Human Rights

International Summit for Community Wireless Networks 2008

Communications — Wed, 28 May 2008 07:00:00 -0400

A New America Event
05/28/2008 - 4:00pm

The New America Foundation/Wireless Future Program is pleased to announce that the International Summit for Community Wireless Networks (ISC4CWN) will be held on May 28th – May 30th, 2008 in Washington, DC.

Co-hosted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) at its downtown headquarters, IS4CWN is the largest gathering of community wireless networking developers, implementers and allies working to build universal, low-cost wireless broadband networks around the world. The Summit serves as an integral lynch pin for connecting and supporting an alliance between technologists, government leaders and community advocates implementing wireless networks worldwide, and providing a rare international forum for discussion of technology, policy and practical solutions to problems facing community wireless.

Since the first National Summit for Community Wireless Networks in 2004, over 300 Community Internet and municipal broadband projects have sprung up in the United States alone. Previous summits have also helped to spur the development of community wireless networks in places such as Chile and Venezuela, Ghana and South Africa, and throughout Europe. This year’s Summit will focus on how these networks can better serve their target populations, the policies needed to support broader deployment of community wireless systems, and the latest technological and software innovations.

For more information and to register, please visit the conference website.

We Have To Clean Up Bush's Messes Before We Can Focus On China

Ron Tang — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 02:15:00 -0400

This article is the third part of a TNR debate between Steven Clemons and Richard Just, deputy editor from The New Republic, on the appropriate response to the Beijing Olympics.

Please click here for the first part of the debate. For the second part, please click here.

From: Steven Clemons To: Richard Just

Richard reads me pretty well. I don't believe that the U.S. government should throw its weight behind an Olympics-tethered human rights rebuke of China -- not because I feel that advocating for human rights is wrong, but because the approach Hillary Clinton is advocating will… more

Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World

Communications — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:00:00 -0500

A New America Event
02/19/2008 - 1:00pm

When Samantha Power won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, many people wondered what she would write for an encore. Her answer is a groundbreaking biography of Sergio Vieira de Mello. In nearly four decades of work for the United Nations, Sergio distinguished himself as the consummate humanitarian, able to negotiate with-and often charm-cold war military dictators, Marxist jungle radicals, reckless warlords, and nationalist and sectarian militia leaders. His life, and death in a terrorist attack on UN Headquarters in Iraq in 2003, helps frame many of the world's crises and humanitarian challenges of the last few decades.

By taking the measure of this remarkable man's life and career, Power offers a fascinating answer to the question: Who possesses the moral authority, the political sense, and the military and economic heft to protect human life and bring peace to the unruly new world order?

In one of Power's first appearances since the publication of Chasing the Flame, she will discuss her new book, genocide, the state of U.S. foreign policy and the 2008 Presidential election.

Trade Imbalance

adminn — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 01:04:00 -0400

Trade is controversial; around the world many people believe that trade agreements, even trade per se, undermines particular human rights such as labor rights or access to affordable medicine (the right to health). But trade and trade agreements can also advance human rights, directly or indirectly. In fact, some countries use trade policies to advance specific human rights such as labor rights or property rights.

Nonetheless, policymakers struggle to achieve both goals because:

The global economic environment is increasingly complex Human rights conditions, priorities and policies change constantly. Policymakers have no mandate to coordinate trade and human rights Most governments have no structure… more

Humanitarian Action Can Mask an Imperial Agenda

adminn — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 15:31:00 -0400

Even western observers who criticise human rights groups for naivety or irresponsibility generally give them credit for purity of intentions -- and, of course, this noble character is indeed true of many groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. But it is not always true, and western public debate would benefit greatly from a recognition of the moral ambiguities involved in some contemporary human rights advocacy.

The uses of such advocacy for imperial propaganda are alive and well in the US, and some of its allies, at a moment when America's own actions are gravely undermining… more

Eliza Griswold

Operations — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 13:33:00 -0400

FellowEliza Griswold is a writer who focuses on conflict, human rights, and religion. Her reportage and analyses have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, and The New Republic, among other publications. She was a 2007 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and is the recipient of the first Robert I. Friedman Award for international investigative reporting. Her first book of poems, Wideawake Field, was recently published by Farrar Straus and Giroux.As a fellow at the New America Foundation, Ms. Griswold will continue to pursue her interest in conflict, human rights, and religion. She… more