• Gold’s image tarnished by child labour in mines
    Dec 22, 2011
    There has been a lot of debate about corporate social responsibility. But most gold traders I interviewed showed no concern about the use of child labour.
  • UK Should Not Put Trade with Sudan Ahead of Human Rights
    Aug 16, 2010
    The new UK government has made it clear that an important priority of its foreign policy will be to promote British trade and investment abroad. But recent remarks in Sudan by the Africa minister, Henry Bellingham, raise concerns that, by blindly pursuing commercial interests, the UK runs the risk of undermining international efforts to protect human rights and promote justice for serious abuses.
  • Blood diamond
    Feb 1, 2010
    When people buy diamond jewellery, they often want to convey love or commitment to someone dear and special. But, this jewellery, if it contains diamonds from the Marange diamond fields in eastern Zimbabwe, could have a bloody past signifying mistreatment and abuse.
  • How Israel Can Help Stop the Flow of Zimbabwe’s Blood Diamonds
    Jan 28, 2010
    Diamonds from the Marange fields of eastern Zimbabwe are mined under highly abusive conditions – the latest “blood diamonds” of the twenty-first century. To its credit, the Israeli government has tried to put pressure on Zimbabwe to improve these conditions. In the coming year, as chair of the global group that monitors the diamond industry, Israel will have the opportunity to do even more.
  • Engaging Cuba on Human Rights
    Nov 19, 2009
    Normalization of U.S. relations with Cuba was widely seen as exactly the kind of high-value, low-hanging fruit that would be ideal for a president elected under the banner of "change." But a scathing new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, "New Castro, Same Cuba," will make lifting sanctions against the Castro regime-on travel, remittances, trade-more difficult for President Obama.
  • Obama's Chance to Shift Gears on Colombia
    Jun 26, 2009
    By ending the double standard on human rights and democracy that marked US policy toward Colombia under President Bush, Obama could go a long way toward restoring US credibility in Latin America.
  • The Kimberley Process and Zim: Last-chance Saloon?
    Jun 22, 2009
    Namibia hosts the Kimberley Process Intersessional Meeting in Windhoek starting tomorrow. Namibia's Deputy Mines Minister, Bernhard Esau, who chairs the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), has a problem on his hands:  protecting the integrity and credibility of the Process and the international diamond industry.
  • Delay Consideration of Colombia Trade Deal
    Nov 14, 2008
    In the midst of the economic crisis, the Bush administration has decided to spend its final days in office pushing for a trade agreement with Colombia that few Americans even know about.
  • Advocacy group misrepresented
    Apr 14, 2008
    RE "THE promise of a Colombia trade pact" (Op-ed, April 11): Edward Schumacher-Matos misrepresents the work of Human Rights Watch on killings of trade unionists in Colombia when he says we "imply" that all such murders are because of labor organizing.
  • Don't Dismiss the Killings in Colombia
    Apr 9, 2008
    If death squads with ties to the U.S. government were targeting Post reporters for assassination, I doubt that The Post would dismiss the problem by arguing that the murder rate for journalists was less than the rate for the District as a whole. Yet that is exactly what The Post did in dismissing the killings of trade union activists by paramilitaries in Colombia on the basis that trade unionists are still less likely to be killed than the average citizen ["The Sin of Speaking Truth," editorial, April 8]. Congress is right to delay approval of a free-trade agreement with Colombia until Mr. Uribe takes on the violent right as he did the violent left.