SARIKA BANSAL Finding the perfect organizational partner can be tricky. Human rights groups are no exception to this. To be effective, they often must work with other groups, including NGOs, for-profit companies, and even autocratic governments. Some partnerships work beautifully,…
Day: April 8, 2011
Indian Independence Was Academic to Him
By Sarika Bansal Cramped in a sweltering college dormitory in South India, Dr. Vemuri Venkat Ramanadham—then known as “Lecturer Ramanadham”—and fervently debated the Indian independence movement with more than 50 students. Was non-violence the best way to get the British…
Mexico’s Latest Poet-Diplomat
By Mónica Adame I met Gaspar Orozco during my first event as public relations coordinator for the Mexican Consul General in New York almost three years ago. Our boss, the head of the Consulate, invited Mexican artists living in the…
Ending Violence against Women in Zimbabwe
By Mónica Adame “I had been at the base for about two days when a group of three men instructed me to enter a room. They forced me to lie on the ground and stripped off all of my clothes.…
Outpacing Violence one Tweet at a Time
By Mónica Adame The first time armed gang members threatened Daniela Azpilcueta, 27, a resident of Monterrey, in the Northern state of Nuevo Leon, Mexico, she immediately tuned to Twitter. “I saw the gun on the right window and just…
Flight from Stalingrad
By ANNA KORDUNSKY Galya and her family had been living in the bomb shelter under the ruins of her apartment building for two weeks when unexpected visitors came down the stairs: five Soviet soldiers, three of them wounded in street…
Journey Into Israel
By Nicole Schilit About 12 meters from the end of the bridge stood the fence separating Egypt and Israel. Zebib, 27 years old, born and raised in Eritrea, was alone. Alone except for the 36 other African refugees who had…
Ethiopia Chokes Refugees
By NICOLE SCHILIT Genet’s soft voice makes it difficult to make out the words she is saying. The young Eritrean refugee avoids eye contact, and when she speaks she turns toward the empty space in her small one-room home rather…
Just Beside History
By Stephen Schaber My parents hate being bothered by the telephone- the ringing, the holding, the talking. When someone calls they rarely answer it. In fact, the answering machine picks up after two rings. I find it incredibly annoying. They…
Can Afghanistan Police Itself?
BY REBECCA WEXLER NEW YORK—Seeking new ways to speed the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, General Petraeus recently announced a massive expansion of the Afghan Local Police, a community policing initiative touted as the “new way forward” in winning…