Unless you’ve been living under a rock, chances are you have seen your Facebook and Twitter newsfeeds blow up with reposts of Invisible Children’s (IC) new viral social media campaign, “Kony 2012,” intended to make Joseph Kony, the rebel leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, infamous worldwide — so that the international community can bring…
Women Under Siege is a fascinating new initiative of the Women’s Media Center that focuses on rape and sexual violence used as tools of control in instances of war, conflict, and genocide throughout the world. The project is spearheaded by Gloria Steinem and hopes to increase our understanding of the causes of mass sexual assaults…
My inspiring story of the day (other than, you know, all the protests happening in Bahrain, Wisconsin, etc..) was about an innovative mobile gender justice court prosecuting perpetrators of sexual violence and rape in Congo. The court is trying eleven soldiers, responsible for a mass rape on New Year’s Day of dozens of women and…
I just wanted to plug this great new Foreign Policy article, “How Obama Betrayed Sudan: The former Sudan Envoy on how U.S. government policy could push the country back into civil war.” I took a class at Northwestern, about Sudan and Darfur, with the author – Richard Williamson, our former Sudan Special Envoy. His perspective…
Just this Wednesday, there was a lot of buzz on the Twitterverse about FrontlineSMS:Legal, a new addition to the FrontlineSMS family. According to their website: FrontlineSMS:Legal helps our partners bridge the distance between communities and the legal services they need most, using low-cost mobile tools. FrontlineSMS:Legal develops and implements technologies that improve the delivery, reach,…
A recent New York Times article describes the world of comfort – and perhaps even luxury – that war criminals are provided with at The Hague, Netherlands. I don’t have a gym, a personal trainer, or a spiritual room in my tiny bedroom. On my (soon to be) non-profit salary, I certainly won’t be able…
From Jurist: Indonesia’s justice minister announced Tuesday the opening of a prison wing intended to confine individuals convicted of corruption….The wing was added to alleviate overcrowding in the Indonesian prison system and was also in response to criticism that wealthy prisoners are permitted to live in luxury. Anti-corruption reform has been one of the primary…
Thanks to Running Chicken, I found an excellent new article by Hunjoon Kim and Kathryn Sikkink: Explaining the Deterrence Effect of Human Rights Prosecutions for Transitional Countries. The article basically concludes that: We find that human rights prosecutions after transition lead to improvements in human rights protection, and that human rights prosecutions have a deterrence…
Recently, I wrote a post about the injustice of international justice – that war criminals are given decent living conditions and fair trials, while more petty criminals are denied the same. I ran across a very related argument in an excellent article: After Arusha: Gacaca Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda by Alana Tiemessen. Here it is:…
I just ran across this fascinating Time interview with Stephen Rapp, who was previously chief prosecutor for the Special Court for Sierra Leone (H/T Shelby Grossman). Rapp states: The concern all of us had was that we were conducting justice in a comfortable courtroom with long trials and well-paid attorneys. Prisoners had single cells, and…
