Human Rights

From the I.C.C. Situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: In this situation, three cases are being heard before the relevant Chambers: The Prosecutor v. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo; The Prosecutor v. Bosco Ntaganda; and The Prosecutor v. Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui. The accused Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui […]

Today is National Freedom Day, marking the anniversary of the ratification the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution under Lincoln, promising freedom from slavery and involuntary servitude.  The day was enacted by President Harry Truman on June 30, 1948, as he signed the bill proclaiming February 1 as National Freedom Day. I spent the evening […]

The world capital of libel is London.  Not that there is a list or anything.  And people are still finding imaginative ways of making money, despite the crisis.  Take the English libel law.  Under UK libel law, a defendant is guilty until proven innocent.  Doesn’t matter if you are British or not. “English libel law […]

News of irregular immigration into the United States often focuses on those trying to cross the border via land. Huge fences and security cameras monitor the divide between the US and Mexico (less so the northern border with Canada – that is material for another blog post), while scanning machines and dogs search cars and […]

The Christian Science Monitor carried an interesting feature yesterday about the prospects and potential for land reform in Africa. In it correspondent Jina Moore argues that land and access to resources is at the heart of most of the continent’s conflicts; thus, fixing land issues could offer a preventative fix for a region prone to […]

Lynndie England became infamous around the world in 2004, when photos of her and other U.S. soldiers humiliating and torturing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison became public. In 2005, the then 22-year-old England received a three-year sentence for her role in the abuses. She was paroled after 521 days of serving her term and […]

Human Rights in Crisis A selection of Pulitzer Center-sponsored works When: February 1, 2010 Time:  6-8 PM Where:  Hart Auditorium-Georgetown University Law Center 600 New Jersey Avenue, NW Reception to follow Screening and Q&A, with journalists Welcome by Ann Peters (GULC, 94), Pulitzer Center Featuring: •    “Afghanistan Disabled,”  Don Duncan and Jessica Wanke cover the […]

Call for papers: UNICEF and the Graduate Program in International Affairs (GPIA) at The NewSchool will host an international conference on adolescent girls in April 2010. With an emphasis on reviewing existing evidence and policies, the conference will focus on the role and potential agency of adolescent girls in meeting emerging global challenges. The conference, […]

As an activist and writer, one who focuses on issues that face children, but with a passion and concentration on modern day slavery, I live and work in a world that is full of stories of the worlds most heinous and shocking crimes against humanity.  Often I am asked how do you do it…how do […]

A year after the Gaza War, the debate rages on about the conduct of forces on both sides during the three-week conflict. By now, major human rights organizations both in Israel and abroad have had their say in what crimes may have been committed during the war, and the UN released the results of their […]

Antwerp, Belgium is Europe’s second largest port.  At this very moment it is, like so many other places, going through troubling times.  Unemployment is high and now,  last week, General Motors announced they will close the Opel plant which means thousands of lost jobs in this city.  But this post is not about Opel, nor […]

*Noam Scheiber, the senior editor of The New Republic, says that much of the Haiti coverage is “redundant” and worries that the massive media onslaught is further complicating the recovery efforts. He proposes a “disaster pool” to deal with the problem: “Just like they do for White House coverage, the major (and some not so […]