Human Rights

This dossier provides a diverse selection of strong civil society voices from Cambodia. We hope that the analyses and contributions included will lead to a better understanding of the results, impacts and successes of the actions of Cambodian civil society.

The Geneva Refugee Convention turned 70. Hardly anyone feels like celebrating in view of the many violations internationally, but the occasion offers the opportunity to strongly support the Convention’s principles in face of all hostilities, because it stands for nothing less than the protection of refugees.

Women's bodies are always the central target of conservative and fundamentalist ideology and practice. The individual rights are also shaped by social and cultural norms, legal conditions and, more than ever, also determined by reproductive technologies and medical offers. The essay by sociologist Christa Wichterich offers background information and analytical approaches from an international perspective.

Interview with Alicia Baier and Sophie G., who are both activists, on the occasion of International Safe Abortion Day.

Section 218 has been a topic of intense political debate ever since it was first incorporated in the Criminal Code of the German Empire on 15 May 1871. It has always been one of the most controversial paragraphs in German law, both legally and socially. In 1995, a compromise solution was found, but since then nothing more has changed. To find out why that is so, and work out what can be done about it, it’s worth taking a look back at the history of Section 218.

Interview with Rahmatullah Amiri on the withdrawal of international troops from Afghanistan and the increasing challenges for the peace process and civil society.

No country is safe from COVID-19 until all countries are safe from COVID-19. To state the obvious: To overcome a pandemic of this magnitude, vaccines must be made available quickly, cheaply, and fairly.

For centuries, resources have been extracted from the African continent without adequate payment or compensation. With colonialism, Khoikhoi and San, the first inhabitants of Southern Africa, lost their land and many lost their lives. During decades of Apartheid they were racially discriminated and still have to fight for political and economic inclusion in the post-Apartheid era. We spoke to the Khoikhoi lawyer Lesle Jansen about her fight for the community and for the legal acknowledgement of the cultural heritage of Indigenous people.

Tunisia is often deemed the main success story of the “Arab Spring” after long-term dictator Ben Ali was ousted ten years ago. But in the first contribution of our series “Reminiscence of the future”, Rim Benrjeb writes about a revolutionary spirit that is in danger of falling asleep, patriarchal and state violence, and the impossibility of discussing all of this with one's own father.

Environmental and human rights activists fight to protect nature, biodiversity and the climate. They champion sustainable development. They defend land and resources from exploitation and destruction. They uncover corruption and abuses of power. And that is precisely what makes their work so dangerous.