Human Rights
- Dulcie Leimbach
- • July 7, 2019

A group of several hundred international human-rights lawyers reacted to a first-person opinion piece published by the United Nations expert on torture that “had a problematic definition of rape,” according to the lawyers’ open letter, published on July 1,…
- Categories: Gender Violence, Human Rights
- Stéphanie Fillion
- • June 26, 2019

“I am pro-life, I believe that all human life is sacred, and that human life begins at conception,” Andrew Bremberg told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently. Asked if rape victims should have access to abortion, he…
- Categories: Human Rights, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations
- Eleanor Nwadinobi and Meera Khanna
- • June 17, 2019

For many women around the world, the death of a spouse is magnified by many losses — of their social status, marital home, land, property, social security, dignity and, sometimes, their children. But men, on the other hand, lose…
- Categories: Gender Violence, Human Rights, Poverty, WORLDVIEWS
- Barbara Crossette
- • June 4, 2019

In an audacious move that could be the capstone of the Trump administration’s campaign to reverse decades of American support for human rights globally, the State Department is creating a separate new commission to advise Secretary of State Mike…
- Categories: Africa, Asia, Gender Violence, Human Rights, US Foreign Relations
- Barbara Crossette
- • May 28, 2019

With a fierce national budget battle looming in the United States Congress, Democrats on a key committee have formally proposed legislation overturning Trump policies that deny millions of women and girls in developing countries access to vital reproductive health…
- Categories: Health and Population, Human Rights, Women
- Suraj Girijashanker
- • May 27, 2019

Progress in recognizing the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people at the United Nations in New York and in Geneva may seem detached from the realities faced by LGBTQ people in the Middle East and…
- Categories: Africa, Human Rights, Middle East, WORLDVIEWS
- Sonah Lee-Lassiter
- • May 14, 2019

While Koki Muli Grignon was working as the facilitator during the most intense week of the Commission on the Status of Women in New York, a prominent annual women’s rights conference at the United Nations, she received an odd…
- Categories: Gender Violence, Human Rights, US-UN Relations, Women
- Barbara Crossette
- • April 2, 2019

Here’s how the United States government marked the 2019 monthlong celebration of the world’s women in March: Donald Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo got off to an early start on March 13Â by releasing the State Department’s annual…
- Categories: Human Rights, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations, Women
- Jeroen Spangenberg
- • April 1, 2019

So how are women doing these days, during the global push for gender equality? Not all that great in work and legal protections, according to a new World Bank report, even in some prosperous countries — including the United…
- Categories: Human Rights, Women
- Serra Sippel and Akila Radhakrishnan
- • March 14, 2019

Every year, 25 million women across the world are forced to obtain unsafe abortions. The United States, through its foreign policy, is deeply complicit in the violation of these women’s right to life and equality under international law. International human-rights…
- Categories: Gender Violence, Human Rights, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations, WORLDVIEWS
- Kacie Candela
- • January 29, 2019

More than two decades have passed since the United Nations General Assembly approved the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, which encourages countries to protect people who fight for human rights around the world. So why has the situation deteriorated,…
- Categories: Gender Violence, Human Rights, Women
- Barbara Crossette
- • January 22, 2019

Sloppy or nonexistent identification systems at the United States-Mexican border, no organized tracking of children snatched from their parents — some often too young to say who they are — and the withholding of important information by Trump officials,…
- Categories: Human Rights, Migration, Refugees
- Barbara Crossette
- • December 26, 2018

In a rebuke to President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua on Dec. 21, governments of 14 democratic nations in Europe, the United States, Chile and Australia condemned the closing, banning or expulsion of civil-society organizations working on rights and governance…
- Categories: Geopolitics, Human Rights, Latin America
- Dulcie Leimbach  and Laura E. Kirkpatrick
- • December 12, 2018

The nomination of Heather Nauert to succeed Nikki Haley as United States ambassador to the United Nations has quickly enraged some international women’s rights groups and a major Islamic advocacy organization based in the United States, portending a tense…
- Categories: Human Rights, LGBT, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations, Women
- Barbara Crossette
- • November 13, 2018

The results of the recent United States elections raise hopes for women’s rights. At least 100 women, among them young liberals who defeated incumbent men, will hold nearly a quarter of the seats in the House of Representatives when…
- Categories: Human Rights, US Foreign Relations, Women