Slender forms in decadently jeweled red and gold glide across the stage. Delicate white flower petals cling to dark hair and long limbs grab the air in soft waves. This traditional dance marked a stunning welcome to the mid-November commencement of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOG) in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The ceremony provided a much needed moment of glitz and […]
After more than a year of planning, much diplomatic hype, and thousands of attendees, last month’s UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro produced what one activist called a “failure of epic proportions.” The few agreements—including yet another “universal intergovernmental high level political forum” to talk some more—seemed to fall well short of the challenge […]
With Europe on the brink of economic meltdown, it’s easy to forget that some people never saw the good times. The 10 to 12 million strong Roma minority—often disparaged as “Gypsies”—have lived in Europe for centuries, but have been considered unwelcome intruders at best. Enslaved in Romania, forcibly settled in Hungary and Poland, Roma are […]
The following is a guest post from James A. Goldston, Executive Director of the Open Society Justice Initiative Strasbourg – The United States government has been trying for close to a decade to hush up what it did to Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen whose story of mistaken identity, abduction and abuse marks one of […]
Once again, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled against Azerbaijan. RFE/RL reports that the Court (commonly referred to as “the Strasbourg Court”) has ruled that the Azerbaijani government illegally annulled the election victory of pop singer Flora Karimova after the 2005 parliamentary elections. The court ruling (which is available here) addressed decisions of […]
Europe has certainly made headlines recently, and unfortunately not for good things. From an ongoing volcanic ash plume out of Iceland to the Greek debt crisis, it appears that it is Europe’s turn to hold the news spotlight. One of the many headlines coming out of Europe is of course the general election held last […]