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Protecting Individual and Group Rights
Human Rights Watch reports that detainees at a secret prison in Iraq were subjected to routine and systematic torture. The Baghdad prison was under the control of the Shiite-led Iraqi government; the detainees are Sunni. And the revelations are already inflaming sectarian tensions.
Judges at the Hague handed down two rare genocide convictions, sentencing two security officers for the Bosnian Serb Army to life in prison for their roles in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, the worst single episode in a decade of war that left 100,000 dead and tore the Balkans apart. In Serbia and Bosnia, many still deny the magnitude of the killings at Srebrenica and of the role of both the Serbian and Bosnian Serb leadership in the planning and final capture of the United Nations protected zones.
In this opinion piece Desmond Tutu states, "My hope is that in the future, the Responsibility to Protect will be exercised not after the murder and rape of innocent people, but when community tensions and political unrest begin. It is by preventing, rather than reacting, that we can truly fulfill our shared responsibility to end the worst forms of human rights abuses." (Desmond Tutu)
Samantha Power, Director of the Human Rights Initiative at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, discusses why, after the Holocaust, the world vowed 'never again' should such an event be allowed to happen. Yet in the following 50 years, it has been permitted again and again. Powers discusses why this might be so, and what might be done about it.
This document seeks to respond to questions commonly asked by humanitarian workers on the legal framework that serves as a basis for assistance and protection activities in situations of armed conflict. It sets out the relevant international instruments and offers examples of their provisions and application" by responding to a variety of questions related to international humanitarian, human rights and refugee law.
This report addresses arguments relating to the relationship between human rights and sustainable peace, examining whether human rights provisions assist or hinder the search for peace. It draws on recent peace agreements and identifies which human rights provisions they have included, with some background as to how and why these provisions were included.
This report focuses on protecting human rights of trafficked persons primarily in countries of destination, since less work has been done in that area than on countries of origin. The conference was attended by governmental and nongovernmental representatives from both countries of origin and countries of destination.
Addressing the Commission on the Status of Women's fifty-fourth session, Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said the General Assembly's proposal to create a United Nations body for gender issues was an historic opportunity to give women a stronger voice in global governance and policy making. "When women and girls have the same freedoms and rights as men and boys, we will have more stable economies and stronger, more peaceful societies."
This article examines the Kenyan organization Ushahidi which allows people to anonymously report violence and other misdeeds which are then plotted on a map and published so the police, humanitarians etc. can find the victims or refugees.
