Search results for: constitutional rights

Nicole Browne, Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity Northern Ireland is on the edge of the United Kingdom in more ways than one. Brexit has led to the contested Irish Sea Border which puts a trade barrier between Great Britain and these six counties.…

[caption id="attachment_75843" align="aligncenter" width="960"] Photo: Treatment Action Campaign[/caption] Advocacy is a central mechanism for driving social change. As Mark Heywood, Executive Director of Section 27 says: “Advocacy is not a handful of individuals shouting from the rooftops. It is about effective community education, community mobilisation…

By Christopher Oechsli and Darren WalkerCommentary: Realizing Mandela’s vision of a democratic future is a collective global responsibility.A statue of Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first democratic president and Nobel Laureate is pictured outside the parliament. (RODGER BOSCH/AFP/Getty Images)Over a year after the death of Nelson…

Christopher G. Oechsli, President and CEO of The Atlantic Philanthropies, delivered this keynote address at an international conference held by New York Law School: Constitutional Rights, Judicial Independence and the Transition to Democracy: Twenty Years of South African Constitutionalism. The conference brought together a diverse group…

Former Guantanamo prisoners released after years of detention without charge went home to find themselves stigmatized and shunned, viewed either as terrorists or as United States spies, according to a report released Wednesday by a human rights group and a legal organization representing detainees.The report…

Laws provide the skeletal frame of a social order but while laws in theory and by tradition serve the cause of justice, they can easily be, and often are, used to reinforce a repressive regime. Here James A. Goldston and Martin O’Brien reflect on the…

This heartrending short documentary tells the story of Fahd Ghazy, a Yemeni national unlawfully detained at Guantánamo since he was 17. Fahd is now 30.Through moving interviews with his beloved family, “Waiting for Fahd” paints a vivid portrait of the life that awaits a man who,…

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit was unwise to put a stay on the necessary remedies Judge Shira Scheindlin of Federal District Court in Manhattan ordered in August in response to the civil rights violations of New York City’s stop-and-frisk policy.And it overreached in taking…

By Kieran Rose, Chair of GLEN, the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network“I think same-sex couples should be able to get married” – these ten simple words spoken by US President Barack Obama last Wednesday have reverberated around the world and provided a watershed moment in the…

This publication is an attempt to distil the learnings from three important books that were published during 2009 and which provide valuable insights into doing advocacy in an emerging constitutional democracy in South Africa. Written by Marian Nell & Janet Shapiro for The Atlantic Philanthropies…