KAMPALA, 17 May 2012 (IRIN) – The arrest of a senior Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) commander has reignited debate in Uganda about what to do with alleged war criminals: let them go, to encourage other rebels to surrender; or prosecute them in the name of accountability and justice. LRA commander Caesar Acellam Otto, along with [...]

COLOMBO, 17 May 2012 (IRIN) – Three years after the government of Sri Lanka declared an end to decades of civil conflict with separatist rebels, thousands of people are still missing, according to the UN and Sri Lankan activists. The Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) of the UN Office for the High [...]

RAMALLAH/TEL AVIV, 14 May 2012 (IRIN) – Israeli settlers east of the separation barrier in the central West Bank occupy the land most critical for any future final status agreement under a two-state solution. But instead of limiting settlement expansion, critics say the Israeli authorities are setting a dangerous precedent by legalizing new outposts and [...]

We can overcome the problems of delivering collective action on climate change by treating mining, deforestation, ocean degradation and more as violations of human rights Global climate-change talks often resemble the scene of a traffic accident. Multiple voices shout each other down in a bid to tell their own version of events. What is the [...]

LONDON, 10 April 2012 (IRIN) – Motorcycles, school fees, counselling, cash: Thomas Lubanga’s `kadogo’ (child soldiers) know what reparations they want from the International Criminal Court (ICC). Less clear is what a cash-strapped tribunal can offer damaged children taken from their families and forced to fight in a brutal ethnic conflict in northeastern Democratic Republic [...]

Mali is on the brink of a major humanitarian disaster following a coup and rebellion in the north, Amnesty International says. The human rights group says aid agencies must be allowed immediate access to the country, to prevent more civilians dying. Some fighters in the north have said they have stopped military operations. But Amnesty [...]

(Reuters) – The United Nations launched an international investigation on Thursday into Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories, with the United States isolated in voting against the initiative brought by the Palestinian Authority. The U.N. Human Rights Council condemned Israel’s planned construction of new housing units for Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East [...]

JOHANNESBURG, 3 April 2012 IRIN – A Nobel laureate, a Swedish environmentalist’s idea, the “doughnut” concept, Scandinavia’s sense of social capital, measuring the quality of life, and valuing the oceans are just some of the things trending in the run-up to the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development due to be held on 20-22 June [...]

Escalating tensions between the Mapuche people and Chile’s government following a spate of devastating forest fires reveal the high cost of policies that champion multinational corporations by subordinating environmental protection to market growth. The fires have thrown into stark relief the consequences of a strategy that has made Chile a rising star in the Organisation [...]

Honduras has become a human rights disaster. The country now has the world’s highest murder rate. And impunity for political violence is the norm. For all this, the United States deserves a good deal of the blame. I was pleased to see the New York Times recently publish a hard-hitting op-ed by Dana Frank that [...]