Human Rights Archive

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and senior editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss recent tensions between Israel and Palestine, and the vanishing voice of the Trump administration in the conflict. For the Report, Max Radwin talks with Peter Dörrie about the challenges facing Paraguay’s Ache people as they continue their transition into a sedentary agricultural lifestyle, and explains how the Ache’s rainforest traditions might be the key to navigating them. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines, as well as what you’ve seen on WPR, please think about supporting our work by subscribing. Listen: Download: […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on LGBT rights and discrimination in various countries around the world. The recent court ruling paving the way for same-sex marriage in Taiwan prompted speculation about similar measures elsewhere in Asia. It was unclear, though, whether the ruling would help or hinder the same-sex marriage cause in China. Still, Chinese activists have been scoring victories of their own, among them increased cultural visibility and heightened popular awareness of the harms caused by “conversion therapy.” On Thursday, a court in the city of Guiyang ruled in favor of a transgender […]

Latin American countries have consistently ratified international conventions to protect women. They are falling behind in implementation, though, despite some of the worst rates of gender-based violence and femicide in the world. Why aren't these agreements being translated into policies? Protecting women against gender-based violence is too often overlooked as a global human rights issue. On the surface, Latin America may look like an exception. All of the region’s countries have ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and 14 have ratified the convention’s optional protocol that permits a special U.N. committee […]

Southeast Paraguay would look a lot like Iowa were it not for the small patches of jungle sticking out of its rolling hills of corn and soybeans. Agriculture has become the cornerstone of the country’s economy over the past several decades, but the rainforest that was sacrificed to make that happen remains in bits and pieces, trying to hold on. Paraguay’s changing natural landscape has raised doubts about how the small country will balance both its economic and environmental needs. The government’s inability to reconcile them so far has created major—albeit often unnoticed—social conflicts in the southeast, especially for the […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on LGBT rights and discrimination in various countries around the world. The climate for LGBT Poles has deteriorated under the Law and Justice Party, which came to power in 2015. Attacks on LGBT individuals and organizations are on the rise; legal protections against discrimination remain limited; and curricula reforms privilege nationalist themes over messages of tolerance. In an email interview, A. Chaber, executive director of the Campaign Against Homophobia, explains how LGBT activists are trying to adapt. WPR: What is the current state of LGBT rights in Poland, and […]

Last month, Colombia’s Congress rejected a referendum that would have prohibited same-sex couples from adopting children. The measure had previously passed the Senate but was defeated during its first debate in the lower chamber, the House of Representatives. LGBT activists hailed the vote as a remarkable affirmation of the rights of same-sex couples in Colombia, where legal victories for same-sex marriage, adoption rights and military service have made Colombia central to what many have called a “gay rights revolution” that has swept through Latin America over the past decade. Yet in a puzzling turn of events, the momentum in favor […]

In his first six months in office, President Donald Trump has appeared to reorder the foundations of U.S. foreign policy, alienated many traditional U.S. allies, remade the Republican Party and generally dominated American public discourse with his wild pronouncements and seemingly endless scandals. Outside the United States, however, it is a different story. In Asia especially, Trump’s impact, though substantial, has been more marginal than in North America or Europe, where Trump has created a massive divide between Washington and the governments of major American partners like Germany and Mexico. Overall, policymakers in Washington and across Asia have come away […]

MEXICO CITY—Over two days in mid-June, more than 300 journalists gathered in Mexico City to discuss how to respond to the murder of 33 of their colleagues in the past five years. Last year, Mexico was the third-most dangerous country in the world for journalists, according to the NGO Reporters Without Borders. Nine reporters were killed in unrelated incidents across the country. With no fewer than seven journalists murdered so far this year, 2017 is almost certain to surpass that figure. The reporters in Mexico City launched an initiative known as the Journalists’ Agenda to push the government to participate […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on LGBT rights and discrimination in various countries around the world. The recent vote by German MPs to legalize same-sex marriage was seen as an example of the law catching up with public opinion. Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was certain same-sex marriage would be approved, voted against it herself, leaving people guessing as to whether her vote reflected her values or was a strategic calculation. In an email interview, Dr. Beate Küpper, social psychologist on the Faculty of Social Services at the Hochschule Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences in […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on LGBT rights and discrimination in various countries around the world. Argentina has moved rapidly from a country that used to ban LGBT organizations to a global champion of the community. Favorable conditions and savvy strategies have helped fuel the embrace of LGBT rights in Argentina. Since becoming the first Latin American country to approve gay marriage in 2010, Argentina has continued to be a leader on LGBT issues, moving forward with an expansion of transgender rights at home while pushing for LGBT rights generally on the world stage. […]

The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, called them “starve, surrender and slaughter” tactics. Former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called them a “war crime.” Sieges have been especially brutal on civilians in Syria’s civil war, yet they remain the Syrian government’s favorite strategy for retaking territory and purging key regions of the country of its opponents. In May, the United Nations undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Stephen O’Brien, accused Bashar al-Assad’s government of exploiting civilian suffering as a “tactic of war.” The regime’s bloody, four-year campaign to recapture the battered city of Aleppo, which ended in a four-month siege […]

Editor’s note: The following article is one of 30 that we’ve selected from our archives to celebrate World Politics Review’s 15th anniversary. You can find the full collection here. As people continue to migrate—and die—by crossing the Mediterranean Sea by boat, it is time to reflect on what has gone wrong with the 2015 European Agenda on Migration. The agenda purports to be a comprehensive, multidimensional framework designed to address the crisis of increased precarious migration to Europe and associated fatalities at sea. It has led to the development and implementation of policies across a range of priority areas. Yet without […]

Diplomacy is a mendacious business. “An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country,” one 17th-century wit supposedly quipped. Diplomats are still expected to massage, twist or conceal facts to suit their countries’ national interests. By contrast, international institutions are generally meant to make diplomacy a marginally more honest business by upholding higher standards of objectivity. Organizations like the United Nations and World Bank draw a lot of their credibility from the assumption that they tell the truth. In the last century, the League of Nations and then the U.N. pioneered the global […]

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia—“It’s easy to understand Cambodian politics,” said Vanna, a 45-year-old shop owner in Phnom Penh, as he waited for the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) to begin its last campaign rally before the June 4 local elections. Some 90,000 candidates would be competing to represent the country’s 1,646 communes in the voting two days later. “The government does not care about us poor people. It only cares about power.” That morning, the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), which has been in power for four decades, held a much larger and better-organized rally in Phnom Penh, the capital, […]