Human Rights Cartoon (96): Modern Slavery

(copyright Monte Wolverton)
Slavery was officially abolished worldwide at the 1927 Slavery Convention. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
“No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms”.
Slavery is illegal everywhere and yet it still exists everywhere. Experts estimate that today [...]

Human Rights Quote (80): Impunity

(source)
I deeply hope that the horrors humanity has suffered during the 20th century will serve us as a painful lesson, and that the creation of the International Criminal Court will help us to prevent those atrocities from being repeated in the future. Statement made by Luis Moreno-Ocampo on the occasion of his election as first [...]

Human Rights Quote (75): Real and Normative Universality of Human Rights

No doubt the commitment of many countries to human rights is less than authentic and whole-hearted. Yet, the fact of the commitment, that it is enshrined in a constitution, and that it is confirmed in an international instrument are not to be dismissed lightly. Even hypocrisy may sometimes deserve one cheer for it confirms the [...]

Human Rights Facts (43): Genocide

(photo showing the excavation of mass graves in Srebrenica)
Genocide is the deliberate, systematic and violent destruction of a group (an ethnic, racial, religious, national or political group). This destruction can take many forms:

the outright murder of (the majority of) the members of the group
inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about destruction
measures intended to prevent [...]

Human Rights Facts (35): Support for Democracy and Political Rights

Democracy and human rights are first of all a conviction and a state of mind. If the people cannot be persuaded to accept democracy and human rights, then the case is lost, even when there is prosperity, when the culture is beneficial to the development of democracy and human rights, and when the necessary laws [...]

Human Rights Facts (34): Arms Trade

This post on the international arms trade is a follow-up of a previous post on the evolution of war in the world and of one on the evolution of military budgets and defense spending.
Again, it’s useless to oppose trade in or production of arms in general. People and countries have to be able to defend [...]

Human Rights Facts (33): Military Spending

This is a follow-up of a previous post on the evolution of war in the world. Whereas the number of wars and their intensity seem to decrease over the last decades, the same cannot be said of the arms trade and the defense budgets. This makes it difficult to hope that the statistics on warfare [...]

Chinese Charm Offensive

In response to international criticism of its human rights record in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government has started a PR campaign. Among other things, it will widely distribute the following poster in Olympic venues and hotels. If your Chinese is not very good, tilt your head 90° to the right.

Human Rights Facts (27): Migration

1. Numbers of migrants and trends
The Center for Global Development (CGD) (http://www.cgdev.org) estimates that around 200 million people - one in 33 - do not live in the country where they were born. Not surprisingly, the richest countries receive the largest number of migrants:

(source: http://esa.un.org/migration/index.asp?panel=1)
It is believed that the number of migrants will grow as [...]

Human Rights Quote (53): Double Standards

Double Standard 1. a rule or principle applied more strictly to some people than to others (or to oneself). – The Concise Oxford English Dictionary.
I think I made it clear in this blog how I feel about the importance of promoting democracy and human rights worldwide. However, often it is difficult to decide how to [...]