Daniela Rodriguez. Yasuri Orellana. Elizabeth Castillo. These are the names of the three transgender women who were brutally slain last month in El Salvador. The string of murders made headlines and raised questions about the safety of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people across the country. Although the government of El Salvador does not track …
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All of his friends were moving on with their lives and heading off to college, but Sebastián Flores Cerritos felt stuck. Sebastián felt he couldn’t embark on his own journey until he could live a life true to himself. In 2010, he summoned the courage to tell his parents that he felt deeply uncomfortable in …
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Earlier this month, AJWS brought together 34 activists from 17 human rights organizations in five countries for a workshop on disaster response. The participants—many of them respected human rights leaders in Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Burma and the Philippines—had been on the frontlines of relief efforts during catastrophes like the earthquakes that struck Nepal …
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In October 2016, as Hurricane Matthew swirled towards Haiti and was about to make landfall, government leaders told people to pray. Meanwhile, Radyo Vwa Klodi Mizo (VKM), a small radio station on the country’s southern coast, urged residents to evacuate and prepare.
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When you walk into what remains of Françoise Inocent’s ravaged cement home—remnants of a stairway at the front, steel rods and slabs of walls still standing, and mounds of rubble, all exposed to the open skies—it’s hard not to lose morale. Hurricane Matthew wrecked thousands of homes like this, robbing countless Haitians of their shelter …
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January 12 marks seven years since the catastrophic earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010. Ahead of this anniversary, I visited the country alongside AJWS colleagues who work there, to document the widespread destruction left behind by another tragedy—Hurricane Matthew.
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A narrow window is quickly drawing shut for Liberia to enact a landmark law that would guarantee millions of its people the right to formally own the land they have long lived on and farmed. If the Liberian legislature fails to pass the bill by a deadline currently set for the end of this month, …
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