In which Secretary Clinton delivers a ground-breaking speech to bring LGBT rights at the forefront of the international discourse. Naz finds reference. The blogosphere has been overflowing with platitudes; and although it is too early to evaluate how the Obama administration will calibrate its foreign policy towards countries with limited or no recognition of LGBT [...]
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Posted in Constitution, Court, Human Rights on Oct 14th, 2011
Does the massive case backlog in India merit a consolidation of sorts – an enforced rationing of the judicial system? What are the implications of making justice scarce, and how can they be tackled? These are questions that Gaurav Laroia (GWU alum, currently with an election monitoring team in Liberia) raises in his pilot post [...]
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At its core, the Arab Spring has ushered in participatory politics and democratic aspirations hitherto repressed in the region. The cup of mass movements is now reaching its brim and threatens to overflow – naturally, the focal point of discussions has shifted from the centre to the edges. For some in the Middle East, these [...]
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(Update: A version of this piece with minor tweaks appears on the op-ed page of The Hindu dated July 9, 2011) In the seventies, the Supreme Court of India was called upon to decide the constitutionality of Excise Rules that allowed the State of Punjab to regulate the number of days, even hours, when liquor [...]
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Posted in Foreign Affairs, Human Rights on Jul 6th, 2011
A domestic court at The Hague yesterday ruled the Dutch state was “responsible” for the death of three Bosnian Muslims in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. To quote from this astonishing verdict: “The Dutch state is responsible for the death of these men because [UN peacekeepers] Dutchbat should not have handed them over…The Dutchbat had been witness [...]
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Two years ago I had written about Gantal Raju, a tribal in the village of Lingagiri, Dantewada District Chhattisgarh. About how in 2006 his father had been shot by the forces in Chhattisgarh and he had to watch his sister being raped before his eyes. It was part of a report on 40 families returning [...]
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