The International Human Rights Exchange (IHRE) is the world’s only full-semester, multidisciplinary program in human rights for undergraduate students. The program is based at the University of the Witwatersrand in Joahnnesburg, South Africa and is a joint venture with Bard College. Applications for the upcoming Spring Semester are October 15th and are processed through the IHRE website.
Human Rights Watch calls on Ethiopia’s new leadership to release political prisoners, repeal restrictive laws, and reform legislation. The full article is available on HRW’s website.
Companies will be required to disclose if they rely on minerals from war-stricken parts of Africa under new rules adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Read the full article from The Hill’s “On the Money” blog.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke eloquently at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. on July 30, 2012, at a release event for the 2011 International Religious Freedom Report. Secretary Clinton’s speech and the full report are available on Human Rights.gov, a State Department website.
Human Rights Watch declares that the government of Bangladesh should immediately cease its punitive restrictions on international organizations providing lifesaving humanitarian aid to the more than 200,000 Rohingya Muslims in Bangladesh. Read the full article on Human Rights Watch’s website.
Gambian President Yahya Jammeh’s announcement that all death row prisoners will be executed next month has drawn condemnation from human rights groups and foreign governments. Read more onthe LA Times‘s World Now blog.
Mexican Supreme Court finds unconstitutional part of a military law that allowed soldiers accused of abusing civilians to be tried by military tribunals. Read more on the LA Times.
Why do the world’s most revered companies end up embroiled in human rights abuses? What is to be done? How can the language and architecture of the human rights regime apply to companies, when it was created as a state-based system? How should all organizations in this domain–from companies with competing priorities, to resource-challenged NGOs, to the U.N. Working Group–best focus their limited time and capacity?” The U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Analysis and Implementation summarizes the current state of play in the field and contributes to the agenda going forward.
Nonresident Senior Fellow and Kenan Advisory Board member Christine Bader sees Google’s deal to buy cellphone manufacturer Motorola as its biggest opportunity in corporate social responsibility to date—if Google commits to developing a smartphone free of conflict minerals. Read the full post on CSR Wire.