Turn in Thy Neighbour — Hong Kong’s New Informers’ Hotline
On Nov. 6, it was reported that Hong Kong’s ‘Informers' Hotline’ received over 1,000 reports within hours of police launching the initiative on social media. Day two saw numbers soar beyond 2,500. The ‘National Security Department Reporting Hotline’ has been established
Rural Women Must Be at the Heart of COVID-19 Response and Recovery
COVID-19 continues to sweep across the world, and has now spread from the developed world to the global South. With rural populations making up three-quarters of the world’s poor, the impact of the pandemic will inevitably be most devastating in developing
What’s Wrong with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)?
The UDHR or Universal Declaration of Human rights (UDHR) had the trigger for its codification in the aftermath of the Second World War, as a way for states all over the world to collectively avoid such atrocities and for suffering
Guantanamo Bay: an example of American Hypocrisy?
After the terrorist attacks in the USA on 11 September 2001, the George W Bush administration declared a ‘War on Terror’, and with that the establishment of Guantanamo Bay: a place for the US authorities to hold people perceived to
Assessing China: For Worse or Better
To assess how serious a threat China is to our society and our values, it helps to take a step back in time. The 1940s were among the most momentous in modern history. The end of World War II, the
Gender As Symbolic Glue For Different Extremist Movements
The demonization of ‘gender ideology’ has become a key rhetorical tool in the construction of a new conception of ‘common sense’ for a wide audience. It is simplistic to believe that Kaczynski, Orbán, and Trump have risen to power simply by
The Effects of Globalisation on Languages and Cultural Diversity
Part of the difficulty of advocating linguistic rights as the facilitator of other human rights, like the freedom of socio-economic choices, lies in the fact that a language-based community cannot be free of complexity due to religion, gender, cultural and
Human Rights, Technology and Partnerships
Solid documentation and verified facts are key tools for human rights defenders. Human rights violations happens daily, all over the world, and there is always someone who knows something. The challenge is documenting those violations, placing responsibility, telling the story
The universal validity of human rights
The international community must recognise democratic freedoms and social justice as basic principles in order to secure lasting world peace. Only then can a global civil society develop in which men, women and children can live without fear of discrimination, oppression
Humanitarian Aid Organizations Under Risk
The 2018 Annual Report of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), an organization for humanitarian purposes, has been released. The new Director General of the Office for South America, Josefina Martorell, has confessed that 2018 was not an easy year for MSF or
Digital Outreach: Be the Story
There is a twilight zone lived in by family members of the disappeared. Daily life, joys and frustrations happen against an internal backdrop that is difficult to share. Gulruy Asqar writes movingly about this in Missing: Loved ones in East
The ICC is Taking a Pro-Active Approach to Myanmar
The International Criminal Court (the ICC) is the only permanent international criminal tribunal with the mandate to investigate and prosecute mass atrocities. However, the ICC is a treaty-bound tribunal, the treaty being the Rome Statute. This very fact prevents the