Harvard’s 18th annual International Development Conference was held in Cambridge on Saturday. I had the opportunity to attend and sit in on some great panels about education, women, and corruption- all related to development. Speakers from the UN, the World Bank, USAID, and even one of Time Magazine’s top 100 most influential people in the …
Tag: Human Rights
Apr 11
A Change in Jenna Talackova’s Miss Universe Disqualification
Last month, Jenna Talackova was banned from competing in the Miss Universe competition due to the fact that she is transgender. After finding out about her past, officials promptly took Jenna out of the running, causing uproars along the way. Social media websites devoured the story, news sources kept people constantly updated, and gay rights …
Apr 09
Using the Index of Women’s Economic Opportunity to Improve the Global Economy
As stated in the 2012 version of the Index of Women’s Economic Opportunity, “women are the key driver of economic growth.” Research has shown that in the United States alone, women have added 2 percentage points per year to the overall economic growth. Similar or even better numbers have been seen in numerous countries all …
Apr 06
El Agua: Ganancias vs Humanidad
Read this post in English Uno de los temas que me ha interesado cada vez más ha sido la inaccesibilidad del agua y la privatización del agua. El último par de semanas, he estado siguiendo el Consejo Mundial del Agua y el Foro Mundial del Agua, los cuales se establecieron con el fin de abordar …
Apr 05
Myanmar and the Politics of Tourism
Several months ago I wrote a post on the future of tourism in Myanmar (better known as Burma), which many groups were hoping to capitalize on in the coming years. Myanmar has been largely untouched by tourists thanks to a combination of government restrictions and sanctions imposed by countries like the US, and now that …
Apr 03
Water: Profits vs Humanity?
One of the issues that I’ve become increasingly interested in has been the inaccessibility to water and the privatization of water. The last couple of weeks, I have been following the World Water Council and the World Water Forum, which were established in order to address some of these issues. Overall, I have found that …
Mar 29
Separatism in Libya
I’m sure that you were expecting to read a post about the latest development in Syria today, and, to be honest, that’s what I was planning on writing about. But as I was reading news article about Assad’s latest peace plan and the continued violence, I realized I really didn’t have much to say that …
Mar 28
Was Jenna Talackova a Victim of Discrimination?
If you’ve watched the news, listened to the radio, or opened up any homepage on the internet lately, you have probably heard or read about Canadian contestant, Jenna Talackova, being disqualified from the Miss Universe pageant. Jenna is a 23 year old transgender who has stated that she knew she was a female by the …
Mar 28
Unsustainable Consumerism Part 2- Production
In my last post I introduced the concept of the materials economy. We took a look at the ridiculous rate at which the American consumer is driving the destruction and exploitation of our planet’s natural resources and native cultures. These themes will perfectly translate into this post’s discussion of the second step in the materials …
Mar 26
Improving LGBT Rights with the Corporate Equality Index
Since 2002 the Human Rights Campaign has been creating and releasing a public Corporate Equality Index each year. This is a list of businesses and corporations that indicates their level of LGBT support and equality in terms of employment. Businesses are chosen from the Fortune Magazine’s 1000 largest publicly traded businesses and the American Lawyer …