Even in Latin America, a region often thought to share the same democratic orientation and values of the U.S. and Europe, there are some striking differences among groups of countries regarding supporting norms and practices on human rights internationally, with some countries lining up more with autocratic countries of the Global South.
Despite legal setbacks in Peru and El Salvador and retrograde rhetoric from the newly-elected President of Guatemala and the Catholic cardinal of the Dominican Republic, overall LGBT civil, human and political rights continued to make gains across the region.
This week’s stats shot measures equal protection of laws and lack of discrimination across the region. Equal treatment does not improve with increasing development.
A week before the Donors’ Summit in San Salvador I was able to catch up with Kathy Hall of the Summit Foundation. In a wide-ranging interview she discusses the failures of governments in Central America to provide for the younger generation, the need for the U.S. to condition its assistance to local governments meeting their own commitments, and the moral obligation of donors to collaborate and ensure greater transparency.
Ecuador and Venezuela on the UN Human Rights Council? The UN General Assembly just voted Ecuador to the organization’s human rights body and renewed Venezuela’s mandate—two countries that have some of the worst human rights records in the Western Hemisphere.
Last week, Human Rights Watch, along with 36 other human rights organizations, issued a statement that Venezuela did not deserve to be re-elected to the UN Human Rights Council. This week, unfortunately, the UN General Assembly did just that. Here’s why the human rights groups were right.
En los últimos años, la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos se ha encontrado bajo constantes ataques diplomáticos destinados a debilitar el alcance de su mandato y privilegiar la soberanía nacional.
The longest running internal armed conflict in the Americas could soon be over. The Colombian government and FARC have announced a date to sign a peace accord, and the parties have finally come to an agreement on the single most contentious issue of the negotiations: whether, to what extent, and under what conditions the members of FARC would be punished for its crimes. Will it be sufficient?
In a press release, Representative Eliot Engel applauded the Inter American Development Bank Board members for its recent discussion on LGBT rights, and incorporating awareness of LGBT communities into its development programs. Representative Engel is the ranking Democratic member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Despite the shrinking size of their community over the years due to emigration, Cuba’s remaining Jews have done their best to sustain their ritual and community spaces. Reforms in the 1990s allowed outsiders to visit on religious grounds, including visits, cultural exchanges and support from American Jews. As small as the Cuban community is today, it was, and is, sustained in many ways by the support of those abroad. Their story points to the importance of contact across borders—embodied in the recent U.S.-Cuba changes—and how it builds and sustains the values of tolerance and pluralism.
