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.
Peru Passes Law Against Racism in the Media!
Great news in Peru! The Peruvian government just approved a new law against racist discourse in the media. The law was designed, promoted, and advocated for by AJWS’s grantee Peruvian partner LUNDU Centro de Estudios y Promoción Afroperuanos (LUNDU Center for Afro-Peruvian Studies and Empowerment). LUNDU was able to garner support from a significant number …
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 …
Why Honduras Still Needs Human Rights Advocates Two Years After the Military Coup
Two years ago on June 29, 2009, in the middle of the night, Honduras’s democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya was kidnapped at gunpoint in a military coup d’état and sent to neighboring Costa Rica. Before his ousting, Zelaya planned to follow through on a public referendum to reform the Constitution by extending the maximum term …
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 …