Growing activism against modern-day slavery has highlighted the abuse and exploitation suffered by millions of men, women, and children around the world. Donor funding has flowed to create shelters and services for victims while a proliferation of anti-trafficking legislation has focused on arresting and prosecuting traffickers.
Malta should be proud of its recent ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a crucial tool for protecting the rights of more than one billion people with disabilities worldwide. As the Government begins to integrate the convention into its laws and policies, it should understand that the protections apply to the thousands of migrants and asylum seekers who linger in immigration detention in Malta each year.
The first UN International Day of the Girl, designed to promote education for young women everywhere, is the perfect opportunity to finally stamp out child marriage, writes Gauri van Gulik from Human Rights Watch.
It would be a wonderful gift for the many domestic workers if a treaty, which could signal better protection of their rights, was signed before Christmas.
After years of seemingly never-ending conflict and repression, Myanmar's neighbours and the world are watching the changes there with interest and cautious optimism. And for the 140,000 Myanmar refugees in Thailand, many stuck in camps on the border for decades, there is now some hope that they might be able to go home.
Voices from across the political spectrum condemned the Missouri Senate candidate for Senate, Todd Akin, for his recent offensive and scientifically inaccurate reasoning to deny rape survivors’ access to abortion.
A typical child wants to be seen as an adult. Unfortunately, some children who seek asylum in the European Union (EU) through the tiny island nation of Malta find themselves with the opposite problem: needing to prove they are children. Children who arrive without an adult caregiver, all too often following a perilous sea journey, may find themselves detained and treated as adults until administrative proceedings show otherwise. Often detained with actual adults, these children have no access to education or other necessary services.
I first met Labaan, an 18-year-old Somali boy with a slight figure and a well-styled mohawk, this February, in Malta. Labaan left Somalia when he was 15, shortly after his father was killed. He travelled north by himself, taking months to make his way over land through Sudan and Libya. Eventually, he boarded a rickety boat with about 100 other migrants, and after days at sea, without much water or food, reached Malta.
The first UN International Day of the Girl, designed to promote education for young women everywhere, is the perfect opportunity to finally stamp out child marriage, writes Gauri van Gulik from Human Rights Watch.
It would be a wonderful gift for the many domestic workers if a treaty, which could signal better protection of their rights, was signed before Christmas.
After years of seemingly never-ending conflict and repression, Myanmar's neighbours and the world are watching the changes there with interest and cautious optimism. And for the 140,000 Myanmar refugees in Thailand, many stuck in camps on the border for decades, there is now some hope that they might be able to go home.