William Hague congratulated the Burmese government last week for its role in spearheading "remarkable changes" in the country. But his upbeat assessment and heady optimism are premature, as is the EU's haste to lift all economic sanctions on Burma except for the arms embargo.
It took two decades for justice to prevail after bomb attacks in Mumbai in March 1993, which injured hundreds and killed 257. Last month, India's Supreme Court ruled on the final appeals in a long trial process.
But in another episode of brutality in Mumbai, the wait for justice will be much longer.
This weekend, Kerry will have arguably his best opportunity to demonstrate that commitment to rights in an environment in which tough, effective and audible American diplomacy is needed: China.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s recent Walk the Talk on the Indian news channel NDTV was illuminating. He claimed that the now-defeated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had planned to take over all of Sri Lanka — not just the areas claimed for an independent Tamil nation — but that LTTE leader V. Prabhakaran “wanted the whole country.”
Last June, the Philippine delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Council was an embarrassing no-show during an important vote on human rights abuses in Syria.
The Chinese call it jin zhuan, or golden brick. The Russians have suggested calling it briuki, an acronym meaning trousers in Russian. And what about the ambiguous S? It originally was just a plural for the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, places where a Goldman Sachs analyst was urging greater investment. Now it stands for South Africa, which joined in 2010 despite having an economy roughly on the order of China’s sixth-largest province.
How badly does the Chinese government really want to stop Tibetan self-immolations? A campaigner suggests that the rhetoric from Beijing does not match the reality of draconian policy programmes.
A new report from Human Rights Watch documents how religious minorities, including several Protestant groups, Shia Muslims and Ahmadiyah, are targets of increasingly routine intimidation, threats and violence.
Human Rights Watch's Afghanistan researcher focuses on a boy detained for 'moral crimes', a report on torture in Afghan jails, a protest march highlighting violence against women – and dinner in Kabul's best and worst French restaurants.
Across the country, victims of violent crimes, including sexual assault, as well as those who witness it, frequently do not file criminal complaints, cooperate with investigators, or testify truthfully in courts because they fear retaliation. In many rape cases, survivors are threatened or intimidated into settling with the perpetrator.
As long as its leaders fail to acknowledge or act against the increased violence suffered by religious minorities, Indonesia's reputation as a country that balances diversity and tolerance will be in question, says campaign group
Last week the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra agreed to talks with Ustaz Hassan Taib from the separatist Barisan Revolusi Nasional-Coordinate (BRN-C) to seek an end to the armed conflict in the southern border provinces, which has claimed more than 5,000 lives in the past nine years.
The worst fears of the Shia Muslim community in Sampang in Indonesia's East Java came to pass on Aug. 20, 2012. That morning, hundreds of Sunni militants attacked the community, torching some 50 homes, killing one man and seriously injuring another.
Myanmar President Thein Sein has been touring Europe touting his country’s unlikely transformation in the past two years from the archetype of authoritarian repression to a supposedly shining example of peaceful transition towards democracy. But how much of this is real reform and how much is window dressing? How much have human rights genuinely improved on the ground in Myanmar?
As pundits and critics discuss whether the recent Hollywood film offering Zero Dark Thirty wrongly implies justification for torture, a debate about torture that is all too real plays itself out in Afghanistan.
This weekend, more than 140 governments agreed on the text for a new legally binding convention on mercury, a highly toxic metal. It has taken three years and many compromises to get here. What often seemed like a dry and bureaucratic process – delegates arguing over nuance during long night sessions – has very real implications for millions of people around the globe.
Despite recognition in the Millennium Declaration of the importance of human rights, equality, and non-discrimination for development, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) largely bypassed these key principles. The fundamental human rights guarantees of equality and non-discrimination are legally binding obligations and do not need instrumental justifications. Discrimination can both cause poverty and be a hurdle in alleviating poverty. Even in countries where there have been significant gains toward achieving the MDGs, inequalities have grown. The MDGs have supported aggregate progress—often without acknowledging the importance of investing in the most marginalized and excluded, or giving due credit to governments and institutions which do ensure that development benefits these populations. Recognition of this shortcoming in the MDGs has brought an increasing awareness of the importance of working to reverse growing economic inequalities through the post-2015 framework, and a key element of this must be actively working to dismantle discrimination.
Earlier this week, Google’s Chairman Eric Schmidt and United Nations Ambassador Bill Richardson raised eyebrows with a private visit to Pyongyang, North Korea. The United States State Department called the trip “unhelpful.” Schmidt’s visit to Kim il-Song University, during which a student demonstrated how he uses Google to conduct internet searches, seemed like a theatric production in the Potemkin style.
Rizana Nafeek was a child herself -- 17 years old according to her birth certificate -- when a four-month-old baby died in her care in Saudi Arabia. She had migrated from Sri Lanka only weeks earlier to be a domestic worker for a Saudi family.
The quick official response to the horrific gang rape and murder of a young Indian woman shouldn’t fool us. The country has a long way to go when it comes to justice for rape victims.
President Karzai is in Washington this week to meet with President Obama and military commanders at the Pentagon. A main subject of the meetings will be the fate of peace negotiations with insurgent forces and the size of US military forces after a planned military drawdown is completed in 2014. But while the two leaders meet they may want to consider why these topics are still relevant in 2013.
Suggesting that women and girls "invite" sexual assault through their clothing or conduct—and therefore blaming the victim— is not uncommon in India. There is talk of legal reform and fast trials but stigma and blaming of survivors of sexual assault will unfortunately live on without concerted efforts to end it.
If Obama wants to bolster his legacy in his second term, he can and should get tough on some of the United States' most unsavory friends and allies. Here are eight leaders to start with.
It took two decades for justice to prevail after bomb attacks in Mumbai in March 1993, which injured hundreds and killed 257. Last month, India's Supreme Court ruled on the final appeals in a long trial process.
But in another episode of brutality in Mumbai, the wait for justice will be much longer.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s recent Walk the Talk on the Indian news channel NDTV was illuminating. He claimed that the now-defeated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had planned to take over all of Sri Lanka — not just the areas claimed for an independent Tamil nation — but that LTTE leader V. Prabhakaran “wanted the whole country.”
President Karzai is in Washington this week to meet with President Obama and military commanders at the Pentagon. A main subject of the meetings will be the fate of peace negotiations with insurgent forces and the size of US military forces after a planned military drawdown is completed in 2014. But while the two leaders meet they may want to consider why these topics are still relevant in 2013.