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Global Sexual Freedom Watch

  • (También en Español) My Guantánamo Nightmare On Wednesday, America’s detention camp at Guantánamo Bay will have been open for 10 years. For seven of them, I was held there without explanation or charge. During that time my daughters grew up without me. They were toddlers when I was imprisoned, and were never allowed to visit or…

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  • December 10, Saturday, was Human Rights Day 2011, and I reported on its origns, history, and background, noted the important role Eleanor Roosevelt played in drafting The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and delved into the direct connections between human rights and sexual freedom contained in the Declaration. Last week, on December 6, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton…

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  • [pexyoutube pex_attr_src=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SgrdYPGaOE” pex_attr_width=”500″][/pexyoutube] Today is Human Rights Day 2011. To mark the occasion, this video is from Navanethem Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted by a committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, and was adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948. This Declaration…

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  • [pexyoutube pex_attr_src=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAffHoO51Ww” pex_attr_width=”500″][/pexyoutube] Today’s video comes to us from the Demi & Ashton Foundation (DNA Foundation) and is about human trafficking: the illegal trade of human beings for the purposes of reproductive slavery, commercial sexual exploitation, forced labor, or a modern-day form of slavery. Some important facts from their website: Today, more than twelve million people worldwide…

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  • Recently people have been alerted to new facts about the Human Papilloma Virus, known as HPV, a sexually transmitted virus known to cause cervical cancer in women and other cancers, predominately in women but also in men. HPV really represents a cluster of over 100 viruses, most of which are not cancer causing. But now we know…

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  • “Everybody has heard the women’s stories. But nobody has heard the men’s,” says Stewart M. Patrick, a senior fellow at the DC-based, non-partisan think tank The Council on Foreign Relations, writing for The Internationalist. His recent report was widely circulated this summer on the startling 22% of males and 30% of females who have been sexually assaulted as…

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  • One of the best signs at the Occupy Wall Street‘s ongoing protest that is spreading like wildfire across the country right now said, “This revolution will not be privatized.” Well, what do we actually mean by that? In the last 24 hours, Occupy Together has increased by almost 200 more cities, up from 749 to 928 cities, including…

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  • Compassion is not religious business, it is human business, it is not luxury, it is essential for our own peace and mental stability, it is essential for human survival.  Dalai Lama The other evening I received an email inviting me to meet the man commonly refered to as the ‘Desmond Tutu’ of Uganda – Bishop…

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  • A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together. — Margaret Atwood Back in 2009 while in Uganda, I found myself involved in a scam that fell neatly in the stereotype that Nigeria is the NO.1 source of scammers. I am not…

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  • The struggle for the civil rights for women, sexual minorities, and people who are HIV+ outside of the United States, in hundreds of countries, involves fierce protection against imprisonment, mutilation, violence, and death. The abuse of power is monumental, and first world countries mostly sit idly by while this miscarriage of humanity is put forward…

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