To understand Rodrigo Duterte’s rise to power and the public support for killing drug dealers and users, we need to distinguish the empirical from the normative – the ‘what is’ from ‘what should be’.
Does including torture or other human rights violations in video games trivialize the actions? Or might it force us to think more critically about them?
The main criticism leveled at the body that oversees the work of South Africa’s elite police unit, the Hawks, is that it lacks the power to initiate investigations, making it ineffective.
It has taken more than three months for the Australian and PNG governments to jointly announce the Manus Island detention centre will close. But the detainees’ fate is now even more uncertain.
Reports of abuse on Nauru should provide a flashpoint for the Turnbull government to reassess its asylum-seeker policies before more serious harm is inflicted on Australia’s international standing.
Ukraine desperately needs Chinese investment but, like many other countries in this position, this is giving rise to concerns about the consequences for its fragile democracy.
Leaked incident reports from the Nauru detention centre affirm what has been known for a long time: detention is no place for children, and we need alternatives to offshore processing.
Legislating against racial and religious vilification is highly fraught, as the ongoing debate around Section 18C has demonstrated, and unlikely to become less so any time soon.
That South Africa has voted against rights enshrined in its globally celebrated, progressive constitution suggests a troubling indifference to its human rights commitments.
Donald Nieman, Binghamton University, State University of New York
In the 1850s, an influx of immigrants incited xenophobia in Americans. How did Abraham Lincoln, the GOP’s first president, react to the angry mood? A Civil War historian tells the tale.