Did Myanmar President Thein Sein Deserve the Warm Welcome?

May 22, 2013 at 4:27 PM

The warm White House reception, combined with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s call for the suspension of sanctions on imports from Myanmar, gave President Thein Sein a big boost. Did he deserve it? (Photo Credit: Shawn Thew, Pool/Getty Images).

President Obama welcomed Myanmar President Thein Sein to the White House this week, hailing what he called “steady progress“ being made on economic and political reforms. President Obama also reminded Myanmar’s leader that many challenges remain to be addressed, including ethnic strife, rampant corruption, and the continued detention of political prisoners.

The warm White House reception, combined with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s call for the suspension of sanctions on imports from Myanmar, gave President Thein Sein a big boost.

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World Water Day: Celebrating Women’s Rights

By Lisa Schechtman

March 19, 2013 at 1:48 PM

A Malian girl carries a water can she just partially filled at a water pump in northern Mali’s city of Gao (Photo credit should read Pascal Guyot/AFP/Getty Images).

Water is a women’s issue. World Water Day, March 22, is Women’s Rights Day.

As basic economic, social and cultural rights, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) are a government’s responsibility. As a women’s rights issue, WASH is a concern for us all.

There is a great deal of evidence backing this up.

Every year, 40 billion working hours are lost to water collection worldwide, mostly by women and girls. This violates their rights to employment and education by taking up time and energy; and their rights to safety and dignity by exposing them to injury, animal attack, and physical and sexual violence. Since the water they collect is usually unsafe (if it were safe, chances are they wouldn’t have to walk far to get it, because a tap would be available near home), it violates their right to health, exposing them to Neglected Tropical Diseases, diarrhea, even uterine prolapse from carrying heavy loads.

Lack of sanitation and safe drinking water violates the right to safe and adequate housing. Combined with poor hygiene, it makes people sick because they ingest fecal matter without even knowing it, creates breeding grounds for insects carrying diseases like trachoma, and contaminates water sources; water-borne illnesses impact children most, keeping more kids from school and causing trauma for the many parents whose children don’t survive these diseases, up to 2,000 each day.

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India Needs Independence From Hunger

By Govind Acharya

August 14, 2012 at 4:23 PM

Low-income demonstrators in Amritsar on May 7,2012. (Photo Narinder Nanu/AFP/GettyImages)

This August 15, India will celebrate its 65th year of independence from the British Empire. Since then, the country has seen some improvements in the livelihoods of the poorest of its citizens. However, India still has some of the highest rates of malnutrition in the world.

Millions lack adequate sanitation and die of easily preventable diseases such as diarrhea (the satirical newspaper The Onion did a hilarious take on this during India’s recent electricity blackout). In many parts of northern India, maternal mortality rates exceed those of Sub-Saharan Africa.

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World Water Day: Progress Made, Work Still to Do

By Lisa Schechtman

March 21, 2012 at 3:52 PM

A Romani family wash with water from the polluted stream nearby their home in an informal settlement in Slovenia. Water from the polluted stream is used for washing, cooking, bathing and drinking.

Earlier this month, the UN made a major announcement: the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target on access to safe drinking water worldwide has been met.

This comes years ahead of the 2015 deadline, and is one of the first of the MDG targets—focused on reduction of extreme poverty and associated development issues—to be met. Yes, it’s a huge accomplishment. But, it masks extraordinary human rights violations.

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Can A Toilet Save Your Life?

By Lisa Schechtman

November 9, 2011 at 11:33 AM

Sanitation is rarely discussed—after all, what we do with toilets is not usually a topic for polite company. For some of us, the very existence of World Toilet Day seems like a joke. The problem is that many people don’t have a toilet, or any other form of sanitation. In fact, 2.6 billion people don’t. It’s a basic service – and a fundamental human right – that most of us take for granted, but one that is currently denied to 40% of the world’s population.

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Occupy Wall Street: If Banks Are Too Big to Fail, Are People Too Small to Matter?

By Curt Goering

October 19, 2011 at 3:49 PM

Protesters affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement rally in Foley Square before marching through Lower Manhattan (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Originally posted to The Guardian

Occupy Wall Street protesters are understandably angry at the support given big business, while individuals struggle against high unemployment, costly health care coverage and shrinking social services.

A little while ago, opponents of universal health care coverage in the United States claimed that it was a “moral hazard.” The argument characterized people as lazy and irresponsible, prone to “abuse” the system at significant cost to society but none to themselves. The logic and economy of preventative care was largely ignored, as was the fact that access to health care is a human right.

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220,00 Children: Creating A Lost Generation in Zimbabwe

By Sarah Hager

October 11, 2011 at 1:49 PM

On October 10th, Zimbabwe went before the United Nations Human Rights Council to answer concerns about the country’s human rights record. One issue Amnesty raised in its submission to the Council is the lingering effects of Operation Murambatsvina.

In 2005, the government of Zimbabwe destroyed homes and businesses in informal settlements, displacing an estimated 700,000 people. This is the same as wiping out the entire city of Columbus, Ohio. Since then, the government has failed to address the needs of these people in any meaningful fashion.

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Victory for Women's Health: Free Preventative Services for Women

By Cristina Finch

August 4, 2011 at 2:48 PM

Health And Human Services Dept. Approves Free Birth Control For Women

(Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

On August 1, 2011, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced new guidelines for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, ensuring that insurance plans cover a wide array of preventive services for women at no additional cost.

Amnesty International has long advocated for the right to accessible, affordable and adequate health care that responds to the particular needs of women. The assurance that women have access to the full range of contraceptive methods approved by the Food and Drug Administration is a powerful and encouraging statement about the importance of women’s preventative health care.

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How to Help Somalia

By The Editors

July 25, 2011 at 3:31 PM

By Gilbert Martin, Somalia Country Specialist for Amnesty USA

The Amnesty report on Somalia’s Children under Attack released last week reflects the despair already engulfing what is being called a Failed State.

You’ve read the reports and seen the images: continued fighting with no end in sight; more victims – the lucky ones living to tell of their ordeals; the teeming refugee camps across the Kenyan border; all compounded by the severe region wide drought and, now, famine.

None of us can do a whole lot about this deplorable situation, right? The Somalis have been at war for a couple of decades, seemingly fighting over dust and rubble (and as to the drought – well, what can we do about that when we can’t even agree as a government about whether or not global warming is influenced by human behavior?)

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