Links

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Human Rights Watch

Most of the reports which you hear about documenting human rights abuses in the world are coming out of this wonderful organistion. The information which Human Rights Watch compiles empower those suffering at the hands of oppressive groups and give them a voice on the world stage.

Like any organisation of their type which is actually doing it's job they are going to receive fierce criticism, recently they've been taken to task for overly focusing on the Palestinian occupation by Israel. Personally I think instead of criticising and organisation like HRW which does such wonderful work, people should instead focus on the other issues they do think justify illumination.

I lived with someone who worked for them once, which I was very impressed with, though I probably didn't take enough advantage of this to learn about the organisation. As it is, I feel it is one of the very best NGOs in the world, which is evidenced by how often their reports are quoted by other NGOs in the field. If human rights is something which concerns you, they are an organisation you probably should support.

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New Internationalist

I don't currently subscribe to any magazines, but one I did for many years was New Internationalist.

Centred around the fight for Global Justice, each month's edition is themed on an important world issue. Their writing is sharp, well informed, has a long term point of view and I always felt I'd gained valuable insight from reading an issue. There are no football pages, gossip sections, or stock market summaries. In short the opposite of what passes for most modern journalism.

I could write a lot about them, but you don't need to take my word for it. You can sign up for three free issues of either their print or online version, so what have you got to lose, click on the link on the left and check it out. Subscription itself isn't expensive and the online version gives you access to their entire archive.

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Anti Slavery

Perhaps it is a flaw of our education system, a focus on our own world, that leads many of us to believe slavery was outlawed in the 1800s in the British Empire and the USA and had left our world.

Slavery in its many forms is still a worldwide phenomenon. Low estimates place it at 12 million people, and higher estimates are more than double that number. It's not just sex trafficking we often hear about and servants in various parts of the world. The uncomfortable truth is that commodities we use often, cocoa, coffee beans, gold, cotton, often involve the use of slave labor, it is likely unless we are rigorous in purchasing ethical products, there are items we have used or are now in our home that have involved slave labour.

Slavery is simply unacceptable, and if the wealthy citizens of the world don't act to put and end to it, it is a sad indictment on us all. The first step we can take is to buy fair trade where possible, thereby withdrawing our implicit financial consent. To really put an end to it we need to get involved in political action, whether by taking action ourselves, or supporting a proxy like anti-slavery international.

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Amnesty International

Amnesty International I guess need little introduction. One of the largest human rights organisations in the world, much of their effectiveness comes from simply shining a light in dark places of human experience.

I did volunteer work one morning a week for a year and a half so for Amnesty in Brisbane. My job was to reformat the action alerts ready to be sent out to media, politicians and other interested people. An action alert was often along the lines "X was taken from his/her home during the night N weeks ago by suspected authorities, their family has not heard from them since and have reason to fear for his/her safety. We call on your government to respect the human rights of X and provide him/her with medical treatment and legal council". Of course who was holding the person and what happened to them often varied. Generally they had much sadder and more painful detail, torture is still common in the world, and age and gender are no defence against it. By doing this I got a direct look into a world that many of us are happy to let exist on the edge of our consciousness. We know people are poor and don't have what we have, but the extent of the violent oppression and suppression of the global populations political freedoms by governments and other powerful groups most people aren't really aware of.

I look forward to a world in which we don't need organisations like Amnesty, but until then we who are lucky enough to be free (ish) should, as Amnesty say, "use our freedom".