AJWS Blog

The AJWS community has a lot to say about what's happening in the world. Read our insights about the struggle for justice and human rights around the globe — and meet the activists on the frontlines of the fight to build a better world.

Dvar Tzedek: Parshat Matot 5771

Our relationship with people in the Global South is a complicated one. We (try to) move along a continuum from indifference to pity to sympathy to empathy to the vaunted level of “solidarity”—where, even though we live far from the sites of poverty and are largely insulated from the people who experience it, we see …

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Shame & Notoriety: Stopping Police Rape of Sex Workers in Uganda

      Originally posted on Gender Across Borders: A Global Feminist Blog. Last February, I sat across from 50 Ugandan prostitutes who sought my legal advice.  They wanted me to get the police to stop raping them. I was the legal consultant at Platform for Labour Action (PLA), a Ugandan non-governmental organization that provides marginalized …

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Wrestling with Global Poverty

Originally posted on Pursue: Action for a Just World. “Establish early on that your liberalism is impeccable, and mention near the beginning how much you love Africa, how you fell in love with the place and can’t live without her. Africa is the only continent you can love… Be sure to leave the strong impression …

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Why India's LGBTI Community is Outraged

Addressing a convention on HIV/AIDS in India this past Monday, India’s Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad was quoted saying, “The disease of ‘Men having Sex with Men’ (MSM), which was found more in the developed world, has now unfortunately come to our country and there is a substantial number of such people in India.” …

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