As the glare of the media spotlight fades from Haiti, the reconstruction and relief effort is only just beginning – and there’s where we need to ensure that women and girls’ rights is not forgotten. In 2008 Amnesty produced a report...

Perhaps we’d better get Noel Edmonds in …. all this talk of deals with the Taleban is starting to take on an air of unreality. Ahead of today’s big Afghanistan conference in London, Gordon Brown and Hamid Karzai have been speaking –...

Ouagadougou – now there’s a capital city you don’t hear much about. It’s a name which you’d be expected to know in a pub quiz – “name the capital of Burkina Faso…!” Well, now you’ve read this, you’ll have the answer. But if you really...

I was unlucky enough to have a summer job when I was around 19 that involved rebuilding part of a sewage works. It wasn’t my worst-ever summer job – that was the meat pie factory – but it wasn’t a barrel of laughs either. While I did...

So here they are at last: The Sri Lankan Presidential Elections. They are all set for tomorrow and previews were plastered all over today’s papers. After decades of conflict that “ended” last year with the comprehensive defeat of the...

As I was saying the other day , Obama’s promise to close Guantánamo within a year falls due, so to speak, today. It hasn’t happened. Instead, in a pale reflection of what was promised, we’ve seen just 46 of 242 prisoners transferred...

It’s not too often that you read or hear about repression and restrictions on free speech in Vietnam, it’s somewhat overshadowed by neighbours like Burma and China, where stories like these are reported more widely. You only have to...

What were you doing exactly one year ago? Can’t remember? Well, chances are that at some time during 20 January 2009 you glanced at the TV news about Barack Obama being inaugurated as 44th president of the USA. (You didn’t! Well, OK...

I went to see James Cameron’s latest blockbuster, Avatar, last week. There were a lot of things I thought about it: overlong (nearly 3 hours!) bit cheesy, not great acting, great effects, gripping and exciting if you left your cynicism...

This time a year ago the world was reeling at the scenes of devastation coming out of Gaza. Now we’re reeling at the scenes of devastation coming out of Haiti. Plus ça change. Except … Gaza was man-made, Haiti was not. Yes, the death...

In a move that will be of doubtless interest to social media followers of the post-election demonstrations in Iran, it’s reported today that Iran’s chief of police has warned opposition supporters against using texts and email to...

A journalist working on the Google story called here yesterday asking us to wrack our brains for other examples of where companies had pulled out of countries because of human rights concerns. The main examples we came up with were...

I actually thought I was still dreaming this morning when I heard that Google was going to stop censoring Internet search results in China (and, if necessary, pull out if the country altogether). But it’s true – you can read all about...

Sometimes the world of the media throws you a bit of a curve ball. And so it was today. What am I talking about? None other than the Daily Mail putting its weight behind a human rights pressure group campaigning against forced...

Incredibly, it’s now eight years since the first shackled and orange-jump-suited prisoners were taken to the notorious prison camp at Guantánamo. Eight years. This is a long time if you’ve been found guilty of a crime and sent to...

Journalists and their editors make many difficult decisions, perhaps none more so than whether to quote from or broadcast material for which they cannot be absolutely sure of the source but where if genuine the contents reveal evidence...

Today’s report published by ten aid agencies about the volatile situation in Sudan has kick-started the debate about the need for greater international attention to be paid to that country this year. Simon Tisdall’s briefing in today’s...

Reports that the attorney general Lady Scotland will effectively give the Israeli authorities an assurance that none of its leaders will ever face arrest in the UK are … troubling. On what basis are the UK authorities even promising...

There was a fascinating interview on Channel 4 News last night, as Jon Snow spoke to journalist Maziar Bahari about his three months of interrogation and torture in Iran’s Evin prison. Bahari described the bizarre behaviour of his...

If the alleged would-be Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was indeed “trained” by al-Qai’da in Yemen it’s not exactly surprising that Yemen is now on everyone’s lips. But how to react? Closing embassies and talking about Yemen’s...