In the U.S., we often take our legal rights for granted; but sometimes — in other countries, the legal system actually serves to set back the rights of the poor and marginalized groups. In China, a pretty shocking new law has significantly curtailed the rights of divorced women. On August 13, the Supreme Court issued…
I haven’t had the chance to write about Libya yet, but our intervention in the country has been on my mind for some time now. Now, I’m no expert on international relations, but I want to note that I am torn on intervention in general. At this point, however, the intervention in Libya seems like…
Watching this revolution unfold has given me so many thrills and chills down my spine. My heart has been with the Egyptian people all along, and this mass movement has shown me what the power of citizens and humanity united can achieve. I find it incredible that simply by coming together in large numbers, a…
“If I wasn’t pregnant, I would’ve just stayed home.” Marwa Rakha told the Huffington Post by phone, explaining her attendance of the protests in Egypt while seven months pregnant. “I went out because of my baby. I owe this to him.” — Huffington Post In honor of all the courageous Egyptian women (and men!) standing…
I would be remiss if I didn’t at least mention the revolutions shaking the Middle East over the past few weeks, starting with Lebanon, Tunisia, Yemen, and now spreading to Egypt, Jordan, and Sudan. Today, more than a million protesters have taken to the streets in Cairo, and the army has said it will not…
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:…
In “Our Turn to Eat,” Michaela Wrong writes about Kenya: Kenya’s foreign partners failed to grasp that a system of rule based on the ‘Our Turn to Eat’ principle was explicitly designed to prevent the trickle-down upon which they counted for progress. The better Kenya’s economy fared, the more unstable the country actually became, because…
It’s a widely believed theory that the Internet, social media and other online tools and technologies can serve to undermine authoritarian regimes and help to spread democracies. As I wrote before, technology represents the ‘democratization of information’ – by which regimes no longer have a monopoly on knowledge. By reaching people who might never have…
A few days ago, I had the privilege of attending a lecture at LSE by Professor Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion. He talked about the topics in his new book: Wars, Guns, and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places. I haven’t read it yet, but am itching to get my hands on a copy…
