A recent article in the New York Times about India’s Right to Information law made me incredibly happy, because the power of this law demonstrates how law can be used to empower poor and marginalized parts of the population. Law is often vilified. By Americans, but also around the world. The common cartoon of a…
At my internship last summer, what I really took away was the importance of pioneering a new approach to human rights. The 20th century approach to human rights was in defining human rights standards – like the International Covenants on Civil & Political Rights, and Economic, Social, & Cultural rights. I’m sure you know how…
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…
Today, President Obama spoke to Africans in his speech to the Ghanaian Parliament. Before reading, I was kept in anticipation, exciting to hear the new vision of our President with regards to Africa. I was excited, especially, after the revelations in his Cairo speech – and I hoped that he would bring a fresh perspective…
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…
“What can we in the democratic world do to encourage the development of democracy in the Islamic Middle East—and what should we do to avoid impeding or subverting it? There are two temptations to which Western governments have all too often succumbed, with damaging results. They might be called the temptation of the right and…
Technology can do so much – it’s connected people everywhere in a common language, given people increasing amounts of knowledge and information, created an increasingly globalized world, and now — it’s revolutionizing even democratization. Technology, itself, is democratic. It allows anyone to post content on the ever-growing web and gives people immediate access to huge…
I’m currently reading The Future of Freedom by Fareed Zakaria and he makes some extremely useful observations with regards to democracy and liberty. He says there is a clear division between ‘democracy’ and ‘constitutional liberalism’ – something we tend to lump together in the Western world, having lived in liberal democracies our whole lives. But…