I came across this quote this morning, and it summed up everything one should say on a day like Father’s Day. A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty (Author Unknown). Today, many fathers awoke to smiling children excited to give them special gifts–many handcrafted with […]
To protect its national security, North Korea presents a strong visage to the world, but it is proving increasingly unable to provide food security for its people. North Korea’s children bear the brunt of its declining food security as, according to the Guardian, “Millions of North Korean children [nearly one-third under age 5] are not […]
Today, many children across the globe are beginning to look forward to a break from school for summer vacations. However, for millions of children across the globe, there is no “break” and there is no classroom because they are forced to into child labor, often being denied an education all together. The term “child labor” […]
As mentioned in the post, “UN Campaign Seeks to Give all Children a Shot at Life,” one in five children does not have access to vaccines that prevent deadly diseases, like measles, pneumonia, or diarrhea. Nonetheless, some 2.5 million children under the age of 5 die every year as the result of preventable infectious disease, mostly due […]
Last week’s print edition of the Economist reports “the best story in development,” which describes huge declines in child mortality across Africa. Too often, good stories about Africa are buried in the back pages of newspapers and magazines. In this case, the headline is sensationalist but true. The trends of child mortality in a majority of African […]
In Part I of this blog I set the scene for the challenges ahead as societies continue to travel along the demographic highway. In this second installment I look at the novel solutions trying to add color to a greying democracy. In a letter to the The Economist in January 2011, Reiko Aoki, Director of […]
Children under the age of 18 years-old comprise almost a third of the global population, however they are often left unconsidered in the creation of business practices and corporate social responsibility. Nonetheless rights of millions of children across the globe are violated on a daily basis, most of which have a direct correlation to business practices. The […]
As I’ve written on the subject before, Uzbekistan is one of the worst human rights offenders out there. Recent news of child labor during this fall’s cotton harvesting season once again put the country into the international spotlight drawing sharp criticism by human rights activists. Meanwhile, in the same vein, Bell Pottinger Group’s dealings with […]
Few links to human rights stories that other people have been following: Rape in the DRC Cassandra Clifford over at the FPB Children Blog has posted story highlighting the seemingly never-ending crisis concerning rape in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Although this issue has gained more attention recently, her coverage illustrates how much further […]
Today I want to focus on Water and Health (my fellow FPA blogger, Bill Hewitt, has something to say on the environmental front as well). The UN has dubbed March 22nd World Water Day, and in my reading I stumbled upon a pretty amazing statistic. According to the World Health Organization, each $1 that we invest in clean water access gets returned to us 3-34 times in time savings, productivity, improved education and reduced healthcare costs. Compared to the majority of social investments – which often achieve only a 1:1 return, and very frequently, less – this is phenomenal. In terms of “social return”, improved access to clean water is clearly a sound investment.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food’s, Prof. Olivier De Schutter’s, second presentation to the UN General Assembly. The interactive dialogue that followed Prof. De Schutter’s presentation is an excellent example of how the Special Procedures system of the UN Human Rights Council allows for greater […]
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 […]
Guatemala can be considered a vanguard country in ensuring the right to food, in that it has developed legal and institutional protections designed to protect and promote this right. Several national laws exist to promote and ensure the right to food, such as the law (SINESAN) to operationalize the national food security and nutrition plan […]
Amidst what appears to be a confusion of evidence and a disregard for both the pressures faced by girls sold into marriage and the inherently dual victim-perpetrator status of children in conflict situations, Rania Ibrahim, a 16-year-old Iraqi teenage girl, has been sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for an attempted suicide […]