Featured series 
Tag: Human Rights
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Nation & World
Health, rights journal open to all
December will mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a United Nations convention that in 30 articles memorializes basic freedoms involving speech, property, health, security, and the rule of law.
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Nation & World
HMS’s VanRooyen earns Humanitarian Award
At its annual dinner on Sept. 5, the Hippocrates Society honored Harvard Medical School Associate Professor of Medicine Michael VanRooyen with the 2008 Humanitarian Award. VanRooyen, who is also associate professor in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), was recognized for his extensive work in humanitarian…
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Nation & World
HLS student makes journey back to Iraq
Those looking for a relaxing summer break may have opted for somewhere other than Iraq. But for one Harvard Law School (HLS) student, the visit to the country in August was about work — and duty.
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Nation & World
Undergrads spend summer studying international law, child soldiers
Trevor Bakker ’10 spent this summer at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the world’s first permanent war crimes court.
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Nation & World
Stewart named director of HKS’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
Scholar, author, and activist Rory Stewart has been named director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). Stewart will assume his new position on Jan. 1.
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Nation & World
Nasredeen Abdulbari: ‘Lawyers are the cement of society.’
Nasredeen Abdulbari identifies no particular “aha!” moment when he knew what his life’s work would be.
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Nation & World
Three seniors will pursue public service as Richardson Fellows
The Class of 2008 recipients of the Elliot and Anne Richardson Fellowships in Public Service will help others in locations from South Africa to Brazil, documenting human rights abuses, improving sanitation, and helping young women to gain economic autonomy.
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Nation & World
Discussion pivots on worker protection in a global economy
Ethical employment practices and safeguarding workers’ rights in a global economy were the focus of discussion April 29 at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum.
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Nation & World
The literary roots of human rights
The aim was determining the truth and the technique was torture. Pain was administered in secret, under strict guidelines, often with a judge and doctor present. Once a suspect confessed, the confession would have to be repeated in court.
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Nation & World
Surgeon describes horrors that ensue when rape is a ‘weapon of war’
Denis Mukwege, a recent visitor to Harvard, is slow-spoken, weary, and grave. And well he might be. For nearly a decade, Mukwege has been doctor to thousands of women raped in the course of a long civil war in south central Africa — in effect, that continent’s World War II — which has so far…
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Nation & World
Exploring tangled legacy of slavery
Certain adages exist about historical repetition: those who don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it, for example, or history doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme. Walter Johnson doesn’t necessary believe in these old chestnuts, but he does see how the past and the present can illuminate one another in order to provide…
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Nation & World
Glendon named U.S. ambassador to the Holy See
President Bush has appointed Harvard Law School (HLS) Professor Mary Ann Glendon as the new U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. The president announced his intention to nominate Glendon on Nov. 5.
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Nation & World
1.8 million veterans lack health coverage
Of the 47 million uninsured Americans, one in every eight (12.2 percent) is a veteran or member of a veteran’s household, according to a study by physicians from Cambridge Health Alliance who are also Harvard Medical School researchers. The study is published in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health. Approximately 1.8…
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Nation & World
Looking at China’s role in Africa
China’s increasing influence in Africa is a double-edged sword that wields the potential for prosperity and despair.
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Nation & World
‘Who is the human in human rights?’
What does it mean to be human? Are all people the same, and if so, entitled to an identical set of rights and treatment? Or, in the age of globalization, do wide-ranging cultural, moral, religious, and political beliefs and behaviors make the definition of humans — and therefore human rights — contingent, that is dependent…
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Nation & World
Wade hails ‘African renaissance’
His Excellency Abdoulaye Wade, president of the Republic of Senegal, visited Harvard last week (Sept. 27). Looking younger than his 81 years, he walked onto the stage at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum to the sound of a tama, a West African “talking drum” used to telegraph complex messages.
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Nation & World
‘Witness to Darfur’ to bring awareness to Sanders Theatre
The Boston Landmarks Orchestra and Harvard Extension School will co-present “Witness to Darfur,” a unique evening of dialogue, film, and music, in Sanders Theatre on Oct. 1 at 8 p.m. The two-hour program aims to draw attention to the tragic events in Sudan, while acknowledging the work of organizations and individuals who are committed to…
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Nation & World
New index quantifies performance of governments
“All citizens of all countries desire to be governed well.” That plain statement — universal and self-evident — is the first sentence of a Harvard-generated report released this week in London. According to its authors, it is the first attempt in the world to systematically and objectively quantify governance.
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Nation & World
Serbian foreign minister talks about Kosovo, other issues
Today Vuk Jeremic´ of the Republic of Serbia is, at 32, one of the youngest foreign ministers on the planet. Last week he was back at his alma mater (M.P.A. ’03) to describe his own political odyssey and to face some tough questions about his country’s foreign policy agenda. He made his government’s case for…
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Nation & World
Little Rock Central: 50 years later
It’s been half a century, but it feels like just yesterday for at least one member of the “Little Rock Nine.” “I can’t feel this so strong, it doesn’t make sense … you are supposed to be over it,” says an emotional Minnijean Brown Trickey in the opening of the film “Little Rock Central High:…
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Nation & World
Humanitarian aid professionals strategize
The public and private agencies that respond to war and disasters sometimes respond disastrously — and it’s time to do something about it. That was the basic message of a three-day Humanitarian Health Conference at Harvard Sept. 6-8, which drew more than 120 emergency physicians, epidemiologists, and professional aid workers from 68 organizations.
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Nation & World
IFC, U.N. to cooperate on study of investment contracts and human rights
The International Finance Corp. (IFC), which is a member of the World Bank Group, and Kennedy School of Government (KSG) Professor John Ruggie, who is the United Nations secretary-general’s special representative on business and human rights, recently launched a joint study on foreign direct investments and human rights.
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Nation & World
Gates receives European Culture of Peace Award
Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. has been awarded the European Science and Culture Award from the City for the Cultures of Peace in Berlin. The award is given in recognition of his fight against the abuse of human rights, racism, and discrimination, and efforts on behalf of the victims of oppression. Gates, the Alphonse…
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Nation & World
Africans is U.S. practice range of religions
In Nigeria, where Jacob Olupona was born, there are more Anglicans than there are in England. There is also a growing Pentecostal movement as well as a large Roman Catholic presence. In 2005 when the College of Cardinals met in Rome to choose a new pope, one of the leading contenders was a Nigerian, Cardinal…
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Nation & World
Former child soldier gives stirring talk
Call him Ishmael. But don’t call him part of a “lost generation.” It’s a phrase that “I absolutely detest,” Ishmael Beah, a former child soldier in the civil war in Sierra Leone, told his audience at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government March 14 at an event co-sponsored by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.
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Nation & World
NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to deliver KSG address
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has been named this year’s graduation speaker at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (KSG). Kristof will deliver his remarks June 6 in the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum.
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Nation & World
Schulz: U.S. should take stand on torture
“The ancient Greeks would have been ashamed of us.” That was the assessment of Amnesty International USA’s former executive director William Schulz of the U.S. military’s abuses of prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2004. Schulz said that Greeks and Romans routinely tortured slaves as a way to establish the truth of a situation…
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Nation & World
Tackling tradition and taboos
Mary Gitagno plainly remembers the pain of her traditional Tanzanian tribe’s female circumcision ritual. It is a pain she determined her own daughters would never feel. In the years since, Gitagno went far beyond sparing her daughters from female genital mutilation, beginning a nonprofit organization to lobby the government and educate the public about the…
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Nation & World
Power sees U.S. foreign policy on steep downhill slide
On Aug. 19, 2003, the first suicide bomb to hit Iraq went off with a roar at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, where the United Nations had been encamped for a dozen years. Among the dead was a Brazilian diplomat, Sérgio Vieira de Mello, the UN high commissioner for Human Rights.
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Nation & World
Sewall named director of Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
Sarah Sewall was appointed director of the Kennedy School of Government’s (KSG) Carr Center for Human Rights Policy on Jan. 25. She began her appointment immediately and will serve through the 2006-07 academic year.