Diplomacy & Politics

Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs is a new weekly column covering the world’s major human rights-related happenings. It is written by regular WPR contributor Juliette Terzieff. BARBARIC VIOLENCE AGAINST CONGO WOMEN — A United Nations expert on violence against women reported July 27 that violence against women in the Democratic Republic of Congo is widespread and brutal to the point of incomprehension. Yakin Erturk said her investigations revealed massive incidents of torture, gang rape, sexual slavery, forced incestuous rape and women being forced to eat human excrement and flesh. Violence against women, Erturk said, is committed by armed groups, civilians, [...]

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. President George W. Bush are scheduled to meet this weekend at Camp David to discuss the situation in Afghanistan. Two topics likely will dominate their conversation: the death of Afghan civilians from NATO military action and Afghanistan’s narcotics problem. The civilian casualty issue was an important agenda item at the NATO Defense Ministers’ meeting in June 2007. At the time, NATO leaders largely argued that civilian casualties were an inevitable characteristic of war. A joint press conference with Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak following the Ministerial meeting, [...]

GUADALAJARA, Mexico — A year after losing Mexico’s contested presidential election, runner up Andrés Manuel López Obrador has largely fallen out of view and it’s unclear whether he can stage a comeback. But he can certainly still draw a crowd. Last month, on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the vote he narrowly lost, López Obrador beckoned his followers to Mexico City’s enormous Zocalo (town square) for a rally, where the self-proclaimed “legitimate president of Mexico” once again branded the election fraudulent, invoked a new theory to explain his defeat and railed against proposed economic reforms. He also promoted [...]