Human Rights Archive

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss the standoff in Washington over President Donald Trump’s border wall and the crisis in Central America it overshadows. For the Report, Anna-Catherine Brigida talks with WPR’s senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, about recent progress made by abortion rights activists in Latin America and the challenges they continue to face in liberalizing the region’s strict abortion laws. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our uncompromising analysis delivered […]

It’s been a tense start to the year in Central Africa. The Democratic Republic of Congo appears to be barreling toward an election standoff, with defeated opposition candidate Martin Fayulu on Thursday denouncing “an electoral coup.” Also this week, renegade soldiers in Gabon attempted to oust President Ali Bongo, briefly taking over the state airwaves before they were arrested and two of them were killed. Meanwhile, the Republic of Congo, which is sandwiched between those two countries, is quietly and tepidly moving ahead with a peace-building process designed to stave off just this kind of unrest. While one of the […]

The new year marked the beginning of a new era for Latin America’s largest country. Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right winner of Brazil’s presidential election, assumed office amid a remarkable swirl of contrasting expectations. While the former army captain’s incendiary declarations during the election campaign last fall sparked fears among millions of Brazilians and others abroad, a less noticed phenomenon took shape in the weeks leading up to his inauguration on Jan. 1: Brazilians, by large majorities, are optimistic about his tenure. In two surveys last month, Brazilian pollsters found that a stunning 75 percent of respondents approved of Bolsonaro, and […]

Since the mid-2000s, democracy has regressed in nearly every part of the world. The global monitoring organization Freedom House has recorded declines in global freedom for 12 years in a row. In Thailand, Bangladesh and Turkey, democracies have all but collapsed. Countries where democracy seemed to be making gains in the early 2010s, like Myanmar and Cambodia, have slid backwards, with Cambodia reverting to one-party rule. Some states where democracy was believed to be well-rooted, such as Poland and the Philippines, have regressed under populists with authoritarian tendencies. Their democracies have not fully collapsed but are in grave danger, as […]

U.S. President Donald Trump took his case for building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border directly to the American people in a brief televised address on Jan. 8. Trump characterized the situation at the border as a humanitarian crisis that required urgent action and defended his refusal to sign compromise legislation that would end a partial federal government shutdown that began in late December. Trump made immigration a central component of his 2016 presidential campaign, with his promise to build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it becoming a signature catchphrase. Throughout the campaign, he demonized Mexican and […]

USULUTAN, El Salvador—Imelda Cortez, a 20-year-old Salvadoran woman, was at home one evening in April 2017 when, seemingly out of nowhere, she began experiencing sharp abdominal pain. Suspecting a flare-up of her colitis, she went into the bathroom, where, to her astonishment, she gave birth to a baby girl. She would later say that she hadn’t even known she was pregnant. Her mother called for help, and Cortez was rushed to the hospital. Doctors found no signs of induced labor or any other indications that Cortez intended to harm her child. Nevertheless, one of the doctors accused her of trying […]

BOGOTA, Colombia—On the surface, the future looks bleak for Latin America. In an era of slow economic growth, with deeply polarized societies and increasingly entrenched violence, the continent’s leaders face some daunting challenges. Latin America is grappling with a surge in homicide, which has made it the world’s most dangerous region. The illicit drug trade is booming, organized crime is proving to be more agile than most states, and anti-corruption efforts have been rolled back across the continent, undermining democracy. There are, however, glimmers of hope if you look closer. Amid the carnage, solutions and experiments are emerging that could […]

The Cuban government rolled out mobile internet service for the first time last month, one of the last countries in the world to do so. While the 3G mobile network will be too costly for most Cubans, it could still help open political space and develop the island’s burgeoning independent media scene. In an interview with WPR, Ted Henken, a sociologist at Baruch College in New York who specializes in contemporary Cuba, discusses the promises and peril of expanding digital access in Cuba. World Politics Review: How much of an impact will this actually have on Cubans’ ability to access […]

South Sudan’s five-year civil war was supposed to end with the signing of a revitalized peace deal last year, but violence continues and the humanitarian situation remains bleak. The government and opposition now have five months to implement the agreement and form a transitional government, or risk another unraveling. On paper, the peace deal signed by South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and former Vice President-turned-armed opposition leader Riek Machar on Sept. 12 halted a conflict that has claimed an estimated 383,000 lives and left most of the population facing malnutrition and severe food insecurity. However, a very similar peace deal […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Some 27 candidates initially threw their hats in the ring to challenge Senegalese President Macky Sall in the West African nation’s upcoming election, which is scheduled for Feb. 24. Seven weeks out from voting, however, it looks like the actual number of contenders will be considerably lower. On Wednesday, Senegal’s Constitutional Council ruled that 19 candidacy registrations had been rejected outright, while three others were still under review. Only five registrations, Sall’s included, had been approved. As Jeune Afrique […]

The Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants and asylum-seekers has placed the United States in the same camp as the countries recently denounced by National Security Adviser John Bolton as the “troika of tyranny”—Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. For years, those three countries have denounced or refused to participate in the proceedings of the Organization of American States’ inter-American human rights system when their own violations of democratic norms and human rights are under scrutiny. Over the past two years, the Trump administration has joined their ranks, ignoring or rebuffing the Western Hemisphere’s premier human rights body. Since Trump’s inauguration, the OAS’ […]

After years of political unrest in Burundi, the country is now in the midst of an authoritarian crackdown.Even as the human rights sphere shrinks, there are signs of a deepening ethnic crisis in Burundi. In early December, the tiny east African country of Burundi garnered international attention when its Foreign Ministry, at the request of President Pierre Nkurunziza, called for the closure of the U.N. human rights office in the capital, Bujumbura. The move was not altogether surprising from a regime once called one of “the most prolific slaughterhouses of humans in recent times” by former U.N. rights chief Zeid […]

One of the most dramatic political pivots of 2018 occurred in Ethiopia, where the sudden rise of 42-year-old Abiy Ahmed as prime minister ushered in a series of head-spinning reforms in a country long ruled by a deeply repressive regime. There is now the very real possibility that Ethiopia could make a lasting shift to democracy. There are so many positive signs so far that most Ethiopians at home and abroad seem gripped by a sense of euphoria. But not all is well in Ethiopia. Abiy faces a number of significant obstacles to his goal of bringing a free, peaceful […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. In his first major policy speech on Taiwan since taking office in 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned Taipei on Wednesday that efforts to assert independence could be met with force and called unification between the “two sides of the strait” the “great trend of history.” Xi’s address at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, which largely reaffirmed China’s current policy toward Taiwan, came just over a month after the major opposition party, the Beijing-friendly Kuomintang (KMT), […]