Human Rights

Their meeting made for some uncomfortable visuals as Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf defended a national law that criminalized homosexuality in front of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, long an advocate for gay rights, who was visiting Liberia in his capacity as the founder of the African Governance Initiative (AGI), a nonprofit dedicated to building the capacity of African governments.  But the terse exchange masked a deeper, more serious question: should Western leaders try to impose their mora

Like baseball great Yogi Berra, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had his own struggles with the English language, one of his best malapropisms was the coining of the term “unknown unknowns.” Rumsfeld was trying to make a valid point about the uncertain security situation at the time in Iraq – that there were unexpected contingencies that simply could not be prepared for; unfortunately for him (but perhaps fortunately for us), that thought came out as “unknown unknowns.”

[read Part 1 here]

Invocation of the “Ceased Circumstances Cessation Clause”: Is Rwanda Fundamentally Altered Enough?

by Harry W.S. Lee. Originally published by our partner site, World Policy Blog.

In a prison-issued white sarong, the artist enters, blinded by a black bag over her head, stumbling her way on tiptoes, her legs trembling from hunger and fear. On the floor, she struggles to devour rice and the water through the black bag, venting out heavy gasps, punctuating with groans—a disturbing sight almost too private to be public.

Recently two of my colleagues at The Mantle asked why the international community was not intervening in ongoing humanitarian crises in different parts of the world.

It is no secret that in this new era of intra-state conflict, rape has increasingly become used as weapon of war. Sadly, the women of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) know this all too well. This past week a new report was released in the American Journal of Public Health, which takes an in-depth look at rape statistics in the DRC. The article reports some incredibly staggering numbers.

Why the post-Communist transitions of Eastern European governments hold some surprising lessons for the fledgling democracies in Egypt and Tunisia.