The United Nations has established a commission to investigate human rights violations in North Korea, saying some of them may amount to “crimes against humanity.” The U.N. Human Rights Council unanimously passed a resolution Thursday to create the commission, which…
Written by Eva Galperin – Re-Published from eff.org (Creative Commons) On 27 December 2012 prominent Vietnamese activist and blogger Le Quoc Quan was arbitrarily arrested and detained by local authorities while taking his daughter to school. The arrest was the…
China and Russia are buying increasingly powerful surveillance technologies to intercept communications and try to take control of the Internet, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday. Alec Ross, the U.S. secretary of state’s senior adviser for innovation, said new…
United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay has dismissed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s recent claims that the U.N. is not a credible organization and that her commission of inquiry failed to contact his government during an investigation of human rights…
A new worldwide spike in agricultural commodity and food prices is generating both predictable and extraordinary fallouts. The search for causes once again leads to a conjuncture of flawed policies in trade, environment, finance and agriculture that is likely to…
Human trafficking occurs throughout the world, yet has become increaingly more prevalent among the country of Iraq due to the instability produced by the Iraq War. Many Iraqi women and girls are widowed or orphaned by wartime casualties. Currently, more…
Written by Margaret Besheer | United Nations As Syrian tanks shelled the flashpoint town of Hama Wednesday, the U.N. Security Council overcame months of division and strongly condemned the on-going violence. The U.N.’s most powerful body expressed “grave concern” at…
Written by Cathy Majtenyi | Dadaab, Kenya Drought, famine, and warfare have profound physical and psychological impacts on children, especially those three years old and under. Malnutrition and disease at these vulnerable ages leave a lasting mark that stretch into…
At least 10 people are reported to have been killed in the Somali capital Mogadishu, as African Union and government forces battle militants to protect the flow of food aid. Witnesses said the deaths occurred during heavy fighting Thursday –…
Rights groups say they have new details about how Burma’s military forces prisoners to work as laborers and human shields on the front lines of its battles against ethnic militias. Human Rights Watch and the Karen Human Rights Group say…
Censorship in America 