Human Rights

(copyright Monte Wolverton) Slavery was officially abolished worldwide at the 1927 Slavery Convention. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms”. Slavery is illegal everywhere and yet it still exists everywhere. Experts estimate that today [...]

(source) Excerpt from Orwell’s 1984: There was an outburst of squeals from the cage. It seemed to reach Winston from far away. The rats were fighting; they were trying to get at each other through the partition. He heard also a deep groan of despair. That, too, seemed to come from outside himself. O’Brien picked up the cage, [...]

The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is [...]

The Slave’s Lament, Robert Burns It was in sweet Senegal that my foes did me enthrall For the lands of Virginia-ginia O; Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more, And alas! I am weary, weary O! Torn from &c. All on that charming coast is no bitter snow and frost, Like the lands of Virginia-ginia O; There streams for [...]

The White House, Claude McKay Your door is shut against my tightened face, And I am sharp as steel with discontent; But I possess the courage and the grace To bear my anger proudly and unbent. The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet, A chafing savage, down the decent street; And passion rends my vitals as I pass, Where boldly shines your [...]

“In an increasingly interdependent world, Americans have a growing stake in how countries govern, or misgovern, themselves. The larger and more close-knit the community of nations that choose democratic forms of government, the safer and more prosperous Americans will be, since democracies are demonstrably more likely to maintain their international commitments, less likely to engage [...]

This post focuses on health and health care. I already wrote posts on the specific subjects of infant mortality, maternal mortality and life expectancy and will not come back to these in the current post.  Health is a human rights issue in two respects. First, people have a right to health care and health insurance. Article 25 of [...]

Time for one of my own: Refugee (2), FIlip Spagnoli I’m a stranger, like hope in a world that doesn’t change or change in a world that doesn’t hope. And like all strangers I wash my hands separately, and I scratch my own back, and I no longer wonder ’bout the double meaning of “asylum” ‘cos there is none: you have to be [...]

Here’s a small catalogue of examples of dehumanization, of the ways in which humans try to exclude others from humanity, to deny them equality, to ridicule them, to render them objects in their plan, instruments for their advancement or pleasure. It ranges from the harmless national stereotypes and political humor, to the incitement of genocide. [...]

This is from the infamous Nazi newspaper of Julius Streicher, Der Sturmer, from 1934. The cartoon praises the Nazi Ministry of Culture for removing Jewish teachers from German classrooms. Streicher was convicted at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity and hanged in 1946. A crime against humanity is a large scale atrocity against a body of people, such [...]

It is said that the rights of humans- both individually and collectively as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) are universal, inalienable and immutable. However, there seems to be a new school of thought/concept of human rights developing especially among the international community in the west with regards to African affairs that African human rights can be abrogated un

AMMAN - PalestineNews : Prasad Kariyawasam, the head of the special UN committee on human rights in Palestine, voiced deep concern about the ongoing Israeli violations against human rights in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, pointing out that the Israeli siege increased poverty and destroyed economy in the Strip.Kariyawasam, the representative of Sri Lanka in the three-member committee, warned ag

(photo showing the excavation of mass graves in Srebrenica) Genocide is the deliberate, systematic and violent destruction of a group (an ethnic, racial, religious, national or political group). This destruction can take many forms: the outright murder of (the majority of) the members of the group inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about destruction measures intended to prevent

I’ve written before on discrimination, especially gender discrimination (also here) and discrimination based on sexual orientation. This post tackles the subject more generally. Discrimination, in its non-political and non-legal sense, simply means the recognition of differences. In the political and legal sense, it means unjustifiable differences in treatment between groups of people, most

The decay of decency in the modern age, the rebellion against law and good faith, the treatment of human beings as things, as the mere instruments of power and ambition, is without a doubt the consequence of the decay of the belief in man as something more than an animal animated by highly conditioned reflexes [...]

Reflections of Fidel: The discredited way in which the European Union suspended its sanctions on Cuba on June 19 has been reported in 16 international press dispatches. It has absolutely no economic effect on our country. On the contrary, the United States' extraterritorial laws and, thus, its economic and financial blockade are still fully in effect. At my age and given my state of health, o

PRESIDÊNCIA DA REPÚBLICAGABINETE DA PRESIDÊNCIADEPARTAMENTO DE COMUNICAÇÃO SOCIALEnglish Dili, 27 June 2008STATEMENT BY PRESIDENT JOSÉ RAMOS-HORTAI thank the many countries that in the last few weeks have encouraged me to table my candidacy for the position of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. I am very touched by the trust placed on me by the many friends in the world who believed that

Today marks the 45th birthday of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former head of Yukos, who had the audacity to politically challenge former president Putin, and, in so doing, was deprived of his company and sentenced to an eight year term on trumped up charges of tax-evasion and fraud. He has now reached the half way point of [...]

A leading suspect in the National Monument (Monas) violence case, Munarman, has lodged a human rights violation report against the National Police to the National Commission of Human Rights (Komnas HAM) on Tuesday. Munarman, represented by his lawyer Syamsul Bahri, accuses the police of excessively handling the Monas complex incident. “Their actions, including placing my [...]

Excerpt from “In the Penal Colony” by Franz Kafka (abbreviated) (The story is about a settlement where they have a very peculiar judicial system, and a horrible execution method. The dialogue is between a visitor and the local self-styled “judge” annex executioner. They are talking about a soldier about to be executed). Visitor: ‘Does he know his [...]

“Open markets offer the only realistic hope of pulling billions of people in developing countries out of abject poverty, while sustaining prosperity in the industrialized world.” Kofi Annan   “Africa must be allowed to trade itself out of poverty.” Bob Geldof Human rights do not include a right to have economic freedom or to have a free market. [...]

“Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer an escape from poverty.” Lyndon B. Johnson “Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, [...]

“The child mortality rate—the number of under-fives dying per thousand live births—dropped by almost a quarter worldwide between 1990 and 2006. … Progress in sub-Saharan Africa, where the death rate is highest, has been slower. Around one in six children in the region still die before the age of five and the rate is rising [...]

A Pict Song, Joseph Rudyard Kipling Rome never looks where she treads. Always her heavy hooves fall, On our stomachs, our hearts or our heads; And Rome never heeds when we bawl. Her sentries pass on–that is all, And we gather behind them in hordes, And plot to reconquer the Wall, With only our tongues for our swords. We are the Little Folk–we! Too little [...]

“The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do [...]

“If I try to ‘found’ equality rationally, I am able to do this only in and through a discourse which addresses itself to all and refuses all authority, a discourse therefore which has already presupposed equality of humans as reasonable beings.” Cornelius Castoriadis There are many reasons why equality is important, or is an important value. [...]

I’ve mentioned the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) before. This post gives some more data. The United Nations agreed the 8 MDGs in 2000, to be reached in 2015. Now, half-way to that deadline, there is progress, but not all regions in the world are doing equally well. However, even in the poorest region - sub-Saharan Africa [...]

Exxon Mobil Corp. has failed to convince the Supreme Court to halt a human rights lawsuit against it. The justices, without comment, on Monday rejected the energy company's appeal of a ruling on a 2001 lawsuit filed by International Rights Advocates on behalf of 11 villagers in Indonesia's Aceh province. The suit, which did not seek a specific amount of damages, alleged that members of the Ind

Maternal death, or maternal mortality, is the death of a woman during or shortly after a pregnancy. More than half a million women die during pregnancy or childbirth every year, and many millions suffer from inadequately treated complications. About half of these deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa and about one third occur in South Asia – [...]

In a previous post, I gave some data showing the quasi-universal popular support for democracy as the best form of government.  In the current post, I try to do the same for some aspect of other, non-political human rights, such as the freedom of religion, free speech and press, and fair judiciary. The data are taken from [...]

Democracy and human rights are first of all a conviction and a state of mind. If the people cannot be persuaded to accept democracy and human rights, then the case is lost, even when there is prosperity, when the culture is beneficial to the development of democracy and human rights, and when the necessary laws [...]

Matt Wardman has followed up on my post, Mugabe, al-Qaida links alleged and very helpfully reviewed Zimbabwean information sources from my list. NB: these are all 'civil society' sources, there's also a host of expat media sources. Here's the media sources which Robb Ellis (aka 'the bearded man') uses:All Africa News (Zimbabwe)Financial GazetteJan Lamprecht's 'African Crisis' SiteIRIN News (Zimbab

The Elf king (Der Erlkönig), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Who rides so late through night and wind? It is the father with his child. He has the little one well in the arm He holds him secure, he holds him warm. “My son, why hide your face in fear?” “See you not, Father, the Elf king? The Elf king with crown and [...]

(Photograph: Jane Bown) Musee des beaux arts, W.H. Auden About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; how well, they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not [...]

“The poor man’s conscience is clear; yet, he is ashamed . . . He feels himself out of the sight of others, groping in the dark. Mankind takes no notice of him. He rambles and wanders unheeded. In the midst of a crowd, at church, in the market . . . He is in as [...]

Some people urge us to accept and respect other cultures, other practices and beliefs unconditionally and without exceptions. Every cultural practice, whatever its content, is valuable and should be protected, even if this means giving up certain or all human rights. This means that rejecting intolerance in a certain culture is intolerant and rejecting discrimination [...]

So after watching the films I did recently, Lilja 4-Ever, Not Angels, But Angels and Body Without Soul. I was driven to read up a bit more on some of the problems faced in Europe with regards to child prostitution and exploitation, and human trafficking, both of which have become more and more of a problem worldwide.I landed on this blog discussing the problem of trafficking along with the MTV

“The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. To hold that the political branches may switch the Constitution on or off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this court, say what the law is.” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the US Supreme Court, [...]

This post on the international arms trade is a follow-up of a previous post on the evolution of war in the world and of one on the evolution of military budgets and defense spending. Again, it’s useless to oppose trade in or production of arms in general. People and countries have to be able to defend [...]

This is a follow-up of a previous post on the evolution of war in the world. Whereas the number of wars and their intensity seem to decrease over the last decades, the same cannot be said of the arms trade and the defense budgets. This makes it difficult to hope that the statistics on warfare [...]

Since the beginning of recorded history, around 3600 BC, over 14.500 major wars have killed close to four billion people, a number that not so long ago equalled the whole of humanity. Since the Second World War, there have been on average about 30 armed conflicts ongoing every year. 90 per cent of casualties in these [...]

The United States appreciates the recent report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Burma, which compiles important evidence of continuing violations of human rights in the country. The U.S. shares the conclusions of the UN human rights monitor in his sobering report that the referendum on the regime’s draft constitution was far from credible; that the ongoing detention of political pri

The End and the Beginning, Wislawa Szymborska After every war someone has to clean up. Things won’t straighten themselves up, after all. Someone has to push the rubble to the sides of the road, so the corpse-laden wagons can pass. Someone has to get mired in scum and ashes, sofa springs, splintered glass, and bloody rags. Someone must drag in a girder to prop up a wall. Someone must glaze a [...

Ethnic cleansing is the violent displacement of an ethnic group from a particular territory in order to create an ethnically “clean” unit, i.e. a territorial unit composed of only one ethnic group. The means used to achieve ethnic unity are: direct military force police brutality genocide the threat of force intimidation rape pogrom demolition of housing, places of worship, infrastruc

I’ve written about the Human Development Index before on this blog, but only casually. This post is meant to give a more in-depth explanation of the concept. The word “development” as it is used in terms such as “the developed and developing (or underdeveloped) world”, “international development aid” etc. refers to an evolution or process towards [...]

The Solution, Bertolt Brecht After the uprising of the 17th June The Secretary of the Writers Union Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee Stating that the people Had forfeited the confidence of the government And could win it back only By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier In that case for the government To dissolve the people And elect another? [...]

Questions From A Worker Who Reads, Bertolt Brecht Who built Thebes of the seven gates? In the books you will find the names of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock? And Babylon, many times demolished Who raised it up so many times? In what houses of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live? Where, the evening that the Wall [...]

Tortures, Wislawa Szymborska Nothing has changed. The body is susceptible to pain, it must eat and breathe air and sleep, it has thin skin and blood right underneath, an adequate stock of teeth and nails, its bones are breakable, its joints are stretchable. In tortures all this is taken into account. Nothing has changed. The body shudders as it shuddered before the founding of Rome [...]

(source: www.boligan.com) I’ve written about privacy before on this blog (here, here and here), with a particular attention to the importance of private property for privacy. The current post deals more generally with privacy.  There’s no light without darkness. By recognizing the right to keep certain thoughts, relationships and communications secret, one automatically recognizes the

Economic rights, such as the right to be free from poverty, should not be viewed as primarily the business of states, otherwise we will lose the benefits of solidarity which results from spontaneous mutual assistance. Allowing economic rights to be realised at the level of people’s relationships will strengthen solidarity, feelings of common humanity and [...]

Faut-il tuer pour empêcher qu’il n’y ait des méchants? C’est d’en faire deux au lieu d’un. Do we have to kill in order to get rid of bad people? Then we just double their number. Blaise Pascal Amnesty International estimates that around 1.200 people were executed by their governments in 2007. Of course, this is a [...]

Shema, Primo Levi You who live secure In your warm houses Who return at evening to find Hot food and friendly faces: Consider whether this is a man, Who labours in the mud Who knows no peace Who fights for a crust of bread Who dies at a yes or a no. Consider whether this is a woman, Without hair or name With no more strength to [...]

Most people in the western world do not understand the horror that women must endure in the Islamic world. Hopefully the following information will help to open many eyes.....In the Koran (4.34) it is written:"Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, g

  The theme of this post is the often difficult relationship between citizenship and human rights. This relationship is difficult because human rights, which are explicitly rights for all people everywhere, without distinctions of any kind, seem to require citizenship, and hence a distinction between groups of somehow differentiated people, for their protection. Without citizenship, it [...]

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! Emma Lazarus, inscription on the Statue of Liberty (or rather the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World) This post on asylum is a follow-up on a [...]

In countries where people have to flee their homes because of persecution and violence, political solutions must be found, peace and tolerance restored, so that refugees can return home. In my experience, going home is the deepest wish of most refugees. Angelina Jolie In a previous post, I talked a bit on the problem of migration [...]

(artist unknown, source: -commentary/20030825/202/503) In a previous post on migration, I briefly mentioned that one of the problems faced by migrants is their exclusion from politics in the country they migrated to. I will now argue that there is some kind of justification for this exclusion. Political rights are rights that guarantee participation, directly and through freely [...]

1. Numbers of migrants and trends The Center for Global Development (CGD) () estimates that around 200 million people - one in 33 - do not live in the country where they were born. Not surprisingly, the richest countries receive the largest number of migrants: (source: It is believed that the number of migrants will grow as [...]

(copyright by Mikhail Lemkhin, www.lemkhin.com) Incantation, Czeslaw Milosz Human reason is beautiful and invincible. No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books, No sentence of banishment can prevail against it. It establishes the universal ideas in language, And guides our hand so we write Truth and Justice With capital letters, lie and oppression with small. It puts what should be above [...]

A Task, Czeslaw Milosz In fear and trembling, I think I would fulfill my life Only if I brought myself to make a public confession Revealing a sham, my own and of my epoch: We were permitted to shriek in the tongue of dwarfs and demons But pure and generous words were forbidden Under so stiff a penalty that whoever dared [...]

Double Standard 1. a rule or principle applied more strictly to some people than to others (or to oneself). – The Concise Oxford English Dictionary. I think I made it clear in this blog how I feel about the importance of promoting democracy and human rights worldwide. However, often it is difficult to decide how to [...]

(copyright by , Chappatte) Private companies, especially companies engaging in international trade and multi-national companies, have duties in the field of human rights. They can violate human rights or they can act positively to protect them. They are obliged to respect human rights, just as individuals or states. They can create labor conditions that respect human rights [...]

In the theory of international law one can find the terms monism and dualism. These are used to describe two different theories of the relationship between international law and national law. 1. Monism Monists assume that the internal and international legal systems form a unity. Both national legal rules and international rules that a state has accepted, [...]

The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization EraThe issue of human rights is of central concern for indigenous peoples. Ever since the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948 applying those universal rights to indigenous peoples has been a struggle. The full text of the U.N. Declaration can

Complaints, verdicts, judgements, condemnations and recommendations are not enough. Words do have some power. They may be able to influence those who violate rights or those who are unwilling to protect rights. And the language of rights is a tool that victims can use to recognize their predicament, to organize their struggles, to rally supporters [...]

To effectively control (or “monitor”) states’ respect for human rights one needs respect for human rights. Organizations, whether international organizations or private organizations (NGOs), must have some freedom to control, to engage in fact finding, to enter countries and move around, to investigate “in situ”, to denounce etc. Victims should have the freedom to s

Article 4 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the main human rights treaty, creates the possibility for states to declare a so-called “state of emergency“, a temporary suspension of mechanisms for the protection of some human rights when this is required by a national crisis: 1. In time of public emergency which threatens the [...]

Humanitarian intervention is an armed intervention in one state by another state or states with the objective of ending gross violations of human rights, such as genocide or ethnic cleansing. Whereas the moral case for such an intervention is very strong, it remains controversial because of the fact that violence is used and that the national sovereignty of [...]

While nursing is seen by many as an inherently political act in and of itself, and while nurses have advocated for the poor for centuries, this article explores how nurses have organized for the betterment of society, and whether nurse-centric organizations exist---or have existed---akin to Doctors Without Borders or Physicians for Social Responsibility.Please click here to read my complete articl

(copyright ) The concept of “illegal alien” is meaningless. A person can never be illegal, only certain acts can be. I suspect that the use of this concept betrays certain prejudices and perhaps even racism. Of course, people settling in a country without this country’s permission act illegally and commit a crime. I wouldn’t go as far [...]

Human rights are rights which belong to humanity, to all persons of all cultures, nations, states, color, gender etc., whether or not the legal system in which they live explicitly protects these rights. And which belong to all of us equally. No one has more or less rights than the next person. Human rights are therefore [...]

This is taken from the determination in the Henshall Hearing.Drs Samuels and Spencer had argued an abuse of process. Their applications were rejected but the GMC made a number of shocking admissions. Despite admitting to violating the doctor's human rights, they ruled that the hearing must continue.Dave Blackhurst of the Sentinel is a one sided reporter with his own agenda. He has his own agenda b

There can be no government without an army. No army without money. No money without prosperity. And no prosperity without justice and good administration. Ibn Qutaybah, Muslim scholar from the 9th century. (The picture shows the phrase “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” in Arabic).

*Youth Initiative for Human Rights* office in Kosovo, is organizing a Human Rights School. This Human Rights School is part of a large project organized in the Western Balkans: Macedonia, Serbia,... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

According to Marx, human rights are the “rights of the egoistic man, separated from his fellow men and from the community”. They are the rights of man as an isolated, inward looking, self-centered creature who regards his free opinion as his intellectual private property instead of a part of communication who uses his right to private property [...]

The GMC panel today ruled against the three doctors in the Henshall case. The abuse of process arguments were thrown out and the hearing continued in the " public interest". This is as predicted on our blog. If the GMC cannot think of anything else, they opt for "public interest".The definition of public interest in the GMC's eyes is " soundbites" or media interest. The GMC are fairly tunnel vis

I discussed the freedom of the press before on this blog. There’s a post on the importance of the press for a democracy, there’s one on the importance for the struggle against poverty, and finally one on the importance for a well-functioning economy. The current post contains some factual information on press freedom in the world. [...]

In a previous post I commented on the beneficial influence of prosperity on democracy. Here are some reasons why democracy is good for prosperity. The squeaky hinge gets the oil. Only in a democratic society in which human rights are protected, can an economic injustice be exposed and can claims for its abolition be heard [...]

Prosperity creates time and leisure, which can be used for democratic participation, public life and other uses of human rights. We often see democratic aspirations and claims of rights arising almost automatically in states that do well economically (see for example Taiwan, Korea and many South-American countries in the 1980s). People do not live on [...]

One of our human rights is the right to democracy (see this post). This is the ranking of the world’s countries by Freedom House: And here’s how this has evolved from 1972 till 2005 (red = not free, green = free): (source: ) Of course, Freedom House is just one resource, and not uncontested. There are other interesting [...]

We believe that human beings aspire to freedom by their very nature, and that no single culture has a monopoly on democratic values. The tradition of democracy has been enriched by contributions from many cultures, and the development of democracy is open to people everywhere. World Movement for Democracy () I strongly believe in the universal [...]

In the previous post, I cited some numbers on development aid. Many donors have started to attach conditions to the aid they give (much like the conditions that are often attached to loans, see this post on foreign debt). Some of these conditions are respect for human rights, democratic government and good governance. Indeed, development is [...]

International development aid is a necessary tool for the protection of the human rights of people in developing countries. Especially their so-called economic rights such as the right to food and shelter. “Can” implies “ought”, because those with more power tend to have more responsibilities. A wealthy country or a group of wealthy countries can help [...]

Together with aid, fair and free trade and good governance (including democratic government, respect for human rights, curbing corruption etc.), debt relief is the answer to the development problems of third world countries, especially in Africa. Much of the foreign or external debt of these countries is unpayable, and exacts a heavy toll. Cancellation of debt [...]

Many prisoners on death row in the US have waived all their appeals, fired their lawyers and written letters to governors begging for an execution date. From Time.com: “These “volunteers” constitute 11% of executions nationwide, and will continue to dominate both the headlines and the execution schedules (8 of the last 16 executions in Florida have been [...]

(copyright unknown) Some countries use economic sensibilities to escape condemnation of their human rights record. China is a notorious example of a country with such an appealing market that export countries dare not insult the Chinese government. This government knows all too well that a mere hint of economic consequences is enough to silence most criticism. This [...]

(copyright -srv/opinions/cartoonsandvideos/toles_main.html) (copyright ) This post gives some more detail about one element of our system of “fair trial” which I discussed here. It’s the very important principle of Habeas Corpus, litterally (from Latin) “(We command) that you have the body”. This is an important legal tool to defend oneself against arbitrary or unla

A few cartoons about overpopulation. I’ll try to show in this post how this is related to human rights. (copyright ) (copyright ) (copyright ) (copyright unknown) Some blame overpopulation for many of the world’s problems such as poverty, famine and war (which are obviously rights violations). There are supposed to be too many people for peaceful coexistence and sustainable [...]

In 2007, an estimated 33.2 million people lived with AIDS/HIV worldwide, and it killed an estimated 2.1 million people, including 330,000 children. Over three-quarters of these deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, retarding economic growth and destroying human capital. From Wikipedia AIDS has become the leading cause of death in Sub-Saharan Africa where approx. 1 in 4 deaths [...]

Some facts about gay rights (or LGBT/Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights). This is a problem of discrimination and unequal treatment, both in law (legal discrimination) and in social life (homophobia and hate crime). It’s not about special rights or special treatment for homosexuals as some kind of minority group with a separate identity, but about their [...]

The International Indian Treaty Council and the Longest Walk focused on human rights as inherent rights of Indigenous Peoples, as the walkers arrived for prayers at Cahokia Mounds and the St. Louis Arch, the gateway to the west. For the Longest Walkers on the northern route, it was the gateway to the east, marking the completion of three-fourths of their sacred walk for Mother Earth. Walkers

One of the arguments against democracy and in favor of authoritarian forms of government turns to the economy. Economic development requires consistency, coherence, long term and central planning, all of which is said to be incompatible with democracy. The rotation in office typical of a democracy puts always other people in power, with other priorities [...]

"So much for the guarantees given to the IOC about human rights back when the 2008 games were awarded. Where is the condemnation from sports bodies and the International Olympic Committee now that..." In an initiative designed to harness the power of Blogosphere and Social Network members, today is the day that tens of thousands of online writers come together to demonstrate unified collaboration

It has been over 50 years since the United Nations (UN) Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed by most governments in the world and yet the abuses continue to grow.   Freedom of Speech and Human Rights are taken for granted in the west, but recent years have seen conditions deteriorate around the world. As early [...]

From The Guardian : It would seem self-evident that a country which tortures and kidnaps its own people has no place on the world's leading human rights body. Apparently not: Sri Lanka, despite repeated criticism for its human rights record, is running for re-election to the UN human rights council, with a vote to be held in New York on May 21. Governments owe it to Sri Lankan human rights vict