NEW YORK: For months now, it has been clear that no peaceful, even satisfactory, resolution of the conflict in Syria is possible without external intervention. Paradoxically, too many Syrian civilians have been tortured, wounded, and killed to stop (...)
NEW YORK: Justice Richard Goldstone was condemned by many apologists for Israel's human-rights record for his conclusion that Israel intentionally targeted Palestinian civilians as a matter of policy during the 2008-9 Gaza war. Goldstone's United (...)
NEW YORK: The assassination of Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab province in Pakistan and an outspoken critic of religious extremism, has focused attention on his country's draconian blasphemy law. Adopted in its present form by General Mohammad (...)
NEW YORK: Perhaps no country on earth - not even Iraq, Afghanistan, or Sudan - has suffered more gravely from armed conflict in the past decade and a half than the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Several million people have died either directly in (...)
NEW YORK: In a way, the stir aroused by the decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to indict Sudan's President Omar Al-Beshir for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur is a surprise. After all, the Court has no means of its (...)
NEW YORK: The most important contribution of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly 60 years ago, on December 10, 1948, was to assert a powerful idea: rights are universal. Rights do not depend on (...)
It is only a little more than 15 years ago that the first of the contemporary international courts was created to prosecute those who commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Yet there is already a persistent theme in criticism of (...)
At least for purposes of public consumption, southern Africa's political leaders continue to stand by Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, despite his country's ever-deepening economic crisis, which is directly attributable to his tyrannical rule. (...)