Human rights

On 15 January 2003, gunmen shot and beat Marcus Veron, a leader of the Guarani-Kaiowatribe in Brazil, after he attempted to reoccupy ancestral land. Veron, 70, was the third BrazilianIndian to be killed in two weeks.

In 2000, Veron toured Europe with tribal advocates' group Survival to publicise the history of his people, who have been forced off their land by ranchers. Now armed…

While the world noted the international day against female genital mutilation (FGM) on 6 February, African women are making their own stand against the practice.

In Kenya, hundreds of girls ran away from home to escape FGM and are now in hiding. In Ethiopia, the wives of four African presidents led hundreds of women in Addis Ababa in a protest against FGM.

FGM is banned in many parts of Africa, but many families practise it in secret. The United Nations estimates that two…

Peace Brigades International (PBI) is a non-governmental organisation working with communities world-wide to address conflicts in nonviolent ways. We send teams of volunteers into areas of conflict to “make space for peace”.

PBI only enters countries where our international presence has been requested, and after a thorough study of the specific conflict. After that, we assess whether PBI's presence would be effective in dissuading violence, or in persuading parties to address their…

Greetings from the front lines in the battle for democracy in Colombia. I'm not referring to a war waged between the Colombian military, right-wing paramilitaries and left-wing guerrilla groups, but rather the war waged on peaceful civilians who dare to raise their voices or organise politically.

Colombia is often referred to as “the oldest democracy in Latin America” because of its nearly uninterrupted series of elections during the last century. However, civil society and the…

Colombia has become a model of the extreme use of violence to impose neoliberal globalisation. Every form of social organisation that resists is being eliminated: indigenous people, peasants, workers are assassinated for opposing the objectives of investors. Each year more trade unionists are assassinated in this country than in the whole of the rest of the world.

Coca-Cola and its Colombian subsidiary, Panamco SA participate in this dirty war against social movements. So it is that…

The San José de Apartadó Peace Community See page 23. The “Nunca Más” (“Never again”) Project This group works in the area of recovering historical truths regarding national human rights violations. The Women's Organisation of the People (OFP)See page 28. The Committee for Solidarity with Political Prisoners (CSPP) This committee, based in Medellín and Bogotá and in the Chocó and Urabá areas, provides legal advice and defence work for prisoners belonging to social organisations or members of…

While international attention is focused on prisoners transferred by US from Afghanistan to Camp X-Ray, elsewhere in the world the US government is using peace-keeping forces to arrest, unlawfully detain, and in some cases effectively kidnap, people.

After encouraging states such as Bosnia-Herzegovina to adopt international human rights standards, there is a certain irony in the US acting in such clear violation of both domestic legal systems and of those same international human…

Both independent and foreign journalists, and the lesbian and gay community, have again been under attack in Zimbabwe during January and February.

With the build-up to the presidential election - due to be held on 9 March - a combination of new legislation and political policing is attempting to prevent dissent, through restricting press freedom and banning public demonstrations and opposition party election rallies.

At the end of January the restrictive new media bill and…

I have been invited to write about torture for this issue on prisons and really, much or nothing could be said, the topic simply does not allow for neutrality or impartiality.

It has not been easy to find a way of approaching the subject in such a way that allows us to enter - even superficially - into the paradoxes, the emotions, dilemmas and the rationality provoked by this human manifestation: something which is painful, hard, and even tortuous to communicate. So why examine this…

According to the Washington Post "FBI and Justice Department investigators are increasingly frustrated by the silence of jailed suspected associates of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, and some are beginning to that say that traditional civil liberties may have to be cast aside if they are to extract information about the 11 September attacks and terrorist plans".

So far more than 150 people have been detained in the US in connection with the World…

Though a relatively short book, this is a dense and scholarly work. It attempts to contextualise human rights within a three-fold setting - the philosophical, the legal and the political - with the emphasis on the latter, and usually least acknowledged, area.

It is a book which needs careful reading since it condenses many of the current and past theories in international relations, and critiques them in the light of the new era of globalisation, whilst never losing sight of what…

Genocide, according to the UN Convention of 1948, is defined as any acts committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. This book represents a review of the various dimensions of a strategy that might lead to a genocide-free world.

The key strands identified include 1) Strengthening the institutions and actors like the UN and NGOs that are dedicated to the monitoring and the protection of human rights - including the…