The recent tightening of the sanctions regime against the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) as a way to deter the country’s nuclear program continues to be among news headlines. Yet, the US sanction regime against Iran is nothing new and is more than three decades old. In addition to the US sanction regime, there have […]
I went back to Haiti, where I lived last year, to reconnect with a country I love and report on how things were progressing. It was amazing to see some of the public parks open instead of covered with tents. But as I followed people moving out of those camps, and met the people still […]
Family planning is a controversial frontier in the maternal health field. Almost everyone can get behind saving mothers and babies from preventable death–be it from hemorrhages, anemia, preeclampsia, or logistical barriers to doctors and health care. But granting women control of their reproductive choices is as controversial in the developing world as in the US. […]
I am pleased to announce that this week in Washington, D.C., Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton officially released the 12th annual Trafficking in Person’s (TIP) report. The report was openly released on June 19th in the Benjamin Franklin Room at the Department of State. The event was open by invite to key government officials, leading anti-trafficking leaders and […]
By Majid Rafizadeh The world may have been able to pretend that it was not aware of the genocides taking place in Germany or in Rwanda in the 1990s. However, considering all the communication technology that exists today–international news outlets, social media, YouTube, etc.–in the future we won’t be able to claim that we didn’t […]
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 […]
Syrian refugees sit outside their tents at Reyhanli refugee camp in Hatay province on the Turkish-Syrian border in April. Turkey’s prime minister recently warned that ‘Syria must be aware that in the event of a repetition of border violations, Turkey’s stance will not be the same.’ A fifth of Turkish military’s top brass is under […]
Mariela Castro’s U.S. tour continued this week with a visit to the United Nations, a meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, and a public presentation at the New York Public Library. The East Coast stopover followed a busy agenda in San Francisco last week, and has upset those who say that […]
At the beginning of May, I analyzed the unfolding Chen Guangcheng diplomatic controversy with the valuable input of guest contributor and Atlantic fellow Helen Gao. Today, I look ahead to what Mr. Chen’s future may hold. A little over a month ago, dissident Chen Guangcheng was living under house arrest in a farming village in […]
Last night, 4, 200 boxes of beautiful flowers took flight on a plane from Bogotá, Colombia to Miami, Florida. They arrived early this morning to US shores and represent the first product to enter the US under the Colombia-United States Free Trade Agreement (FTA). The agreement went into effect today. The flowers are […]
The following is a guest post by By Zeljko Jovanovic, director of Roma Initiatives at the Open Society Foundations. The United States announced earlier this year that it would become an official observer to the Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015. This is an international initiative that gathers governments and international and nongovernmental organizations into a […]
In New York this week the United Nations is hosting the Commission on Population and Development, an annual weeklong conference. In the face of the planet’s ever-booming population growth, and the fact that 90 percent of the world’s 1.8 billion youth live in developing countries, this year’s focus is on youth and adolescents. On […]
Creating awareness for and showing solidarity with those who have and continue to be persecuted and permanently silenced by the Iranian Government, the Mad Graffiti Campaign for Human Rights in Iran was a seven-day international event aimed at raising awareness about social injustice in the Islamic Republic. Part of the United For Iran Campaign, which […]
Hollywood on the Potomac–movie actors deserting Tinseltown to remind the Big Dogs back east that every time an A-list celeb is arrested for picketing a foreign embassy an angel gets his wings.
Actor George Clooney, his father Nick, and four Congressional Democrats were among more than a dozen protesters who descended on the Sudanese Embassy on March 16 for the purpose of crossing, in a disorderly fashion, a police line.
The cast of characters? Along with Clooneys I and II, it included Reps. James Moran (D-VA), Jim McGovern (D-MA), John Olver (D-MA) and Al Green (D-TX). NAACP President Ben Jealous was also arrested, along with Martin Luther King III.
Clooney’s mid-day performance on Mass Ave was the finale to a 3-day tour in DC that included an impassioned plea to a standing-room-only crowd at the Council on Foreign Relations, and dramatic testimony delivered to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the miserable state of affairs in the border region of Sudan.
Omar al-Bashir’s military, operating out of Khartoum, is working assiduously to wipe out mostly Christian populations hunkered down on some highly contested, oil-rich real estate to the south.
Clooney, who has frequently taken on the role of the world-weary activist in his films, accuses Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and the ‘same criminals responsible for Darfur’ of conducting a genocidal war against his own people, of starving, maiming, raping, and murdering them.
And he says it as if no one has ever heard it before. . .
For the past year, far from the front pages of Western newspapers, the southern African country of Malawi has faced increasing political and economic turmoil, mainly at the increasingly oppressive hand of President Bingu wa Mutharika. So when news hit Twitter yesterday that the septuagenarian president had collapsed from a massive heart attack, it was […]