While the BP Oil Spill and the World Cup have stole headlines this summer, a number of disturbing trends have passed through the cracks of newswires without garnering a fraction of the fanfare.
To stay informed on the most pressing issues and abuses across the world, there is seldom a better resource than Human Rights Watch.
Human Rights Watch is one of the world’s foremost watchdog agencies for news, policy briefings, and investigative journalism without borders. Their mission statement is a reflection of their status as an indispensable NGO:
Mission Statement:
Human Rights Watch is dedicated to protecting the human rights of people around the world. We stand with victims and activists to prevent discrimination, to uphold political freedom, to protect people from inhumane conduct in wartime, and to bring offenders to justice. We investigate and expose human rights violations and hold abusers accountable. We challenge governments and those who hold power to end abusive practices and respect international human rights law. We enlist the public and the international community to support the cause of human rights for all.
Human Rights Watch is dedicated to protecting the human rights of people around the world. We stand with victims and activists to prevent discrimination, to uphold political freedom, to protect people from inhumane conduct in wartime, and to bring offenders to justice. We investigate and expose human rights violations and hold abusers accountable. We challenge governments and those who hold power to end abusive practices and respect international human rights law. We enlist the public and the international community to support the cause of human rights for all.
This post illustrates the epicenters of the articles highlighted this summer on the Human Rights Watch website, through the medium of Google Earth.
Each place-mark in the presentation has an original short summary of the infraction on human rights in question, as well as link to the original article on HRW.
There is no tour mode for this file, so please spend some extra time exploring the linked articles, and exploring the nearby panoramio photos of the areas.
The presentation is dotted with hundreds of photographs of Jamaican slums, Ossetian rubble, Saharwi Refugee Camps, Corrupt Zimbabwean Diamond Mines, and Kyrgyz Steppes to be discovered, in some of the most dangerous areas of the world for a journalist to visit.
