RightsBase

human rights news & views

Countdown to review of the Non-Proliferation Treaty

Key nuclear states Israel, North Korea, India & Pakistan remain non-signatories to the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).  What is your government's current position on the treaty and issues under review? The next review conference will be held at the UN in New York City in May next year.  This Japanese call from arms invites […]

Mary Ann Glendon’s ‘A World Made New’

Acclaimed Harvard legal academic Mary Ann Glendon's A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Random House, New York 2001) is a great read for anyone with more than a passing interest in human rights. It does what good history writing should do: help us understand where we are today. […]

‘The most violent place in Asia’

Extra-judicial killings are a major source of human rights violation in Asia, according to the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), and, of eleven countries reviewed in the Commission’s 2006 Report on human rights in the region, Sri Lanka is the worst. On this second anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami, reconstruction in the north-east of […]

Health crisis in eastern Burma

The Back Pack Health Worker Team (BPHWT), a Thai NGO established by Burmese expats in 1998, provides primary health care and health education to rural and conflict-ridden areas of Burma. They have 70 teams of 2-5 health workers trying to meet the health needs of some 140,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the east of […]

Women’s rights key to saving baby girls

There are the moral and legal arguments in favour of human rights, which ought to be enough, but, let’s face it, sometimes it helps to come up with self-interested reasons for abusers to cease and desist and for governments to protect and promote. And in this geo-political clime, ‘national security’ is leverage par excellence. Here’s […]

Law enforcement to combat enforced disappearances

Vying for the honour of the first human rights treaty of the 21st century is the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. After 25 years of work, the text of the draft convention has been passed by the UN Human Rights Council and now awaits adoption at the General Assembly […]