building an effective structure in the field of memory management. Radical nationalists have also come to staff senior positions as deans and vice chancellors at Ukraine’s top universities, the ministry of education, the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory (UINP), and the archives of the Ukrainian Security Service (HDA SBU). The hard right has gained a disproportionate influence on “soft issues” of identity and the shaping of “national memory” – not only by running the governmental memory institutes, but also by hands-on drafting of memory laws outlawing “disrespect” for the OUN, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and other historical far-right groups. This study seeks to trace and contextualize the repatriation of the ethnonationalist hard right from emigration and its role in shaping an infrastructure of memory production – in particular, under presidents Yushchenko (2005–2010) and Poroshenko (2014–2019).

The Hong Kong Colonial Cemetery, established in 1845, served as both an exemplary burial space and a refuge from the ‘degenerative’ tropical urban environment for the British during the second half of the nineteenth century. This article argues that what constitutes the sacredness of the cemetery was not merely Christian values, but a mixture of personal emotional meanings and imperialist sentiments. The sacredness of the site during the nineteenth century also rested upon the exclusion of the Chinese ‘other’, even though such boundaries were often volatile due to the diverse and unfixed nature of the colonial community, and the rising influences of the Chinese elites.

The end of the civil war, the fall of the Italian Social Republic, the allied occupation and the gradual transition to the new Italian Republic not only set Italy on the path to democracy, but also gradually gave Italians access to a new public space. This article proposes to revisit the classic question of the legacy of Fascism by looking at the question of space and the difficult construction of a genuine democratic space. During the ventennio, opponents were largely denied access to common spaces, both symbolically and physically. The article raises the question of violence and the exclusive appropriation of space, showing that the representations and practices inherited from Fascism did not disappear overnight. But these practices of space were not always violent: by looking at aspects that are often neglected (graffiti, manifestos, noises and singing), the aim is to show that the transition took time and was sometimes complicated, despite the political leaders of the Italian Republic claiming to have opened up a completely new era.

Street signs in Italian, Hebrew and Arabic, installed in the twenty-first century, mark Palermo's former Jewish quarter, over half a millennium since Sicily last had a substantial Jewish population. They recall a medieval Jewish minority, but also symbolise what some consider to be Palermo's essentially pluralistic character. What motivates this inchoate revival of ‘Jewish space’, and what does it mean for contemporary Palermo? ‘Rebranding’ Palermo as a crossroads of civilisations encourages tourism, but this alone does not explain the re-evaluation of its multi-religious heritage. Palermo is an often-overlooked case study for the contemporary emergence of Jewish ‘sites of memory’. Using a micro-scale ethnographic study to analyse a narrative rooted in history, I show how the ‘rediscovery’ of Jewish history can have multiple catalysts. In Palermo, these include a Europe-wide interest in ‘things Jewish’, and Sicily's increasing religious diversity in the present.

In N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy, core laws are written on stone. But the tablets are incomplete, open to interpretation and their authorship uncertain. Nonetheless, Stone Law forms the basis of the governance system. Ultimately, the narrative reveals that the Stone Laws are recent in origin and an instrument of subjugation whose claims to common sense belie its harms. This article considers immutability in law and the ways in which particular laws become as if written in stone. Constitutional law and jus cogens are two examples of immutable worldbuilding laws represented as inevitable, absolute, unyielding and perpetual. Debates in law and humanities on genre, performance, interpretation and the concerns of a particular era are often reflected and refracted through both the laws and the literature of an era. In particular, the practice of worldbuilding is used to demonstrate the wariness necessary when laws are represented as immutable.

This paper examines the core twin concepts of secularism and pluralism and their location within the Indian constitutional discourse, through a discussion of the hijab ban in the South Indian state of Karnataka. I suggest that attempts at Hindu majoritarian subversion of these core principles face challenges due to the structure of the Indian Constitution, and due to the constitutional agency and mutinies set in motion by women through their legal challenge of state action. I discuss the hijab ban in India and the two judgments on the ban as an example of this attempted subversion but also of its failure, suggesting that these judgments fall short in their reading of this interrelationship between secularism and pluralism. In doing so, I introduce a threefold analytical categorisation, pluralist constitutionalism, constitutional appropriation and constitutional derailment, to help us outline the tensions inherent in constitutional politics in the present.

The Supreme Court of India's judgment in Vedanta Ltd v. State of Tamil Nadu and Others, affirming the closure of Vedanta's copper smelting plant in Tuticorin in southern India, concludes a long and contentious chain of litigation. The plant's troubled history and the ensuing litigation reflect contestations between economic development, environmental and social devastation, human well-being, and corporate responsibility, which are often characteristic of environmental litigation in the global south. This article analyzes the significance of the Indian Supreme Court's reliance on established constitutional rights principles as well as settled environmental jurisprudence, and highlights the relevance of this judicial pronouncement for climate litigation in the global south.