human rights

The New Frontiers of Corporate Foreign Policy

Foreign policy used to be a craft practised by diplomats and statesmen. No longer.

U.N. Rights Group Calls on China to Release Detained Lawyer

A United Nations human rights agency has demanded that the Chinese government immediately release a prominent Chinese human rights lawyer who has been detained for nearly a year, according to a statement released on Monday by an advocacy group. The lawyer, Gao Zhisheng, had said he was tortured during previous rounds of detention. The New York [...]

Uganda on the Regional and World Stage

At this critical juncture in geopolitics, Uganda has made great strides to fulfill both its domestic and regional commitments. The Museveni administration continues to use the resources at its disposal to make the best of what is a rather debilitating situation in rural Uganda; the government maintains pressure on the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to [...]

Uganda, United Nations and Millennium Goals: An Application to Create Tangible Change

It is quite simply paradoxical juxtaposition – a delegation from Uganda on one hand seeks a seat at the United Nations Security Council on behalf of the continent of Africa, a symbolic request unsurprisingly indicative of the bravado of the Museveni administration while on the other, the nation has prospectively failed meeting the Millennium Goals [...]

The Line Between Indigenization and Expropriation in a ‘New’ Zimbabwe

Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai stated last week that a law to increase local black ownership of foreign firms would be implemented gradually and without forced sales. Ultimately, his staff have reiterated sentiments that investment is returning and that ‘Zimbabwe is back‘. Zimbabwe’s government published regulations earlier this year forcing foreign-owned firms, including mines and [...]

China and the Human Cost of Losing Google

In the wake of the latest threat by the Chinese government, Google Inc.’s only choice is to pack up and exit the Chinese market, wholesale. In lieu of this, Chinese authorities on Friday told local news websites that if Google China does close, they will be required to use only official news accounts of situations, [...]

Tackling Negligence Head-On

Marian Tupy is a policy analyst at the CATO Institute in Washington DC with a unique interest in Zimbabwean affairs. He, along with many of our readers and indeed writers, was horrified while watching images emanating from Zimbabwe covering the cholera outbreak, and was baffled as to why it wasn’t nipped in the bud at [...]

Zimbabwe: Zanu-PF Sets Up Torture Bases

Multiple reports have been emanating from Zimbabwe, claiming that Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF has established secret militia bases in Masvingo and some parts of Manicaland province. We can only document the reasoning behind and the existence of these bases as unsurprisingly abhorrent and furthering the lack of fundamental human rights that has plagued Zimbabwe. However, Radio [...]

The Language of Human Rights

This article was first published in The Wall Street Journal. Human rights are under attack, and language is the weapon. The very grammar of justice has fallen into the wrong hands, instrumentalized in the elaborate and sensational theaters of due process. A trial without any rights of defense is still called a “trial,” a conviction [...]

Zimbabwe: Journalist Flees Death Threats

Journalist Stanley Kwenda has fled to South Africa after alleging that he received a death threat by telephone  from a senior police officer, linked to a story he wrote in The Zimbabwean. The newspaper says that “‘impeccable sources” have supplied them with the name of a senior member of the police’s law and order section, a member [...]