By Amy Goodman & Juan González, Democracy Now! — As the United States imposes new Cuba sanctions, citing human rights abuses, we look at the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo…
From Germany to Georgetown, the Global North has a lot to learn about reckoning successfully with past human rights wrongs. By Kerry Whigham, The Conversation — Between 1904 and 1908,…
“It is clearer than ever that the occupation is not temporary, and there is not the political will in the Israeli government to bring about its end.” By Ilan Baruch…
By Joshua Collins — BOGOTA, Colombia – Juan Carlos Neiva says he is part of “Primero Linea,” the “First Line,” a group of protesters who actively engage riot police in…
By Michelle Bachelet, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights— “Recognizing the Past, Repairing the Present, Building the Future” Excellencies, Colleagues, friends, It is my honour to address this…
There will be no peace if underlying grievances aren’t addressed, militaries victimize local populations, and states fail to provide basic services. By Elizabeth Schmidt, FPIF — Late last year, President…
U.S. Civil Rights and Human Rights Groups Say Water is a Human Right — Express Solidarity with Struggle for Water Rights in Nigeria. February, 10, 2020, New York — The Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW) released a Statement today calling for a national and international movement to declare access to water a human right that should not be subject to profiteering by corporate interests. The Statement was released against the…
By R. Drew Smith Professor, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Co-Convener, Transatlantic Roundtable on Religion and Race — Twenty-five years ago, Nelson Mandela was elected South African president after serving 27 years in prison for leading resistance against racially-oppressive apartheid rule. During that same moment in April of 1994, a horrible tragedy was unfolding further north on the African continent as longstanding ethnic grievances within Rwanda irr
By Justin Hansford, ACLU — It is common for nations where mass atrocities have taken place to engage in the process of reparation and repair. This process happened in Germany after the Holocaust, South Africa after apartheid, and here in the United States, forty years after the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. As a result, international human rights bodies have sought to lend their expertise to the process, often by…
By Benjamin Barber, Facing South — This year has seen the continuation of an alarming epidemic of violence against transgender people in the United States. At least a dozen transgender people have been killed already this year, most of them women of color, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Nine of these murders have occurred in the South — yet lawmakers in Southern states have continued to target the transgender community…
There is no doubt that concentration camps are in operation on US soil once again. By Brett Wilkins — Concentration camp (noun): a place in which large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labor or to await mass execution. – Oxford English Dictionary Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has ignited a…
By Thalif Deen, IPS — The UN’s longstanding mandate to promote and protect human rights worldwide –- undermined recently by right-wing nationalist governments and authoritarian regimes – has taken another…