Defending Human Rights

Since returning from exile last year, former dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier has been treated like an old friend by Haitian President Michel Martelly, rather than a brutal dictator responsible for the deaths, torture and disappearances of thousands of Haitian citizens. Duvalier’s excesses as commander-in-chief of Haiti’s notorious “Tonton Makouts” have been denounced internationally as crimes against humanity.

The issue of land grabs remains a critical threat to human rights, forcing millions of people off the land to make way for large-scale industrial farms. Land grabs in Ethiopia are not only threatening to dislocate farmers but are doing so with significant financial aid from the United States. Take a moment to read the information below provided by our colleagues at the Oakland Institute and the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia and take action.

Three years ago today, on December 27, 2008, the Israeli Defense Force launched Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. The offensive left a trail of death and destruction in its wake, including hundreds dead, thousands displaced, and nearly the entire 1.5 million-person population traumatized and hungry. In the years since the bombing stopped and tanks rolled through agricultural fields, recovery has been slow.

Despite being denied, again, title to the land on which they have labored, there is no quit in this group of women from El Estribo.

On December 10, 2011, the Platform of Haitian Human Rights Organizations (POHDH) will celebrate 20 years of human rights promotion and defense in Haiti. A partner of Grassroots International, POHDH is a non-partisan association of eight non-profit, non-governmental Haitian rights organizations bound by shared beliefs in human rights (individual and collective), democracy, and public education around the issues of social, political, and cultural rights.

The United Nations declared November 29 to be the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People some 63 years ago.