By the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law, the Dalit NGO Federation (Nepal), and the International Dalit Solidarity Network. Republished courtesy Smita Narula, NYU.
In creating the new constitution for Nepal, the Constituent Assembly
has the opportunity to crystallize the country’s peace, advance Nepal’s
political, economic and social development, and demonstrate a
commitment to the inherent dignity of all individuals. In order to
fulfill these paramount goals, the rights of all of Nepal’s Dalit
population – especially women and “lower” Dalit castes – must finally
be realized.
[COMMENTARY] ASEAN’s Human Rights Commission: Where are your teeth?
It was unsurprising that the launch of the new Human Rights Commission of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was so ill-attended. Not only did leaders of several member states not bother to show for the ceremony; civil society leaders also walked out in protest.
[REPORT] South Korean NGOs Respond to the North Korean Refugee Crisis
By Hye Gi Shim
When a devastating famine hit North Korea in the mid-1990s, hundreds of
thousands of North Koreans were forced to leave their homes and cross the
border into China.
This marked the beginning of a swelling North Korean refugee crisis. Today the Ministry of Unification estimates
that the total number of North Koreans in South Korea is reaching 17,000. As
the problem has grown, the response of South Korean civil society has also
evolved.
[NEWS] International AIDS Groups Urge UN to Speak Out Against State Harassment of AIDS Activists
UNAIDS must speak out against government restrictions on AIDS NGOs in Asia, Asia Catalyst said today at the International Conference on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP). Physicians for Human Rights and over 30 international AIDS groups joined in calling on UNAIDS to take a stronger stand on the rights of front line AIDS organizations.
Read more: English press release (pdf)
[COMMENTARY] HIV and Human Rights in China
[:en]Remarks by Joanne Csete at launching of Asia Catalyst’s report I Will Fight to My Last Breath: Barriers to AIDS Treatment in China on April 28, 2009.
I would like to offer these remarks in honor of our colleague Mr Hu Jia who is currently in a Chinese prison partly because he exercised his freedom of speech in the form of bold advocacy on behalf of people living with HIV in China. I am also deeply honored to be in the presence of Mr Li Dan and Ms. Shen Tingting and to acknowledge their pioneering work on behalf of people living with HIV.
I congratulate Asia Catalyst on the hard work that went into the production of this very useful report and especially for reminding us that addressing HIV in any population means addressing a wide range of human rights and human rights abuses.
We are in a moment in the global health world when there are many powerful interests making the case that the world has focused too much on HIV, that HIV has been treated as too “special” and has received too much money and attention, and that we need to make our response to HIV more like the response to other health problems. My reaction when I hear this is that this line of argument opens the door for those who would push us back to the time when all global health problems were horribly underfunded and neglected. Why are we not all pushing for every health problem and for health systems challenges to attract the kind of funding that HIV/AIDS has attracted, rather than for HIV to be pushed back into the “normalcy” of other problems?
