Campaigning for human rights in the age of the internet

Sorry, where have I been, what excuses can I offer? I have not written anything on my blog for ages. Here I am again and my New Year's Resolution is to update my blog regularly. Notice that I am not saying how often. What is my blog...

I have just watched a film in the Channel 4 series, Unreported World, about the attacks on civilians in north-eastern Congo by the LRA from Uganda. It was a report from 2009 that was repeated late last night on More 4. When the LRA...

In Uganda there could be a vote on bringing in the death penalty for homosexuality. Avaaz has an urgent petition to the government of Uganda and aims to get one million people to sign.

"Both the present Government and its predecessor misjudged the risk that arms approved for export to certain authoritarian countries in North Africa and the Middle East might be used for internal repression." Just what you might expect...

Free at last... they all owe their lives to Amnesty . That is the headline of an article in the Observer describing how four political prisoners were released because of Amnesty International. One man was held for five years at...

Impunity , a film about Colombia, was shown 29 March and will be shown on 31 March in London as part of the Human Rights Watch film festival.

A select committee is to investigate corporate tax avoidance .

The law to protect some of the poorest countries from profiteering by vulture funds is to become permanent, the UK government has announced. See this page of the Jubilee Debt Campaign website. This law has already saved the country of...

Presunto Culpable (Presumed Guilty) is a documentary critical of the Mexican justice system . It centres on the case of a young man accused of murder. An appeals court has now declared that it is wrong to prevent the film being shown...

Change.org have a petition urging the Maltese government to grant asylum to two Libyan pilots who refused to bomb civilians in Libya. Their likely punishment if they returned to Libya could be execution.

Avaaz have a petition to urge world leaders to freeze Mubarak's fortune . All that money could be very useful to the Egyptian people, many of them living in poverty. Avaaz hopes that half a million people will have signed by Friday...

Stop the global land grab writes Gisele Henriques in Comment is Free. She refers to the World Social Forum, held very recently in Dakar, Senegal .

The UK government plans to relax the requirements for criminal records checks, unless people are working closely with children or vulnerable adults (such as those having learning disabilities). There is talk of saving money and of...

President Obama backs the protests against the Egyptian government. Simon Tisdall in the Guardian says that in doing so Obama challenges other Arab leaders not only Hosni Mubarak. International Aid's dirty secret , according to the...

The final version of a documentary film about the jailed Russian oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, has been stolen days before its planned premiere in Berlin. Update, 14 Feb. 2011: . The verdict in the case of Khordorkovsky was handed...

John Vidal says in his Environment Blog for the Guardian that the widely circulated recent photos of an uncontacted Amazonian tribe have at last led to the Peruvian government taking action. Survival International campaigns for tribal...

Human Rights Watch has recently issued a report, Work on Him Until He Confesses , about impunity for torture in Egypt. Human Rights Watch also reports on a violent response to protests in Sudan . Avaaz has a petition inviting you to...

Avaaz have a petition to the South African authorities about the vicious practice of corrective rape, seeking to "cure" lesbian women. People are adding their names to the petition from around the world and you can see names and...

Was the shooting spree in Tucson, Arizona, caused by inflammatory rightwing rhetoric? Or was it at least partly to blame? Ewan MacAskill in the Guardian writes about the fierce debate in the USA about these questions. I think that such...

The Vaccine Casebook was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 8 pm on Tuesday 4 January 2011. A team of Danish and African health specialists has been monitoring a population there and has come up with interesting findings that could influence...