by Marjorie Cohn, marjoriecohn.com
- USA -

Nearly 30 years after President Jimmy Carter signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the United States remains the only democracy that refuses to ratify the most significant treaty guaranteeing gender equality. One hundred eighty-five countries, including over 90 percent of members of the United Nations, have ratified CEDAW.

by Virginia Keyder, EU Observer, Belgium - The European media has been awash with stories of government excess in electronic surveillance and retention (as well as loss) of personal data. But the European Commission, aided by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has set its sights on not only assisting such excesses, but mandating them. Not so fast, or at least, not so easily, says Ireland.

by Neeti Nair, Outlook, India - Why us? Mumbaikars have asked in anguish. Because Mumbai is, despite the glamour and the success, close to Karachi, and Karachi is falling apart. Because much as it would like to be closer to New York and London, it is still grounded in a differently structured world.

by Cordula Meyer and Simone Kaiser, Spiegel, Germany - André Shepherd is the first American GI to have applied for political asylum in Germany. Shepherd, who deserted to avoid going back to fight in Iraq, argues that the war there is in violation of international law.

by Jane Gabriel, openDemocracy, UK - Dr Azza Baydoun has analysed every ‘honour killing' in Lebanon that has gone before the courts since 1999 and found that behind the plea of offended honour lies the crime of femicide. The women were shot, stabbed, beaten, strangled, burnt or poisoned, by men, because they were women: if they had been men they would not have been killed.

by Jody Williams and Shirin Ebadi, Guardian, UK - The International Criminal Court needs international support to bring Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, to justice for genocide.

by E. J. Graff, Foreign Policy, USA - Foreign adoption seems like the perfect solution to a heartbreaking imbalance: Poor countries have babies in need of homes, and rich countries have homes in need of babies. Unfortunately, those little orphaned bundles of joy may not be orphans at all.

by Beena Sarwar, Dawn, Pakistan - The Mumbai nightmare has plunged the media in India and Pakistan into the dangerous, old trap in which nationalism trumps responsible reporting. This is not a new phenomenon, nor is it restricted to India and Pakistan.

by Aline Gatto Boueri, Comunidad Segura, Brazil - Brazil and Argentina. If soccer comes to mind, you are on the right track. But in this case its not about Maradona, Pelé and neighborly rivalry. Once a month, in the city of Buenos Aires, the Liga de Futebol Popular brings together 20 teams from seven locations, split up into 5 categories – the youngest members being children age six to eight – to play Argentine soccer with Brazilian flavor.

by Liz Fuller, Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic - The NATO foreign ministers' decision on December 2 not to offer Membership Action Plans to Georgia and Ukraine should not have surprised anyone. Nor should their reaffirmation of the provision enshrined in the final document of the April 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest that those two countries will at some unspecified future date join the alliance.

by Sue Branford, Guardian, UK - The world map is being redrawn. Over the past six months, China, South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other nations have been buying and leasing huge quantities of foreign land for the production of food or biofuels for domestic consumption. It's a modern day version of the 19th-century scramble for Africa.

by Ashley Bommer, Today's Zaman, Turkey - The United States went into Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaeda. But seven years later, what has the US achieved? It has spent over $170 billion in Afghanistan, and yet al-Qaeda and the Taliban are growing stronger.

by Safaa Abdoun, Daily News, Egypt - Amid the noisy, crowded streets and bustling activity in the Cairene squatter settlement of Mansheyat Nasser, in the basement of an unpainted building, 25 women have decided to change their destinies. They came to learn how to read and write.

by Lynn Bradach, Los Angeles Times, USA - In the last 10 years, the United States has used cluster bombs in civilian-populated areas of Afghanistan, Iraq and Kosovo. Israel used them on the villages and olive groves of southern Lebanon. And the United States rained cluster bombs on Laos in a secret side war to Vietnam. The "bombies" in Laos are still exploding, 30 years after that war.

by Saba Naqvi, Outlook, India - Terror has given Indian politics a big jolt. Just when the political process appeared to be the sum total of small local issues, the assault on Mumbai by a group of armed terrorists could change the equations—and not very subtly. The political class has no doubt there will be an impact on electoral rhetoric and outcome. Terror, global or homegrown, as will be investigated, will occupy the public mind.

by Robin Kimmerer, Orion, USA - The Onondaga Nation of central New York proposes a radical new vision of property rights.

by Catherine Norris Trent and Virginie Herz, France 24, France - Around 600 illegal immigrants live in makeshift camps around the northern French harbour town of Calais, hoping to hide into a lorry bound for United Kingdom. The authorities do little for them and local charities say they are overloaded.

by Ana Santos and Xu Lingui, Xinhua, China - There are 5 million people in Asia living with HIV/AIDS with around 400,000 people being newly infected every year, according to the statistics released by Uniting the world against AIDS (UNAIDS).

by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Independent, UK - Denial and obfuscation once again stop us from examining who the killers were, why they did what they did, the places and times they pick. It is not to exonerate them or forgive them, but to acquire vital data and a deeper understanding of the international networks and the mental states of the perpetrators – their religious and political ideologies.

by Tamsin Carlisle, The National, United Arab Emirates - Egypt’s 82 million people have enough economic worries without Somali pirates cutting into the government’s revenues.

by Thin Lei Win, Reuters, UK - Between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. military dropped more than 2 million tons of explosive ordnance, including an estimated 260 million cluster munitions -- also known as bombie in Laos.

by Susan Blumenthal and Melissa Shive, San Francisco Chronicle, USA - Today is the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day, and its message, "Stop AIDS. Keep the Promise," calls on global leaders to deliver on the promise of universal access to prevention, treatment and care.

by Beena Sarwar, Inter Press Service, Italy - The pattern is all too familiar. Every time India and Pakistan head towards dialogue and detente, something explosive happens that pushes peace to the backburner and drags them back to the familiar old tense relationship, worsened by sabre-rattling war cries from both sides.

by Tracy McVeigh, Guardian, UK - The resurgence of fierce fighting in this war-torn republic has sent families fleeing into the bush, where they begin to starve, too afraid to return to their homes and fields.

by Marjorie Cohn, Marjorie Cohn, USA - Since the Bush administration began transporting men and boys to Guantánamo Bay in January 2002, it has tried to prevent them from presenting their cases before a neutral federal judge. Indeed, the naval base was turned into a prison camp precisely to keep the detainees away from impartial courts.

by Sophia Kishkovsky, International Herald Tribune, France - There are few spots on earth these days where religions mingle without rancor, or worse. But the Russian republic of Tatarstan has turned religious tolerance into its post-Soviet brand - a place where Muslims, Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics mix and respect each other's traditions.