The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government. – Thomas Jefferson The Supreme Court ruling granting the writ of habeas corpus to the 260 Guantanamo detainees is perhaps one of the most important human rights victories in recent years. Six and half years […]
Career Foreign Service Officer James DeHart discusses whether the diplomatic corps have become too militarized in an op-ed in the Washington Posttoday. Noting the large numbers of diplomats who have volunteered for war-zone appointments in Afghanistan and Iraq, DeHart says: “This surge in war-zone assignments is an extension of the “transformational diplomacy” for which Secretary […]
"They torched our house, they burnt our livestock, I have nothing left and don't know where to start.", said 22 year old Precious, a mother of a six-month-old baby (Telegraph). According to UNICEF the continued violence is damaging Zimbabwe's children and the grip it has on the countries children fears to only be tightening. Just […]
Syria's state-run SANA news agency has dedicated a new section of its website to President Bashar al-Assad's planned visit to India this coming week. The site's English language section has also featured coverage of the visit. So far, the articles featured in this section have included commentary discussing the overall agenda and goals of al-Assad's […]
I wrote a couple of weeks ago here on clean coal technology. First of all, let me explain that I am not rooting against the possibility of finding some way to capture and sequester carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants and other sources. It's just that there is so much reliance on coal now, and […]
Yesterday evening the Foreign Policy Association hosted a lecture by Ambassador Ronald Neumann (retired), current President of the American Academy of Diplomacy. As the former US Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2004 , 2007, Mr. Neumann has intimate knowledge of what happened there and also with the current situation. Streaming video of his lecture can be seen […]
Ethiopia's famine conjures up the horrors of starvation. The image of a 3-year-old child dying captured by cameraman Mohammed Amin and reporter Michael Buerk was witnessed by 470 million people around the world. This was in 1984. The inconsolable image of Africa was forever changed and made indelible by an emaciated boy. For at least […]
(Obama in Kenya, courtesy of the New York Times) Barack Obama likes to highlight that his internatinal exposure distinguishes him from his Republican opponent. His birth in Hawaii, travels to his father's native Kenya, four years spent in Indonesia, and even a college trek through Pakistan and India, have given him quite the international worldview. Now that he is […]
“Come, let us put our minds together to see what kind of lives we can create for our children.” -Chief Sitting Bull (Lakota Indian Chief) The future of the worlds children is in all our hands, it is not for one alone to strive to see that the children of today and tomorrow are given […]
The Top 100 Civil Liberties Advocacy Blogs was just released, and it is with great pleasure that I inform you that the Foreign Policy Association's Children's Rights blog has made the cut. The list, which was compiled by the Criminal Justice Degree Guide, is broken down by subject matter. Featured our very own blog in […]
Here's an interesting report that was recently featured on Al-Jazeera's English language website. It provides some insight into the rise of the al-Shabaab, also often referred to as the Mujahideen Youth Movement (MYM), as an armed force in Somalia. Some interesting points/quotes put forth by the author: 1) Entities within the al-Shabaab initially began as […]
The Pew Global Attitudes Project released today a large global public opinion poll that ties in nicely with my post yesterday about the House Foreign Relations Subcommittee report on views of the US. Here's a chart that shows the decline in favorable views of the US around the world since 1999:
Popular from Press
