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A recent press release from
Reporters without
Borders ranks countries for press freedom.
Iceland scores the highest while Eritrea is last at 169th place. The US is in 48th place according to this report.
Read the whole report here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
In April of 2007 the World Organization for Human Rights USA filed a law suit against Yahoo for complicity in sharing identification information of internet users with Chinese authorities. Two Chinese journalists are serving 10 year prison sentences for publishing material that government authorities considered subversive.
The case is filed in the US. District Court California Northern District: Civil Docket # 407-cv-02151-CW
Read the complaint here.
Good overviews of the case can be found here and here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
Trafficking in persons is a modern-day form of slavery, a new type of global slave trade.
Perpetrators prey on the most weak among us, primarily women and children, for profit and gain. They lure victims into involuntary servitude and sexual slavery. Today we are again called by conscience to end the debasement of our fellow men and women. As in the 19th century, committed abolitionists around the world have come together in a global movement to confront this repulsive crime. President George W. Bush has committed the United States Government to lead in combating this serious 21st century challenge, and all nations that are resolved to end human trafficking have a strong partner in the United States.
Secretary Rice
Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000: Trafficking in Persons Report 2007 is available in HTML format here and in PDF format here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
The United Nations opened the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on March 30, 2007. The Convention is the first new human rights instrument of the 21st century. See the video of the press conference here: http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/pressconference/pc070330.rm
“What the Convention endeavours to do," said Don MacKay, Chairman of the committee that negotiated the treaty, "is to elaborate in detail the rights of persons with disabilities and set out a code of implementation”. Excerpt from The Convention in Brief on the Covention website: http://www.un.org/disabilities/convention/convention.shtml
News story reported at the Jurist website: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/index.php?edition=full
Posted by Marin Dell
UNICEF has published The State of the World's Children 2007:
The State of the World's Children 2007 examines the discrimination and
disempowerment women face throughout their lives - and outlines what must be done to eliminate gender discrimination and empower women and girls. It looks at the status of women today, discusses how gender equality will move all the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) forward, and shows how investment in women's rights will ultimately produce a double dividend: advancing the rights of both women and children.
The Executive Summary can be viewed here.
The full version is here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
Ask me where I'm from and I won't have an answer. I feel I never really belonged anywhere. Never really had a home. I was born in Manali, but my parents live in Karnataka. Finishing my schooling in two different schools in Himachal Pradesh, my further studies took me Madras, Ladakh and Mumbai.[...] I have nowhere to call home and in the world at large all I'll ever be is a 'political refugee'.
These are the words of Tenzin Tsundue, "a talented activist poet and essayist of Tibetan extraction." Via Amardeep Singh
Tsunde's latest words: Lhasa, in translation
In the Upper Valley
Is a three-peaked snowy mountain
It is not a mountain
It is the throne of my guru
Of my Guru Padmasambhava
~A song of devotion to the Great Guru of Tibet, Padmasambhava (From A Journey in Ladakh by Andrew Harvey)
Posted by Toni Urquhart
The AILA Asylum Primer by Regina Germain, a veteran
asylum attorney and former Senior Legal Counselor of the Washington
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, is one of the Law Library's latest print acquisitions. "AILA's Asylum Primer provides practical, interpretive guidance
of the entire asylum process. Intended for everyone from attorneys to
government officials, from law professors to law students, from
nonprofit organizations to asylum seekers themselves, AILA's Asylum Primer will help you understand and resolve
critical asylum issues and provide answers to help you through the
asylum process--from the first meeting until you close the case." It is available in the Law Library on the third floor.
Excerpt taken from: http://www.ailapubs.org/ailasprim.html
Posted by Marin Dell
As "Mother's Day" approaches, thoughts turn to the powerful bonds of love between mothers and their children. It is this procession of generations that unites women of all cultures and time periods in our common humanity.
Children and their mothers are currently suffering unspeakable horrors in the ongoing genocide in the Sudan. The U. S. Department of State Report "Documenting Atrocities in Darfur" includes one mother's account of the day the Jingaweit militia attacked her village, burning homes and shooting the fleeing villagers from helicopters. Running to escape the gunfire, she could only carry one child. She said "You try to take all your children with you but sometimes you can't and have to quickly decide to take one or two of them. You hope that those able to run will follow you."
After the learning of the atrocities of the Holocaust, the world's people said "Never again." It's time to make good on that resolution.
Posted by Patricia Bingham-Harper
An article in today's New York Times (page A14) describes an order entered in Willie Brown, Jr. v. Theodis Beck (E.D. N.C. 4/17/2006) allowing North Carolina to use a "bispectral index (BIS) monitor" to determine whether Mr. Brown is unconscious before proceeding with his execution by legal injection. The BIS monitor is made by Aspect Medical Systems. Read a copy of the opinion here.
Posted by Mary McCormick
Genocide in the Darfur region of western Sudan began in February of 2003. Government and Arab Janjaweed militias have systematically engaged in mass killings, executions, the burning of towns and villages, sexual violence. To date over 300,000 members of African ethnic groups have been brutally killed and 1.8 million have been displaced, pushed to the edge of survival in settlement camps in Darfur and
neighboring Chad. Starvation and disease are rampant.
Human Rights Watch has said "The response of the international community to the events in Sudan has been nothing short of shameful."
Web sites like darfurgenocide.org and savedarfur.org/home
ask for awareness and help, offering links to current news.
As Nicholas D. Kristof said in his New York Times editorial: "During past genocides...it was possible to claim that we didn't fully know what was going on. This time, President Bush, Congress, and the European Parliament have already declared genocide to be under way. And we have photos. This time, we have no excuse."
Posted by Patricia Bingham-Harper
