Who knows best what the needs of Rwandan genocide survivors are as they seek to rebuild their lives?

Genocide survivors themselves.

As the Rwandan New Times recently reported, an October 2012 discussion paper by a collective of genocide survivor organizations including Ibuka, Avega, AERG, and SURF Survivor's Fund called...

In an outpouring of support, millions of dollars have been raised to help support victims of the Boston marathon attacks and their families.

To date, more than 32 million dollars have been raised from individuals, foundations, and corporations by The One Fund.

The support has been...

Dear President Khama,

In keeping with Botswana's commitment to democracy and human rights and respect for all its citizens predicated on equality before the law - irrespective of their ethnic background - I urge you to stop the evictions of the Bushmen of Ranyane.

These evictions constitute unlawful...

Sometimes when one feels weak and vulnerable - one's sense of safety and peace ruptured violently and shockingly - goodness and solidarity rush in to offer support and solace.

That is how I feel a few days after the Boston marathon bombings.

Despite the sadness and grief, the indignation...

A report released by the Task Force on the EU Prevention of Mass Atrocities calls for far greater attention to be paid by EU policies and programs to the need to prevent genocide and other mass atrocities.

This is a timely, commendable and important report, and it challenges many...

In 1938 the Nazis had not yet decided upon their genocidal plan to murder the Jews of Europe.

But by December of 1938 the persecution of the Jews of Germany was already taking on an extreme form.

In November, Kristallnacht, the 'Night of Broken Glass' took place, in which...

Too often, in the media, public conversation, the human rights community and NGO world human rights organizations are excluded from genuine critical engagement.

Because their intentions are considered largely unimpeachable and because their efforts are so widely respected there is a tendency to show them deference rather than to...

Mitt Romney is obsessing about size again and doing a great disservice to the American people by fixating on a bankrupt ideology of smaller government rather than on real, practical, public policy.

There is no reason why the American people should trust Romney's pledges that smaller government is the...

The overriding ideology which drives the Republican Party today is not conservatism. In fact, it's more radical than anything a prudent, cautious, skeptical conservative would support.

Instead, it's a philosophy which sees most problems, social, economic, and otherwise as stemming from government that is too large. It rejects the...

The repression of genuine accounting with an individual or a nation's failures and violations of democratic values and human rights leads not only to a failure to acknowledge and wrestle with historical truth. It prevents victims from seeking redress, allowing for denial which disables efforts to rectify through restorative justice...

When we think of the competitors in the Olympics it's natural that we focus on their athletic talents and efforts. After all, that's what brings them to compete in the Olympics.

We may hear from them in interviews about their efforts, the endless hours of training, the harsh physical demands,...

To its credit, the opening night of the Olympics honoured those who lost their lives in terrorist attacks in Britain in a moving video tribute to those killed in the bombings of the London Tube and buses in 2005.

The moment did not harm the celebratory spirit of the...

Colonisation and its impact on the colonised is rarely a topic of sustained public conversation in Britain. It is not even a tangential topic. It is simply ignored, elided with very infrequent and brief exceptions such as the one prompted now by the case of Kenyan survivors of torture and...

For over a decade the Bushmen of Botswana have been struggling to have their human rights respected by the government of Botswana.

Although Botswana's High Court ruled that the Bushmen have the right to live in their native lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve the government of Botswana...

The 18th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide was commemorated in April in Rwanda and around the world. Many proclamations were issued, expressions of sympathy made, and hopes for the future expressed.

As happens every year, solidarity with genocide survivors was expressed but very little was done to actually meet...