Human Rights

Natalya Estemirova‘s body was found on June 15th of this year.  The award winning journalist and human rights defender was getting too close to the truth.  She paid for it with two bullets. In Chechnya and indeed elsewhere in that wide expanse of impunity (see Dagestan and Russia), Estemirova was finding hard evidence of Chechnya’s […]

Southeast Asia has officially joined the ranks of Europe, the Americas, and Africa in launching their own regional human rights commission.  Speculation on the proposed human rights body for The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has dominated political commentary in the region for the past year.  Yet, now that the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights […]

Robin Morgan, an American author, feminist, and child actor, made the following statement in her book, Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape, in, The Word of a Woman, part 1, which which was written in 1974, but published 1992; “The act of rape is merely the expression of the standard, ‘healthy’ even encouraged male fantasy […]

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 […]

    While it is no secret that racism lives on in the United States, it was nonetheless shocking news that a justice of the peace in Louisiana had refused to marry an interracial couple because he doesn’t “believe in mixing the races that way.”  Keith Bardwell, the justice of the peace in question, has […]

As if the passage northward were not dangerous enough for a migrant trying to enter the US without documentation, human rights organizations now report an epidemic of kidnappings. Irregular migrants are often beaten and detained by their captors until they provide the contact information of family members, who must then send money for their release. […]

Numbers can be a difficult thing.  While statistics can be a powerful form of evidence, they can also be misleading or take a situation out of its proper context.   Human rights organizations like numbers – casualty counts and similar statistics can demonstrate the magnitude of a problem in a way that mere prose cannot.  However, […]

As a writer on children’s rights, the subject of abuse is commonplace, the types of abuse are a varied as they are haunting.  Most often I write about the horrors that happen outside the United States, however the US is plagued by its own child abusers in all forms.  Often we forget to bring much […]

Today is a day to bring awareness to the realities of the situation as it is World Food Day, the theme of this year’s Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is,Achieving Food Security in Times of Crisis. The world food security governance system is inefficient and not well coordinated to address the […]

Months after Iran made headlines for human rights violations following the presidential elections in June, Iran is making headlines again.  Earlier this week Amnesty International condemned the execution of a 21 year old convict who was just 17 when he was accused of murder.  He is the third juvenile offender to be executed in Iran […]

I am a true believer in the old saying that “laughter is the best medicine”, when I am down or just having one of those high stress days I pull a face or just do a crazy dance and the world suddenly seems right again.  Laughter is truly a saving grace in many cases, and […]

  In a strange legal loophole, American companies—including those that receive government contracts such as Halliburton—can require their employees to sign contracts waiving their right to bring a civil trial against fellow employees that rape or otherwise sexually assault them. This egregious loophole was first spotlighted when Jamie Leigh Jones, a former contractor for one-time […]