Poverty and impunity - the two most alarming trends affecting human rights in a divided world

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Poverty and impunity undermine human rights in a divided world
Amnesty International
Press release, 08/11/2007


(Mexico) Poverty and impunity were identified as the two most alarming trends affecting human rights in a divided world, concluded a panel of eminent persons at the Opening Ceremony of the 2007 International Council meeting of Amnesty International in Mexico today.

Under the theme 'Human Rights in a Divided World', distinguished figures recalled the great hope, which emerged after the fall of communism in the early 1990s, that there would be a real global consensus on how to tackle the world's problems. But instead inequality, division and discord - between rich and poor, between the North and the South, and across religious and political divides - appear to be the defining features of our times.

The high level panel took place at the official Opening session of the world's largest human rights organization at its biennial International Council Meeting, attended by more than 400 representatives of Amnesty International from every region of the world.

The panellists included Jan Pronk, former Head of the UN Mission in Sudan; Ruth Ojiambo Ochieng, Executive Director of Isis-Women's International Cross Cultural Exchange (Isis-WICCE), Uganda; Hernando de Soto, President of the Lima-based ILD; Freshta Raper, an Iraqi Kurd from Halabja who was a victim of torture in her home country in the mid-1980s; Nader A Fergany, Director of Almishkat Centre for Research and Training in Cairo and lead author of The Arab Human Development Report; and, Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International.

The panel concluded that the three great hopes for closing these divides are a strengthened and reformed United Nations, the burgeoning of a global civil society, and the ability of today's youth to identify with a borderless world.

The official opening of the International Council Meeting was symbolized through the lighting of the Amnesty International Candle by two representatives from the Independent Human Rights Commission of Morelos (CIDHM), together with the Chair of the International Executive Committee of Amnesty International, Lilian Gonalves-Ho Kang You and the Chair of the International Council Meeting, Claus Hoxbro.

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http://news.amnesty.org/index/ENGORG500402007

[Forkboy]

1. K&R

Interesting read.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. Free energy for third world and developing nations in the form of

windmills will go a long way towards helping people pull themselves up.

http://www.dailycal.org/sharticle.php?id=19461


The project was further spurred on by the fierce independence of a people who fought a 30-year war with Ethiopia before gaining sovereignty in 1993. "It's not just a foreign project that is attempting to put a facility in a country. The project itself is being used to develop internal talent and capability," said Karina Garbesi, an associate professor of geography and environmental studies at CSU East Bay who is familiar with the program. "It's truly a visionary and optimal development project."

Wind energy should have profound effects on Eritrean's quality of life. "The social, human and even economic benefits appear to me to be 5 to 10 times larger per dollar spent than projects in the U.S.," Van Buskirk says. "You provide electricity to a house and now each person in that house has three or four more hours in which to do things."

Perhaps the most surprising factor in this project's inception is also the one that should most interest UC Berkeley students. "In some sense this whole $3.8 million project derives from the 1998 master's thesis project of a student at San Jose State," Van Buskirk said. "That's one advantage of students who decide to do research in developing countries. They may find that five or ten years later their research becomes a project."

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3. ..

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