WELLINGTON, Nov 21,2022: New Zealand’s highest court ruled on Monday that the country’s current voting age of 18 was discriminatory, forcing parliament to discuss whether it should be lowered.
Prime minister Jacinda Ardern has said the New Zealand government will draft legislation to change the voting age to 16, after a landmark supreme court ruling that the existing age of 18 was discriminatory and breached the human rights of young people.
Ardern said she personally supported changing the age to 16, but would take the question to parliament. “It is our view that this is an issue best placed to parliament for everyone to have their say,” she said on Monday.
Her statement followed a supreme court ruling on Monday that marked the conclusion of a two-year case brought by a group of young campaigners, Make It 16, who argued that younger people should be able to vote on issues such as the climate crisis, which will disproportionately affect them and their futures.
The ruling does not automatically guarantee the right to vote will be extended – that can be done only by parliament – but it does mean that parliament is now breaching the fundamental human rights of younger voters, and forces legislators to consider a change.
However, the legislation will have a tough road ahead: changes to electoral law in New Zealand require 75% support in parliament, so a change would require the support of both Labour and the opposition National party to become law. The centre-right National party said on Monday: “Many other countries have a voting age of 18, and National has seen no compelling case to lower the age.”
The governing Labour party has not yet announced a position on lowering the voting age. The Green party and Māori party have indicated they would support it, and the Act party will oppose.
It is also yet to be decided whether the legislation will be a party vote or conscience vote.
The Make It 16 campaign launched shortly after school strikes for climate began mobilising tens of thousands of teenagers across the country, and the climate crisis has loomed large in the background. “Three years ago, we saw school strikes for climate … and there was a sort of global shift towards: how do we give young people more of a say and more of a way to make change on a large scale? Voting was one of those ideas,” said Sanat Singh, Make it 16’s co-founder.
While climate action had been a motivating force, Singh said the same logic – that young people should have a say in issues affecting them – applied to all politics, from public transport funding to mental health. “I was 16 in 2020, which was probably one of the most consequential elections in our lifetime – and issues that mattered to me about mental health, climate change and the state of our democracy were things that I was not able to have a say in,” Singh said.
Only a handful of countries allow those under 18 to vote: Brazil, Cuba, Austria and Malta have voting ages of 16 and up. In Scotland, 16-year-olds can vote in Scottish parliamentary elections, but not the UK general elections. In recent years, however, international campaigns to lower voting ages have grown, with many arguing that young people should have a say on long-term democratic decisions, given they will have to live with the consequences. Prominent UK academic Prof David Runciman has argued that the voting age should be lowered to six, saying ageing populations meant young people were now “massively outnumbered”, creating a democratic crisis and an inbuilt bias against governments that plan for the future.
New Zealand’s Human Rights Act sets the age of 16 as the point from which actions may be discriminatory, so the court noted its decision would apply only to those 16 and up – it could not be construed to mean people of all ages, including infants, should have the right to vote.
Aug 27,2022:Moderna has sued Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech for patent infringement in the development of the first COVID-19 vaccine approved in the United States, alleging they copied technology that Moderna developed years before the pandemic.
The lawsuit, which seeks undetermined monetary damages, was filed in the US District Court in Massachusetts. In a news release on Friday, Moderna said the lawsuit would be filed also in the Regional Court of Duesseldorf in Germany.
Moderna said its lawsuit was not meant to stop people from getting vaccines.
Moderna Inc, on its own, and the partnership of Pfizer Inc and BioNTech were two of the first groups to develop a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.
In an emailed statement, a Pfizer spokesperson said: “Pfizer/BioNTech has not yet fully reviewed the complaint but we are surprised by the litigation given the COVID-19 vaccine was based on BioNTech’s proprietary mRNA technology and developed by both BioNTech and Pfizer.”
“We remain confident in our intellectual property supporting the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and will vigorously defend against the allegations of the lawsuit,” the spokesperson said.
BioNTech did not immediately reply to separate requests for comment.
Just a decade old, Moderna, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had been an innovator in the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine technology that enabled the unprecedented speed in developing the COVID-19 vaccine.
Aug 14,2022:Religious conversion by force or fraud in Himachal would invite more stringent punishment of upto seven years in jail with Himachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, 2019 coming into force in the state.
The Himachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, 2019 which was passed by the State Assembly last year has been notified by the state Home Department. It replaces a 2006 law that has been repealed by the assembly.
The Himachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, 2019 prohibits conversion by misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, inducement, marriage or any fraudulent means.Any marriage for the sole purpose of conversion will also be declared null and void under Section 5 of the Act.
All offences under the Act are cognizable and non-bailable. The violator can be punished with a prison term ranging from one to five years, along with a fine. In case the victim is a minor, woman or member of a Scheduled Caste or Tribe, the imprisonment may extend upto seven years. Failure to declare the conversion in advance can also result in an imprisonment of upto two years.