Early in the Clinton administration, the United Nations Human Rights Commission was holding hearings in New York on the compliance of various member states — including, for the first time, the United States — with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. I was there because I was working at Human Rights Watch, but […]
Gara LaMarche
Gara Lamarche is President of The Atlantic Philanthropies.
Posted inFeatures
Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry by Michael Ignatieff
Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry By Michael Ignatieff, with contributions by K. Anthony Appiah, David A. Hollinger, Thomas W. Laqueur, and Diane F. Orentlicher. Edited and introduced by Amy Gutmann. Princeton University Press, 187 pages, $19.95 Is the world moving forward or backward when it comes to honoring andprotecting basic human rights? In Human […]
Posted inFeatures
Ending Executions
As I write, the United States is preparing to execute Timothy McVeigh on May 16. If the death penalty is to exist at all, it’s hard to imagine a more compelling candidate–a terrorist and mass murderer, apparently sane and unremorseful. Yet, remarkably, there are stirrings of debate about McVeigh’s execution, led by the doubts expressed […]