The conflict between Georgia and Russia presents a complex set of questions for the international community. While Western officials try to figure out how exactly Russia's two-headed government shares power, human rights workers are searching for the truth about atrocities that may or may not have been committed.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin undoubtedly holds the power in Russia, but diplomatic protocol
obliges European and American officials to negotiate with President Dmitri Medvedev, who appears much more accommodating than Putin.
The Zimbabwe government's youth militia use the most horrific tactic — rape — as a tool to terrorize those suspected of sympathizing with the opposition. President Robert Mugabe's ruling party has been carrying out a campaign of political terror since
opposition supporters contested his election.
Today's New York Times
paints a graphic picture of how many of Zimbabwe's women have been abused, humiliated, and raped, often in front of their families.
Trust, a crucial component of most healthy relationships, has become an
elusive ingredient in the transatlantic alliance between the United Kingdom and the United States. England's House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee just issued its annual human rights report, which states that America's word can no longer be trusted when it comes to torture and human rights abuses.
The committee
recommended the following:
The UK can no longer rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, and we recommend that the government does not rely on such assurances in the future.
A British woman working in Dubai faces six years in jail, after Dubai officials caught her
allegedly having sex on beach. Dubai may be the Las Vegas of the Middle East, but it's no sin city. The thirty-year-old businesswoman has been charged with sex outside marriage, indecent behavior in public, being drunk in public, and assaulting a police officer.
It takes just 10 hours for someone in New York City to travel to Haiti and buy a child. ABC News reporter Dan Harris found that out when he set out to test
the ease of securing a child slave. For as little as $150 one trafficker guaranteed Harris a "trained" 11-year-old.
Though this Spring's cyclone brought Myanmar
crashing into our consciousness, the front page ink is drying — and along with it awareness for what is an extended situation for the Burmese to bear. Ah but first, is it Burma or Myanmar? The military regime changed the name from Burma to Myanmar (a short version of the name of the country in the local language) in 1989.
Though I don't know of many prisons guarded by the likes of the two pictured below, with the changes happening to crime and punishment in the US, it might not be long. With
one out of every 100 Americans behind bars, and prisons
turning criminals out to meet their budgets, the debate between what's a human right, and what liberties need be taken away as punishment is a tricky one. Several states have just come to some conclusions — on the side of rights.
In a historic ruling, the US Supreme Court ruled that terror suspects being held at Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba
have a right to contest their detention in United States court, using the constitutionally enshrined principle of habeas corpus — which allows courts to determine whether a prisoner is being held illegally.
In the 5-4 ruling, the majority held that "the laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times."
The four "conservative" justices dissented.
People living with HIV are banned from traveling to twelve countries, including Armenia, Colombia, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Sudan, the United States and Yemen.
China just lifted its ban, as a result of pre-Olympic human rights pressure. Yesterday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon
urged these nations to change their immigration laws — which "uphold stigma and discrimination" — during a major summit on HIV/AIDS.
