In Copenhagen this month, Human Rights Watch presented its proposal for institutional reform to monitor host countries' compliance with international human rights norms. We also believe that the IOC should make host city contracts public.
Having worked in war zones for more than 10 years, I've done a variety of investigations of violations of laws of war for Human Rights Watch. I've inspected the killing fields of Kosovo and the displaced persons camps of Sri Lanka, examined Saddam Hussein's mass graves and researched the effects in Gaza of Operation Cast Lead.
Natalia Estemirova was Chechnya's great champion of human rights until her kidnap and murder last month. On the 40th day after her death, her friend Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch commemorates a uniquely courageous and selfless woman.
Eritrea has avoided international attention in recent years in ways that may have protected the Red Sea country's rulers from proper scrutiny but benefit no one else. Even those who recall that the continent's youngest state gained its unlikely independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a bloody thirty-year struggle may be shocked to hear that the optimistic nationalism of the 1990s has been dissolved under President Isaias Afewerki into a despairing void, causing thousands of Eritreans to flee the country that they fought so hard to establish.
President Obama came under fire last month for sharing a smile with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez at the Summit of the Americas. But I think time may show that Obama did the right thing.
At a closed conference in the Uzbek capital on media freedom this month, speaker after speaker depicted Uzbekistan as a veritable paradise of free speech. Ordinary Uzbeks might have been surprised to hear it. Those who try to tell the truth in Islam Karimov's country are liable to be thrown behind bars.
When China won the right to host the 2008 Olympics, it was due in good part to human rights pledges. These included a specific commitment of “complete freedom” to report for the global media. Beijing made these pledges after losing its first bid to host in 1993, largely because of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Khodorkovsky’s trial occurs at a time when the Russian authorities—guided by President Putin’s seemingly benign concept of “managed democracy”—are exhibiting extraordinary determination to reestablish control over numerous spheres of public life—business being just one of them. And in reasserting control, the authorities are steadily rolling back some of the main gains in civil liberties since the end of the Soviet era.
The Nigerian government, which will proudly host the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting later this week, must get its own house in order before it can claim credibility in terms of human rights.
The dramatic but peaceful transfer of power in Georgia on Sunday must be rattling repressive leaders all across the region. The danger now is that governments in Central Asia and the Caucasus may step up political repression to head off a similar scenario.
In Copenhagen this month, Human Rights Watch presented its proposal for institutional reform to monitor host countries' compliance with international human rights norms. We also believe that the IOC should make host city contracts public.
Having worked in war zones for more than 10 years, I've done a variety of investigations of violations of laws of war for Human Rights Watch. I've inspected the killing fields of Kosovo and the displaced persons camps of Sri Lanka, examined Saddam Hussein's mass graves and researched the effects in Gaza of Operation Cast Lead.
Natalia Estemirova was Chechnya's great champion of human rights until her kidnap and murder last month. On the 40th day after her death, her friend Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch commemorates a uniquely courageous and selfless woman.
Eritrea has avoided international attention in recent years in ways that may have protected the Red Sea country's rulers from proper scrutiny but benefit no one else. Even those who recall that the continent's youngest state gained its unlikely independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a bloody thirty-year struggle may be shocked to hear that the optimistic nationalism of the 1990s has been dissolved under President Isaias Afewerki into a despairing void, causing thousands of Eritreans to flee the country that they fought so hard to establish.
President Obama came under fire last month for sharing a smile with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez at the Summit of the Americas. But I think time may show that Obama did the right thing.
At a closed conference in the Uzbek capital on media freedom this month, speaker after speaker depicted Uzbekistan as a veritable paradise of free speech. Ordinary Uzbeks might have been surprised to hear it. Those who try to tell the truth in Islam Karimov's country are liable to be thrown behind bars.
When China won the right to host the 2008 Olympics, it was due in good part to human rights pledges. These included a specific commitment of “complete freedom” to report for the global media. Beijing made these pledges after losing its first bid to host in 1993, largely because of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Khodorkovsky’s trial occurs at a time when the Russian authorities—guided by President Putin’s seemingly benign concept of “managed democracy”—are exhibiting extraordinary determination to reestablish control over numerous spheres of public life—business being just one of them. And in reasserting control, the authorities are steadily rolling back some of the main gains in civil liberties since the end of the Soviet era.
The Nigerian government, which will proudly host the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting later this week, must get its own house in order before it can claim credibility in terms of human rights.
The dramatic but peaceful transfer of power in Georgia on Sunday must be rattling repressive leaders all across the region. The danger now is that governments in Central Asia and the Caucasus may step up political repression to head off a similar scenario.