A new GlobalPost blog: RIGHTS
A Sri Lankan woman demonstrates against rising living costs in the capital Colombo on March 8, 2012, on International Women’s Day. International Women’s Day (IWD), originally called International Working Women’s Day is a global day observed annually on March 8, celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future.
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” Article 1, Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
NEW YORK – The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is written in 300 languages, from Arabic to Zulu, making it the single most translated document in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
In the aftermath of the horrors of World War II, Eleanor Roosevelt headed up the United Nations committee that drafted the declaration which was proclaimed by the General Assembly in 1948.
To this day, it is a milestone document in the history of how humanity defines the rights inherent to all human beings. And today GlobalPost launches this blog, RIGHTS, dedicated to reporting on the struggles for human rights around the world.
We think it is fitting to launch this blog on March 8, International Women’s Day, as the battle for the rights of women continues in so many corners of the world. One of the most active front lines in this battle is in Afghanistan where GlobalPost Correspondent Jean MacKenzie spent several months reporting “Life Sentence: Women and Justice in Afghanistan.”
The powerful, three-part ‘Special Report,’ which launched yesterday, tells the story of how the national legal and local tribunals are dramatically failing women. Critics say that some U.S. government-funded programs that assist the local tribunals can end up legitimizing a system that carries out misogynistic practices such as ba’ad, which is the barter of women and young girls to settle tribal disputes.
GlobalPost ‘Special Reports’ are also shedding light on labor rights around the world from Colombia to China; on the rights of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) communities from Sweden to South Africa; on the struggles for the right to a free press, assembly and resistance to tyranny from Egypt’s Tahrir Square to Burma’s pro-democracy movement.
This blog is about rights, but it is less concerned with advocacy than it is with the power of story telling. The blog will uphold GlobalPost’s standards for accuracy, fairness and independence as it undertakes unflinching accounts of violations of human rights any where that is happening in the world.