• The disabled often are denied information about sex and HIV
    Dec 1, 2012
    Over a billion people — 15 percent of the world’s population — live with a disability. These numbers should confer power and authority in decision making about all aspects of their lives, including to HIV and AIDS. Yet people with disabilities have been largely ignored in the global response to HIV.
  • In Argentina, Court Reaches Out to Rape Victims
    Mar 31, 2012
    The Argentine Supreme Court's ruling earlier this month in the case of A.G., a 15-year-old girl who became pregnant after her stepfather raped her, does not decriminalize abortion. But it does humanize the judicial process for rape victims seeking timely medical intervention after suffering unspeakable violence.
  • Argentina's Slow Tango With Women's Lives
    Nov 24, 2010
    In five days I will be addressing Argentina's House of Representatives about abortion. The occasion is as deliberately momentous as it is intentionally inconsequential. On the one hand, this is the first time Argentina's national congress has debated the legalization of abortion, and the hearing has been advertised in the national media for weeks. At the same time, the opening of this landmark debate has been scheduled in the last hours of the last legislative session this year, on a day of the week usually reserved for internal meetings.
  • How to Put U.N. Rights Council Back on Track
    Nov 3, 2006
    Seven months after the United Nations General Assembly created a Human Rights Council to replace the much-maligned Commission on Human Rights, the new council already has garnered a level of condemnation that its predecessor took decades to achieve. While the council is in deep trouble, it can be saved if supporters of human rights exert leadership and mount an effective drive to win over moderate states from all regions of the world.
  • Abortion lessons from Latin America
    Mar 21, 2006
    It's been a long time since the days of back-alley abortions in the U.S. Perhaps that's why South Dakota Gov. Michael Rounds signed into law a ban against abortion in his state, with one narrow exception: protecting the life of the pregnant woman. Perhaps Rounds, who was only 19 when Roe vs. Wade was decided in 1973, doesn't remember what it was like to live in a country where women had no right to a safe, legal abortion. But there is a place he could visit if he wants to refresh his memory: Latin America.
  • Historic Moment in the Fight to Ensure there Are No Safe Havens for Mass Killers
    Jun 30, 2003
    The extradition of Ricardo Miguel Cavallo from his hiding place in Mexico to Spain for alleged crimes committed during Argentina's "dirty war" marks a historic moment in the effort to bring to justice the perpetrators of the worst atrocities. Cavallo's transfer is the first time that one country has extradited a person to another country to stand trial for abuses that happened in a third.
  • Justice: The First Casualty of Truth?
    Apr 12, 2001
    "International justice" is already beginning to be a plausible backstop when national justice fails or a perpetrator flees.