human rights

What Global Principled Disobedience Means

In The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen represents a covert rebel alliance attempting to topple a repressive regime. When the series was adapted for the big screen, it became a pop culture phenomenon and helped catapult its leading actress, Jennifer Lawrence, to stardom. It also became a symbol of massive anti-government resistance in Thailand. After General […]

America’s Lose–Lose Withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council

On June 18, 2018, US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley stood beside Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the State Department to announce the US’ withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council (HRC). Haley spoke of the hypocrisy of countries with abhorrent human rights records sitting on the Council and criticized its “chronic […]

Germany’s Landmark Syrian State Torture Trial

April 23 marks the beginning of one of the most important international human rights cases in recent memory, the first criminal trial regarding state-sanctioned torture in Syria. However, it is not Syria or the United Nations adjudicating the case, but Germany.  Syria’s military conflict began in 2011, sparked by a series of protests against President […]

A Notorious Traffic: An Introduction

Few regimes in international law pack as much of an emotional punch as human trafficking. Whether through its portrayal in various media—including the Taken movies or in the music video for Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”—or as championed by various human rights organizations on both the right and left, there is a definite consensus that human […]