Scholars, advocates, and activists seeking to make the U.S. a more responsible global partner.
Women
Rocky Road to Gender Equality in Latin America

Rocky Road to Gender Equality in Latin America

by | May 30, 2012

The increased participation of women in traditional politics in Latin America has made headlines for several years now. Last month, The New York Times published an analysis of the 2012 Women in Politics Survey of UN Women and the Inter-Parliamentary Union by Luisita Lopez Torregrosa. Torresgrosa highlighted the rising percentage of women in parliament and female heads of state in the region, including Costa Rica, Brazil, and Argentina. She and other experts attribute some of the advances to electoral quotas adopted in many countries and more general factors such as democratization, education, and public policies.

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50% of the 99%

50% of the 99%

by | May 16, 2012

What’s 50percent of 99 percent?

Hint: This isn’t a math quiz. To put the question in non-numerical terms: where are women in the global economic crisis?

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Fear, Loathing and Electoral Love in Mexico

by | May 15, 2012

Mexico’s federal election campaign officially kicked off March 30, but the contest arguably began in earnest days earlier when Pope Benedict XVI visited the right-wing  stronghold  of Guanajuato state. In a story worthy of Mexican surrealism, the daily La Jornada chronicled how all the presidential candidates joined with hundreds of thousands of people in the town of Silao to welcome the leader of an institution that is officially prohibited from participating in politics.

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Women of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Twenty Years Later

Women of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Twenty Years Later

by | Apr 11, 2012

Twenty years ago this month, war broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the main act in the dissolution of Yugoslavia. In Sarajevo, the country’s capital that once proudly hosted the Winter Olympics, 11,541 red chairs on the main street mark the grim anniversary. One for every citizen killed during the almost four years of the city’s siege, the longest in recent history.

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Rio+20

by | Apr 9, 2012

In 1992, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the United Nations held its landmark Conference on Environment and Development. Also known as the Earth Summit, the Conference set the global environmental agenda for the next two decades. Now, twenty years on, the world’s governments, development practitioners, and environmental activists are set to reconvene once again, in Brazil, in June 2012, for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development-Rio +20.

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Honduras: When Engagement Becomes Complicity

Honduras: When Engagement Becomes Complicity

by | Mar 15, 2012

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Honduras on March 6 with a double mission: to quell talk of drug legalization and reinforce the U.S.-sponsored drug war in Central America, and to bolster the presidency of Porfirio Lobo.

The Honduran government issued a statement that during the one-hour closed-door conversation between Biden and Lobo, the vice president “reiterated the U.S. commitment to intensify aid to the government and people of Honduras, and exalted the efforts undertaken and implemented over the past two years by President Lobo.”

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The Drug War’s Invisible Victims

The Drug War’s Invisible Victims

by | Jan 27, 2012

There are many kinds of war. The classic image of a uniformed soldier kissing mom good-bye to risk his life on the battlefield has changed dramatically. In today’s wars, it’s more likely that mom will be the one killed.

UNIFEM states that by the mid-1990s, 90% of war casualties were civilians– mostly women and children.

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