An intense controversy over Amnesty International's association with people who reject its universalist principles has been sparked by its treatment of a senior figure who raised the issue. Here, a global petition signed by prominent writers and activists poses questions to the human-rights organi
At what point do the rights of migrant domestic workers as human beings and as workers start to take precedence over their status as migrants?
Olga Kudeshkina made headlines in 2004 as the first Russian judge to flag up political interference in the judicial system. Dismissed for her resistance, she took her case to the European Court of Human Rights and won. Kudeshkina outlines the continued political pressure felt by the judiciary and
Downtown Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, is ablaze with lights and full of chic shops now. But the paralysing fear remains. Human Rights Watch’s Tanya Lokshina and her Memorial colleagues tell a rare visitor from the West about the kidnappings, about the relatives too fearful to complain...
In 2004, some local journalists in Oryol founded an independent newspaper ‘for those who want the truth’. Although it sold well, members of staff were subject to threats, bribes, attacks and arson. Still, it lasted four years.
The focus of dialogue with Beijing about human rights should shift from enforcing universal laws towards building a shared moral identity, says William A Callahan.
Anastasia Baburova and Stanislav Markelov were gunned down in a neo-Nazi contract killing a year ago. In this moving tale Andrei Loshak tells us why he and his friend, who also suffered neo-Nazi violence, will be going on the Moscow march in their memory
Today, as Memorial receives the 2009 Sakharov Prize, Lyubov Borusyak talks to Ludmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, about the birth of Russia’s human rights movement. In 1956, after Khrushchev’s ‘secret speech’, Russia’s people started talking once more, and circulating ‘samizdat’.
Employees of the private security firm Xe, formerly known as Blackwater, directly participated in CIA counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. European leaders threaten Iran with imminent sanctions. North Korea announces that it is ready to co-operate with the United States. All this
The degrading aftermath of Sri Lanka’s civil war demands international action to ensure protection of its civilians from their overweening rulers, says Martin Shaw.
Landmark victories in defiance of the Russian government have made the European Court of Human Rights the most popular legal institution in the country. Many cases fail at the initial committee stage. Grigory Dikov finds a huge disconnect between the capabilities of the Court and the hopes of the
