Click on the photo to launch the 5 minute audio-photo slide. Testimonies…in their own words. Yesterday I met two Iranian political refugees. Their relatives are at Camp Ashraf, a refugee camp north of Baghdad with around 3500 Iranians. At the end of July, Iraqi security forces entered the camp and beat the residents. Eleven died […]
Stories of soldiers murdering civilians, illegal wiretapping, targeted killings of indigenous people, assassinations of labor rights activists and other human rights abuses are troubling, but not troubling enough for the US State Department. Last week the State Department certified Colombia as complying with basic human rights requirements, a necessary condition for releasing the remainder of […]
W.B. Yeats penned one of his most celebrated works at end of first the World War. The Second Coming drew allusions to a world that had lost hope, to an existential crisis into the human condition where a destroyed landscape had been littered with so many bodies – all for a few yards of dirt […]
I wanted tp cross-post today, DC takes on Human Trafficking and wins!, as the event is such a great example on how cities and communities across the country can really take a stand against Human Trafficking/Modern Slavery and make it a fun event for all ages! As the Washington Nationals and Philadelphia Phillies prepared to […]
I just attended a meeting of the subcommittee on human rights at the European Parliament in Brussels. On the agenda was Burma. And as ever, the lack of political will and inaction in the international community was particularly salient. For two decades Aung Sun Suu Kyi has been in the headlines. Her cause celebrated and […]
Governments and religions around the world remain intensely interested in what women, but not so much what men, are wearing in public. On September 6, 2009 I wrote about the proposed parliamentary ban on the public wearing of the niqab in France. On September 8, media outlets lit up with discussions of the recent trial […]
The US-Mexican boarder is nearly 2,000 miles long and is the worlds most crossed border, with some 250 million people crossings every year. Every year it is estimated that some 400,000 and 1 million people attempt to illegally cross US borders, all are in search of the promised land and a chance for a better […]
A recent story in The Guardian highlighted the ongoing abuses of police forces in Venezuela and the difficulties in bring about police reform. Increasingly, police in Venezuela act with complete impunity and growing brutality against criminals, their families, and anyone else caught in between. Stories of disappearances and false imprisonment by police, especially in Caracas, […]
When one thinks of child labor in the context of our American Labor Day Holiday or the International Day of Labor, otherwise known as May Day, the mind drifts back to images of the Industrial revolution of the 18th Century to children toiling in factories and mines in the UK and US. However the roots […]
The worst thing about knowing something you don’t really want to is having it confirmed over and over again. At a time where some of the wealthier nations are seeing the end of a financial crisis (France and Germany for instance) – the developing ones are scrambling to get desperately needed cash to fill their […]
France’s center-right and left political parties are coalescing around a controversial issue: the idea of a national, parliamentary ban on the niqab. Proponents of the ban cite the threat of Islamism to France’s position as a secular state, and argue further that the niqab is both a symbol of and an act of the oppression of […]
As with any change in life, growing older can present its challenges. Beyond relatively incipient social-networking programs like Twitter and Facebook, or newfangled cell phones to deal with, there is the transition from the workforce to retirement, and adjustments as some friends or spouses pass away. New routines must be established. How is this time […]
After nearly two months of questioning in the Hague, the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) has temporarily adjourned the Defense’s questioning of former Liberian President Charles Ghankay Taylor, due to the illness of lead counsel Courtenay Griffiths QC. The SCSL, an ad hoc international-national court – or ‘hybrid’ tribunal – was established by the […]
U.N. Guide for Sex Ed Generates Opposition Conservative groups have reacted angrily to a UNESCO-proposed set of guidelines on sex education as being age inappropriate and supportive of access to abortion as a right. The guidelines, aimed at curbing HIV/AIDS transmission, were to be distributed to government, school systems and teachers around the globe but […]
As we kick back and relax for our long Labor Day weekend, enjoying some work and stress free days among family and friends, relishing in the freedoms of a fair wage, children across the globe toil away as child labors. Often these children, who sometimes are only a few years old, are placed in hazardous […]