Two weeks after unrest erupted in Xinjiang, Beijing should reassess its policies towards and relations with ethnic minorities. Instead of a strong and uncompromising response, the Chinese government needs to protect rights and provide opportunities for real autonomy. Ethnic tensions must be reduced not used to justify harsher measures. Minxin Pei, a senior associate at […]
A row of Moroccan flags firmly embedded in a concrete wall too tall to scale, align a compound that has no political will and surround a United Nations mission that has no human rights bureau. Minurso, the UN Mission for the Referendum in the Western Sahara, is a sad spectacle where the single blue flag […]
India is under pressure to come forward with more assertive action indicating it is going to take part in a mandatory regime of greenhouse gas reductions. It has, unfortunately, been saying much the opposite: that it will not sign up to quantifiable emission reductions. (See last post below.) China and India have been marching, if […]
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Human rights lawyer and women’s rights activist Shadi Sadr was arrested in Tehran on Friday. She was approached by several plain clothed officers who pushed her into a car while she was walking with friends to Friday prayers. In a call to her husband, she confirmed that she was under arrest and being held at […]
World Bank says broadband is key to economic progress Widespread access to information technology reduces poverty and African countries should put more focus on decreasing the costs of broadband access, the World Bank says. While some progress has been made with innovative mobile banking and free call roaming, African countries continue to have the world’s […]
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is off to India to talk of many things, not the least of which is climate change. In a session at the Council on Foreign Relations earlier in the week, she said “We know that India and China have understandable questions about what role they should be expected to play […]
Around 500 different groups of Indians still in the vast forest of the Amazon. Some have never had contact with the outside world. Last year, a small prop plane flying over forests in Peru spotted on such group. The images that came from that venture were truly astonishing. It is hard to imagine that in […]
“We should never permit ourselves to do anything that we are not willing to see our children do.” – Brigham Young Children look to adults for guidance, we are no only care takers, but natural role models. Children watch closely those adults around them for examples of how to act, how to behaveand what paths […]
“After decades of frustration, miscalculation, unrealized potential, India is now emerging as a factor in the global balance of power,” writes Shakti Prasad Srichandan in a Foreign Policy Association Feature published yesterday. He is a scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. “In the coming years, it will have an opportunity to shape outcomes […]
The writers and supporters of the War Crimes series for the Foreign Policy Association honor July 17 as International Justice Day. July 17 marks the anniversary of the drafting of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The U.N. General Assembly launched a five-week diplomatic conference in Rome in June 1999 to establish an […]
A event on July 15 put on by the PEN American Center provided a fascinating look inside the recent protests following elections in Iran. Iran: A Conversation About Elections, Protest, and the Future, was co-sponsored by the New York Review of Books at the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center in Manhattan. Shaul Bakash moderated […]
Are India’s foreign policy institutions undermining the country’s rise? Daniel Markey, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes in this month’s issue of Asia Policy that “India’s own foreign policy establishment hinders the country from achieving great-power status.” He argues that India needs to reform and expand the foreign service and develop […]
Earlier this week, the Israeli human rights group Breaking the Silence released a report containing the anonymous testimonies of 54 combat soldiers who served in 2008-2009 Gaza War, codenamed Operation Cast Lead by the Israeli military. The testimonies detail numerous human rights abuses and violations of international laws of war including the use of human […]