If Prime Minister Trudeau truly wants to bring Canada back to being a leader on the world stage, he needs to reconcile Canada’s promotion of its resource extraction industry with a fairer, more progressive policy in its investments and practices overseas.
Human rights concerns in the Syria conflict? Not according to some Latin American governments.
It was a cringingly awkward moment. After their press conference, Cuban President Raul Castro clumsily grabbed Obama’s arm and attempted to lift it into the classic raised fist of revolutionary struggle. Embedded in the viral image is the difference between what each leader needed to get and convey from the historic visit.
Obama’s opening to Cuba could be one of his policy’s most convincing successes. But there’s a problem. In the time since his executive actions permitted greater U.S. personal and commercial contact with the socialist island, the autocratic Cuban regime has failed to meaningfully improve its human rights record.
After World War II, a focus on social welfare for all people influenced the drafting of multiple declarations protecting human rights, both globally and regionally. Both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and the Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, in the Americas, enshrined civil and political rights as well as economic, cultural and social rights into international law.
It’s been one year since Alberto Nisman was found dead on the very morning he was due to testify before the Argentina Congress about his investigation into the AMIA bombing. Nothing much has changed since, just more questions.
La democracia tiene un solo camino: el compromiso con los derechos garantizados a todos los ciudadanos del país. Su esencia es proteger los derechos y las decisiones del pueblo respecto a un gobierno que podría abusar de su poder, ignorando o rechazando los resultados de la elección. Esto es de extrema seriedad porque constituiría la violación de principios fundamentales.
Even in Latin America, a region often thought to share the same democratic orientation and values of the U.S. and Europe, there are some striking differences among groups of countries regarding supporting norms and practices on human rights internationally, with some countries lining up more with autocratic countries of the Global South.
A week before the Donors’ Summit in San Salvador I was able to catch up with Kathy Hall of the Summit Foundation. In a wide-ranging interview she discusses the failures of governments in Central America to provide for the younger generation, the need for the U.S. to condition its assistance to local governments meeting their own commitments, and the moral obligation of donors to collaborate and ensure greater transparency.
Last week, Human Rights Watch, along with 36 other human rights organizations, issued a statement that Venezuela did not deserve to be re-elected to the UN Human Rights Council. This week, unfortunately, the UN General Assembly did just that. Here’s why the human rights groups were right.
