In the early 1990s, at the Vienna Human Rights Conference, the Chinese government would not allow the Dalai Lama to enter the building and attend the on-going conference. Now in 2009, President Obama just did the exact same thing by refusing to meet with the Dalai Lama during his visit...

Meet The Elders. They're great people. You know most of them.

Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter (39th U.S. President), Muhammad Yunus (creator of micro-credit). Kofi Annan (former U.N. Secretary-General), Mary Robinson (Former UN High Commissioner of Human Rights), Peter Gabriel and Richard Branson of musical fame. Aung San...

Governments need to lead the nation the way good drivers operate a vehicle (you may not talk on your cell phone while driving). To avoid trouble, one must look ahead as well as in the rear-view mirror. To neglect either direction will invite serious trouble.

Eric Holder has called for...

Sometimes in life, luck, unlike lightening, strikes many times. And every time it strikes, your life experience enriches. I have been fortunate enough to have luck strike about once a decade: In the 60's, a twist of fate brought me to Dr. King's March on Washington; in the 70's, Dick...

The military of Burma has crushed the nonviolent monks, uses Burmese children as soldiers, allowed a cyclone and its consequences to sweep over 100,000 Burmese to their deaths, driven a half million from their homes and now the military will not allow the proper medical care for their Nobel Peace...

Amazingly, the Washington Post carried an editorial on March 10 questioning Hillary Clinton's approach to human rights in her new position as Secretary of State. The Post claims that she undercuts her own State Department's human rights reporting by praising Turkey and Hosni Mubarek of Egypt at a time...

As in horseshoes, basketball and love, "almost" does not count. It is either a score, or not, in sports. It is in love, or not in love. It is the same with torture. A government that almost tortures does torture. The act debases the individual suffering torture and breaks the...

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr drove this nation to its own truth, namely that all people are created equal. Once equal, then he asks us to dance to the higher tunes; rule of law, nonviolence, protection of the weakest of us. He knew and preached that human service, the taking...

Sixty years ago, the best document ever written came together in Paris under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt. It is called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That's the good news. The bad news is less than 5% of the world even knows about this document. Worse yet, many governments...