A few days ago, I was reading an interesting book about global health called What’s Killing Us by Alanna Shaikh. Alanna Shaikh is a global health and development specialist and in this book, she writes about the biggest global health challenges we face today. She explores everything from chronic diseases, obesity, Flu, HIV and AIDs, …
Tag: Human Rights
Jul 23
Economic Boom in Myanmar
As you may recall, I’ve written a couple posts about Myanmar (or Burma) in the past, though mostly in the context of tourism. I’d like to switch gears a bit this time and write about another new opportunity for the country: a stock market. Myanmar’s legislative body, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, recently approved …
Jul 13
The Rise of Brazil: Part 2
Brazil has an exciting few years coming up with all the major global sporting events coming to its doorstep. In case you haven’t heard, Brazil will be hosting the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics. Having the two largest sporting events in the world in Brazil within the span of three years can …
Jul 10
H-2B Visa: The Potential for Forced Labor
When we talk about immigration in this country we almost always focus on undocumented migrants rather than documented ones. Because for some reason, we have this idea that our immigration system has no real issues and we just need to solve the problem of undocumented workers to make it perfect. Unfortunately, that simply isn’t the …
Jul 09
Electricity and the Arab Spring
If you were wondering why I missed my post last week, it’s because I was one of the million+ people who lost power during the storm that hit the east coast on the 29th. I was without power for 6 days–almost 7–which meant no internet, no television, no air conditioning, and, since our house has well …
Jul 06
The Politics of Women’s Health in the US: Part Three
The biggest news last week was no doubt the Supreme Court ruling upholding President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA), or you may know it by its catchier on name ‘Obamacare’. The Act does a lot of good for different groups of Americans, but the one I want to look at is the biggest: women. This …
Jun 29
Forced Marriage: How to reconcile differences in culture and tradition with law?
Recently in the UK, that age-old question has popped up again of how to reconcile differences between cultural/ traditional practices and human rights through law. The practice I’m talking about here is forced marriage, the human rights would be the abuse and lack of life choices by those forced into the marriage (likened to being …
Jun 29
No Controversy – The fight for contraceptives
When you think about Women’s rights what comes to your mind? The right to receive an education? Abortion? What about the right to plan their own families? Whenever women’s reproductive and health rights are being discussed, there is always controversy surrounding this issue. Especially when it comes to using contraceptives, also known as birth control. …
Jun 26
Water is Everyone’s Problem
Did you know water was declared a human right in 2010 by the United Nations? Yet, 884 million people are still without access to safe drinking water and, more than 2.4 billion people lack access to basic sanitation. These statistics are pretty shocking to me because despite many advances, we are facing this problem in …
Jun 20
The Rise of Brazil: Part 1
Have you noticed lately that Brazil has been in the international spotlight… a lot? It seems like every week I see some new headline about Brazil in relation to:1) a major international convention, 2) a major international sports event or 3) an issue involving development in the Amazon. The attention is good, bad and/ or …