On March 7, 2012, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon delivered a historic speech at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, asking countries around the world to decriminalize same-sex relationships and end discrimination against LGBT people. The speech itself attracted some coverage, but what dominated the news that day...

All was quiet in front of the Russian mission to the U.N. in midtown Manhattan Feb. 28 -- that is, except for the soaring chords of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake emanating from a small boom box, providing a melodramatic soundtrack for the two dozen demonstrators wearing gags over their mouths and...

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
-- Mohandas Gandhi

The photograph is not easy to look at, and it's not clear at first glance if Millicent Gaika, the woman in the photo, is dead or alive....

This article originally published at Alternet

Sao Paolo, Brazil -- Welcome to the 25th annual conference of the International Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA), which drew up to 300 activists from dozens of countries to a hotel in Sao Paolo this week. This...

It's a lazy Sunday afternoon at Pete's Candy Store, a low-key watering hole on Lorimer Street in Williamsburg, the famously bohemian neighborhood popular with the young and the scruffy. A few men and women stand around the bar chatting and sipping on pints of beer next to a sign listing...

Forensic science for human rights.
Science is helping to bring a former Argentine dictator to justice with expertise that will haunt perpetrators of state violence.

There's an office in this grandiose and sprawling city of Buenos Aires that holds a somewhat macabre collection: over 700...

On one of the last days of the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, the 16th of December, I found myself with thousands of others outside of the well-guarded perimeter of the Bella Center, where UN delegates and heads of State where slouching towards a negotiating failure of historic proportions.

Earlier...

The timing of this week's revolt in Kyrgyzstan, making headlines around the world, is telling. On Thursday the son and heir apparent of ousted president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, Maksim, was scheduled to speak at an economic forum in Washington. The meeting has been postponed indefinitely, and something tells me it may...

As far as "national security threats" go, real or imagined, it's likely that few Americans lose much sleep over Wilkileaks, the website that publishes anonymously sourced documents which governments, corporations, and other private or powerful organisations would rather you not see. It would appear the US security apparatus...

It's a Friday afternoon at Farragut Square, a genteel park just a few blocks from the White House in downtown Washington. Office workers, tourists and the occasional homeless person soak up the afternoon sun on one of the first pleasant days of spring. In other words, it's the perfect time...

This post originally appeared at The Guardian's CIF America

The stubborn weekend downpour was little match for a crowd of 40 or so chatty strangers, men and women mostly in their 30s, 40s and 50s, who met on the second floor of a nondescript deli in the shadow...

New York, NY. December 10, 2009 -- On Thursday morning, a group of friends and colleagues, mostly middle-aged, sat and chatted over coffee at a midtown deli near Grand Central Station. Then Laurie Wen, an organizer with the Mobilization for Healthcare for All, showed up with a box of granola...