Human Rights Archive

Since his arrival in the U.S. nearly two decades ago, Mohammed Jabbateh has dutifully cultivated the image of a hardworking immigrant, building up a container-shipping business in Philadelphia and supporting his family, including five children. But it is another image that helps explain why the Liberian will stand trial next week in federal court. A photograph taken during the West African nation’s 14-year-long period of civil conflict, and submitted as evidence by prosecutors, shows Jabbateh as an unsmiling young man in dark sunglasses surrounded by combatants. Known to Liberians as “Jungle Jabbah,” Jabbateh served as a commander in the United […]

A week ago, U.S. President Donald Trump stunned the world with his bellicose speech before the United Nations General Assembly. Days later, with the fallout from his remarks still hanging in the air over New York, Pyongyang and Tehran, he abruptly changed the subject. In a stump speech in Alabama on Friday and later on Twitter, Trump called out professional football players who have been kneeling during the playing of the national anthem to protest police brutality against black Americans. The storm of controversy he set off has puzzled foreign observers unfamiliar with the arcana of America’s culture wars, and […]

On July 20, more than 1,000 Mexican Marines and federal and local police descended on a southeastern suburb of Mexico City to try and capture a notorious, alleged drug cartel boss. In the clash that ensued, the Marines killed eight suspected drug traffickers from the Cartel de Tlahuac, including its reputed leader, Felipe de Jesus Perez Luna. In response, the cartel’s members hijacked and burned buses in the streets. The operation put to rest a longstanding Mexican government narrative that the country’s drug cartels, present in the majority of Mexican states, do not operate in the capital. It has also […]

A chill has settled over U.S.-Cambodia relations. Since the start of the year, Cambodia’s pugnacious prime minister, Hun Sen, has canceled a planned bilateral military exercise, kicked out a U.S. naval engineering battalion working on charity projects, and assailed Washington for refusing to cancel a $500 million war debt from the early 1970s. This ominous trajectory dipped further with the Sept. 2 arrest of Cambodian opposition leader Kem Sokha on charges of treason. He is accused of conspiring with the United States to foment a “color revolution” aimed at overthrowing Hun Sen’s government, which has ruled Cambodia since 1979. Sokha, […]

Over the summer, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas issued a vague decree restricting freedom of expression on social media and online news sites, ostensibly to uphold “national unity” and the “social fabric.” Critics slammed the measure as an attempt to censure criticism of the Palestinian Authority. In an email interview, Charmaine Seitz, a consultant on the Middle East who formerly reported from Israel and the West Bank and Gaza, explains what’s behind the move, its impact on civil society, and how both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have curbed dissent. WPR: What steps has the Palestinian Authority taken to clamp down […]

YANGON, Myanmar—The crowd waiting for Aung San Suu Kyi’s highly anticipated address on the ongoing crisis in Rakhine, in western Myanmar, looked prepared for a pep rally, rather than a requiem on a conflict labeled “textbook ethnic cleansing.” On Tuesday morning, hundreds of people gathered in front of Yangon’s City Hall to watch a live broadcast of the first speech that Myanmar’s de facto leader has given since the military’s bloody counterinsurgency began in response to attacks from Rohingya militants last month. Yet the crowd’s euphoria all but eclipsed the somber topic at hand. Observers in shirts emblazoned with Aung […]

A year ago this month, efforts to use high-profile diplomacy in the service of global LGBT rights appeared to be gaining considerable momentum. At the United Nations, the Human Rights Council had selected Vitit Muntarbhorn of Thailand to serve as the first independent expert tracking violence and discrimination based on gender and sexual identity. And in Washington, Randy Berry was well into his second year as the State Department’s first special envoy for the human rights of LGBTI persons. To mark the completion of Berry’s first year in that position, the Human Rights Campaign praised him as “a game changer […]

Antonio Guterres is growing a little less enigmatic. Since becoming secretary-general of the United Nations in January, Guterres has often been a rather opaque figure. As I noted in July, he “tends to take decisions with a small circle of advisers, sidelining perplexed U.N. officials he thinks are not up to snuff.” There has been a good deal of grumbling in the U.N. Secretariat about the new chief’s management style, while human rights advocates have faulted him for failing to speak out strongly enough on global injustices. But with world leaders gathering for a week of high-level meetings in New […]

Tundu Lissu was having a rough year even before he was attacked by multiple gunmen last week, taking bullets in the stomach, leg and arm. The opposition lawmaker, who is also president of the national bar association, gained new prominence last year when he began denouncing President John Magufuli as a “petty dictator.” Since then, he has been arrested repeatedly in retaliation for anti-government statements, including this past July and August. By the AFP’s count, he has been arrested “at least six times” in 2017 alone. Last Thursday, the dangers he faced became starker when assailants shot him outside his […]

Religious freedom occupies a complicated place in the halls of U.S. diplomacy. Congress imposed the Office of International Religious Freedom on the State Department in 1998 due to concerns that the Clinton administration was failing to adequately address the plight of religious communities around the world, specifically Christian communities. Because of constitutional restrictions, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom must walk a fine line between being a forceful advocate for religious groups, while being careful not to support one particular religion over any others. In late July, President Donald Trump selected Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, a staunch social conservative, […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series on LGBT rights and discrimination in various countries around the world. Since Haiti was devastated by an earthquake in 2010, the country’s already-marginalized LGBT community has faced a surge of attacks at home, including attempts to pass harsh legal measures that would further restrict LGBT rights. In response, Haiti’s LGBT community has become progressively more organized and active, pushing back for the first time. In an email interview, Amber Lynn Munger, senior program officer at the American Jewish World Service, explains the turbulent environment that LGBT people face in Haiti, […]