There are shortcomings in celebrity led campaigns against “conflict minerals” such as the one in which US actress Robin Wright is involved.
Robin Wright's instagram
The relationship between advocacy organisations based in Western capitals and their marketed constituency of marginalised and disadvantaged African groups is tenuous. What then, is the goal?
Poor knowledge of mental illness and lack of access to mental health care lead many families in Indonesia to chain mentally ill people in shackles.
Reuters/Beawiharta
Thousands of people with mental illness are shackled in Indonesia even though the practice has long been banned. Why does the practice persist and how can we eliminate it once and for all?
Why do vigilante groups in Indonesia get away with harassing and threatening leftists?
Courtesy of Belok Kiri Festival
Non-state actors in Indonesia use violence and intimidation against a critical civil society as a means for the political and business elites to maintain wealth and power.
Under Xi Jingping, the Chinese government has arrested and detained hundreds of lawyers, activists and government critics.
AAP/Alan Porritt
It is important for Australia that messages on human rights in Geneva are backed up with strong and unequivocal public and private action when Malcolm Turnbull visits China.
Claims of whitewashing have been levelled against an Australian university for encouraging students to use particular language about Indigenous peoples. It was the right thing to do.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott has penned an essay in Quadrant defending his government’s stance on national security. It betrays an extraordinarily open contempt for international human rights law…
Refugees rescued off the coast of Greece.
EPA/Kay Nietfeld
In the wake of the Arab Spring the international community lauded Tunisia’s political transition to democracy. But a plethora of challenges may threaten democratic consolidation in the country.
It is for George Brandis to decide whether and how to audit Commonwealth laws for justifiable encroachments on common law rights.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
The Australian Law Reform Commission has given George Brandis a report that does all that it reasonably could, while falling well short of what it was asked to do.
Australia detains asylum seekers in a country that criminalises homosexuality.
AAP/Dan Himbrechts
Western leaders and activists should show humility and allow themselves to be guided by local organisations if they wish to be effective in promoting same-sex rights.
A Syrian child sleeps on the street in Kos.
EPA/Yannis Kolesidis
The tradition of republicanism offered us civil religion, a foundation of belief that could counter any politics or policy that demands sacrifice in this world to be compensated in some “beyond”.
The UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) released its reasons in Hicks v Australia on February 16, 2016, in which it found that Australia had breached David Hicks’ right to be free from arbitrary detention…
Protesters outside Brisbane’s Lady Cilento Hospital show their support for the doctors refusing to release baby Asha until she has somewhere safe to go.
AAP/Dan Peled
Doctors at Brisbane’s Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital are refusing to release a 12-month-old asylum seeker, highlighting a murky intersection of politics, ethics and law.
Tim Wilson has announced he is stepping down as human rights commissioner to contest the Liberal preselection for Goldstein.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
As Australia’s special envoy for human rights, Philip Ruddock will have the chance to change the world instead of listening to other people make suggestions about how it might be done.
Philip Ruddock has been under preselection pressure in his seat of Berowra.
Lukas Coch/AAP