Human Rights

In yet another slapstick episode of this world's financial turmoil, Citigroup says its industry is “partly to blame” and that some actually do feel remorse reports the BBC news.  To express their solidarity with those suffering from the fallout of corporate greed, wealthy executives will give up their million dollar bonuses.  How touching. In the […]

As you spend your last hours of 2008, one hopes you look fondly on the year and ring in the New Year with both hope and great expectations for yourself and our global community, especially our children. Wishing you and a wonderful night and please check back in the New Year when the Foreign Policy […]

The 2015 Millennium Goal to cut hunger by half is dead. An estimated one billion people will go hungry next year says the United Nations.  Never before will so many people go without food reports the Independent.  The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) says 963 million people are malnourished today. There is plenty of food.  […]

Naturally, posting is light this week, and we wish all of you the best of the holiday season and a joyous celebration of whichever holidays you choose to celebrate. We’d be remiss not to note, however, the conviction in federal court of the Fort Dix plotters, who the Department of Justice alleged had prepared to […]

Tomorrow many will sit with their family's for Christmas and celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, however this is the holiday season for all and it is with that note that one must remember the true spirit of the holidays regardless of your religious beliefs. Take this time to look around at all who are […]

Today begings the first of eight nights of Hanukkah, and as you Celebrate the Festival of Lights, please remember to give thanks for the children in your life, and prayer for those who are alone this holiday season.  Nes Gadol Haya Sham ("A great miracle happened there"), and let us again see great miracles for children […]

UNICEF's winning photo for 2008 comes from 21-year-old Belgian photographer Alice Smeets, the youngest person ever to win the competition. The picture comes from a slum in Port au Prince, Haiti called the “Cité Soleil,” or “City of the Sun.” Second place went to Israeli photographer Oded Baililty for his depiction of a child in the Chinese […]

Human Rights Watch just released a report condemning Morocco's human rights record.  The watchdog says Morocco suppresses the activities of human rights activists in the occupied Western Sahara. The report also criticizes the Polisario. In August 2007 I spoke to Polisario leader Baba Sayed while visiting the refugee camps.  His brother co-founded the Polisario movement. […]

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the […]

In front of me is a man who spent ten years in a secret detention center in southern Morocco.Here is a human rights activist who understands the world as it is, its beauty and its terror.  Somewhere between both, lies the inspiration of human nature in all its complexities. While imprisoned in the Black Jail, […]

2008 was a year of dramatic developments in war crimes law. There were major events in the prosecutions of Radovan Karadzic, once the world's most wanted man; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks; and Charles and Chucky Taylor. The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court sought a historic indictment of Sudanese leader […]