While an increasingly devastating famine continues to drive Somalis from their homes, many families are citing another reason for leaving: the forced recruitment of child soldiers. A recent Amnesty International report revealed that al-Shabab has intensified its recruitment process in order to gain more control of Central and South Somalia.

Primary schools are raided for soon-to-be soldiers and children are abducted from local playgrounds. Some are bribed with money and phones. Those who run away are often shot in the back, deemed traitors.

A Somali woman who lost several young family members at the hands of the armed rebels told Amnesty International:

"Those recruited by al-Shabab do not come back."

Boys, sometimes as young as eight, are given guns and forced to fight alongside grown men. Girls are used as servants for al-Shabab members, and in some instances, even wives. One testimony of a 16-year-old boy described how young girls are charged with adultery if they refuse to comply with the marriages. Floggings are a common punishment, sometimes ending with the death of the child. Girls and women accused of being raped (yes, accused) have been beaten or stoned to death - even though refugees have told Amnesty International that al-Shabab was responsible for the rape themselves.

Interviews with youth in the region have produced evidence that the Islamist militant group may be using children as suicide bombers, although Amnesty International cannot verify this. A 15-year-old boy described al-Shabab's recruitment tactics:

"They have a methodology, they say you will fight a jihad and then go to paradise. One friend was recruited by them and then he came to the village asking us to join...He had an AK47 and he said he was given lots of money."

While al-Shabab has been criticized for using children as weapons of war, the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), which is internationally-backed and U.S.-funded, has been listed on the UN's annual list of parties that recruit children for armed conflict for seven years in a row —although they dispute the accusation. During a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland on May 4, 2011, TFG members cited a lack of birth certificates and international financial assistance as the main causes of child recruitment. Human Rights Watch, alongside Amnesty International and other humanitarian organizations, have expressed grave concern over TFG training camps that hold refugee children against their will in neighboring Kenya, which has also denied allegations of using child soldiers.

An ex-child soldier who fled to Kenya told Amnesty International:

"I am not feeling safe. I am stressed. I have flashbacks. I am scared that al-Shabab will come here too. I want a better future, better security, further education. I live in fear here."

South Sudan's independence celebrations tomorrow look set to bring leaders from the world over: 30 African heads of state, plus Ban ki-Moon and a number of other senior Western diplomats. The presence of so many global bigwigs is wonderful news for the world's youngest country, but it has already made arrangements for the event a little more complicated. The Washington Times reports:

Sudanese President Omar [al]-Bashir's decision to attend South Sudan's independence celebrations in Juba on Saturday has created potentially awkward situations for delegations from countries that have been pressing for his arrest on a war crimes indictment...

A senior Western official in Sudan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said southern officials have assured the diplomatic corps in Juba they will do everything to avoid any embarrassments.

"The government is sensitive to these concerns and is going to do everything possible to make sure there are no embarrassments of any sort, on any side, on that day," the official said. "They are conscious that this might be awkward to Bashir as well."

A special seating arrangement has been worked out to minimize the possibility of blushing faces.

The International Criminal Court's March 2009 indictment alleged that Bashir was responsible for war crimes in the ongoing conflict in Darfur. Recent violence in border states Abyei and South Kordofan hasn't endeared him to the international community either. Bashir and rebel leaders pledged in late June to pull troops out of Abyei before the referendum, but Bashir's ambassador to Kenya reaffirmed yesterday the north's claim to the region. Bashir also backtracked yesterday on the June 29 peace accord between government officials and pro-southern rebels that promised to quell the fighting in South Kordofan.

Meanwhile, Jacob Zuma will be donning his superhero cape again on his visit to confront Bashir about recent violence in Sudan.

Just one week after the acquittal of fiery far-right politician Geert Wilders, the Dutch parliament struck another blow against multiculturalism in the Netherlands yesterday with the passage of a bill banning ritual animal slaughter. The bill requires that all animals be stunned before being slaughtered, a requirement that conflicts with halal and kosher stipulations that animals be fully conscious.

The bill was initially proposed by the Party of the Animals, which holds two seats in the 146-seat Dutch parliament and maintains that ritual methods of slaughter are inhumane. It gained support from centrists on similar grounds, but Wilders's Freedom Party has also been a longtime proponent. In fact, it was Wilders who first raised the issue in 2007 when he objected to halal meat being served at a public school in Amsterdam.

The ban has provoked a furious reaction from Jewish and Muslim leaders in the Netherlands and Europe. From Reuters:

"The very fact that there is a discussion about this is very painful for the Jewish community," Netherlands Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs told Reuters. "Those who survived the (second world) war remember the very first law made by the Germans in Holland was the banning of schechita or the Jewish way of slaughtering animals."

It should be noted that a last-minute amendment attached to the bill states that halal and kosher slaughterhouses will be able to apply for special permits if they can show that their methods do not cause more pain than non-ritual methods. But some are skeptical of the permit process's efficacy, and the European Jewish Congress is already considering challenging the law in court.

The bill awaits confirmation in the parliament's upper house, though it passed easily in the lower house and enjoys widespread public support. If passed, it will put the Netherlands in the company of a handful of countries that have outlawed ritual animal slaughter. Revisions to New Zealand's animal welfare code made kosher slaughter illegal as of this May, while bans in a number of Scandinavian and Baltic countries date back to anti-Semitic measures passed before World War II.

For the first time, the United Nation's Human Rights Council condemned violence and discrimination against gays, lesbians, and transgender people today in Geneva. The move-- which was initially put forward by South Africa-- was applauded by gay rights supporters.

The resolution "expresses grave concern at acts of violence and discrimination, in all regions of the world, committed against individuals because of their sexual orientation and gender identity" and calls for a study by the end of the year to examine discrimination against the gay community.

The U.S. ambassador to the council, Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, called it a "historic moment" for the United Nations, according to the Associated Press.

Nevertheless, the vote was close-- with the strongest opposition coming from African and Islamic countries. 23 nations voted in favor, 19 against, and 3 abstained.

Here's a rundown of which countries voted which way:

Read on

In 2008, Yu Keping, the head of China's Central Compilation and Translation Bureau and a professor at Peking University, published an attention-grabbing collection of essays called Democracy is a Good Thing. Coming from a Chinese Communist Party official said to be close to President Hu Jintao, Yu's bold assertion that "democracy is the best political system for humankind" was striking. But so was the fine print: Yu argued in the book that while "it is the inevitable trend for all nations of the world to move towards democracy ... the timing and speed of the development of democracy and the choice of the form and system of democracy are conditional." Among other things, he has resisted the idea that a multi-party political system would be appropriate for China. All of which is to say that Yu is something of a sphinx: As a New York Times profile observed last year, "Even China experts have a hard time determining whether Mr. Yu is a brave voice for change or simply a well-placed shill."

Which makes Yu -- who is in Washington this week -- a particularly interesting person to ask about the current moment in Chinese politics, in which the Communist Party is managing the transition from Hu to his presumed presidential successor, Vice President Xi Jinping, while watching the sudden explosion of anti-government, pro-democratic sentiment in the Arab world with palpable unease. The Chinese government began cracking down on human rights activists, artists, and writers in March, and barred another prominent writer from leaving the country this week.

Read on

The most interesting moment in an otherwise subdued -- dare I say dull -- press conference by U.S. President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao came when a Bloomberg reporter insisted that Hu answer a fellow journalist's question about human rights.

Hu, blaming the translation, claimed he hadn't heard the question (to audible titters among the assembled press corps). He went on to give China's standard answer on human rights, which is basically, "Blah blah we've always respected human rights (yet we're also improving), China faces unique circumstances as a developing country, we favor dialogue, etc."

He also said that "China recognizes and also respects the universality of human rights," which caught the ear of New York Times reporter Michael Wines, who sees the remark as "a palpable shift for a government that has staged a two-year crackdown on internal dissent and imprisoned a Nobel laureate."

"Until Wednesday," Wines continues, "recognizing credos like democracy and human rights as 'universal values' had been all but taboo in Chinese political discourse, although China has signed the United Nations convention that enshrines the principle of universal human rights."

Not so, points out Forbes correspondent Gady Epstein, who passes along this Washington Post article from 2009, which discusses China's submission (pdf) to a U.N. review panel:

"China respects the principle of the universality of human rights," the document states. But it adds: "Given differences in political systems, levels of development and historical and cultural backgrounds, it is natural for countries to have different views on the question of human rights."

That's almost exactly what Hu said. I suppose it's different when the president himself says so with all the eyes of the world upon him, but let's not kid ourselves about whether China has made some profound new commitment to human rights and democracy. For all its very real successes in promoting development, the Chinese Communist Party has no intention of relinquishing its stranglehold on political power anytime soon, if ever. Wake me up when they stop throwing political prisoners in jail, beating people in the streets, censoring the press, and generally evincing little regard for the Chinese people's ability to chart their own future.

The Guardian has the (non-WikiLeaked) scoop on an upcoming bombshell of a report by human rights investigators from the Council of Europe, which accuses Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci of involvement in a criminal network involved with drug, weapons smuggling and even organ harvesting: 

The report of the two-year inquiry, which cites FBI and other intelligence sources, has been obtained by the Guardian. It names Thaçi as having over the last decade exerted "violent control" over the heroin trade.

Figures from Thaçi's inner circle are accused of secretly taking captives across the border into Albania after the war, where a few Serbs are said to have been murdered for their kidneys, which were sold on the black market.[..]

Dick Marty, the human rights investigator behind the inquiry, will present his report to European diplomats from all 47 member states at a meeting in Paris on Thursday.

His report suggests Thaçi's links with organised crime date back more than a decade, when those loyal to his Drenica Group became the dominant faction within the KLA.

It says the group's supremacy over splinter groups in the guerrilla movement enabled them, from 1998, to seize control of "most of the illicit criminal enterprises" in which Kosovans were involved south of the border, in Albania.[...]

Thaçi and four other members of the Drenica Group are named in the report as having carried out "assassinations, detentions, beatings and interrogations". This same hardline KLA faction has held considerable power in Kosovo's government over the last decade, with the support of western powers keen to ensure stability in the fledgling state.

The organ harvesting charge was previously made by Hague Special Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, who says she was prevented by political pressure from investigating KLA atrocities during the war. There's also a currently ongoing trial of Kosovan doctors accused of running an organ smuggling ring. The links are still a little murky, but the new report is sure to reignite the charge:

It finds the KLA did hold mostly Serb captives in a secret network of six detention facilities in northern Albania.

Thaçi's Drenica Group "bear the greatest responsibility" for the ad-hoc prisons and the fate of those held in them. They include a "handful" of prisoners said to have been transferred to a makeshift prison just north of Tirana, where they were killed for their kidneys.

The report states: "As and when the transplant surgeons were confirmed to be in position and ready to operate, the captives were brought out of the 'safe house' individually, summarily executed by a KLA gunman, and their corpses transported swiftly to the operating clinic.''

Thaci's party came out ahead in Kosovo's first post-independence parliamentary elections last weekend, but he's still working to form a coalition and I'm guessing the macabre charges might complicate the situation somewhat. 

Whether or not the most explosive accusations are substantiated -- the inquiry report carries no legal weight on its own -- reports of the Kosovo government's links to organized crime are not new, even if they've never been so explicitly stated by a high-profile body. The full release of Swiss prosecutor Dick Marty's report on Thursday should be eagerly anticipated in Belgrade and Moscow.

Are we surprised to learn, via WikiLeaks, that American diplomats in Colombo blame Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his top officials for the massacre of tens of thousands (by most estimates) of Tamil civilians during the final months of Sri Lanka's bloody civil war? The goods are in a Jan. 15 cable sent by U.S. Amb. Patricia A. Butenis on the eve of Sri Lanka's presidential elections (which Rajapaksa won handily). Butenis was assessing the country's ability to come to terms with the atrocities committed in the protracted conflict between the government and the Tamil Tigers rebel group, which was defeated in May 2009 after nearly three decades of fighting.

In May, the Sri Lankan government announced plans to launch a "truth and reconciliation commission," modeled on South Africa's post-Apartheid investigation, to look into the brutal last phase of the war, in which large numbers of Tamil civilians were trapped between the government and rebel troops. Human rights groups aren't exactly holding their breath for the results of the ongoing inquiry, led as it is by the same government that was allegedly responsible for most of the carnage. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and International Crisis Group -- which released a sweeping and damning report on the war crimes in May -- all turned down invitations to participate. Butenis, it turns out, was similarly nonplussed, writing:

There are no examples we know of a regime undertaking wholesale investigations of its own troops or senior officials for war crimes while that regime or government remained in power. In Sri Lanka this is further complicated by the fact that responsibility for many of the alleged crimes rests with the country's senior civilian and military leadership, including President Rajapaksa and his brothers and opposition candidate General [Sarath] Fonseka.

This last observation gets headline treatment from the Guardian, and it is notable for Butenis's willingness to name names. But the State Department has been fairly clear, albeit more diplomatic, about what it thinks happened in the spring of 2009, in a report released in March:

The government's respect for human rights declined as armed conflict reached its conclusion. Outside of the conflict zone, the overwhelming majority of victims of human rights violations, such as extrajudicial killings and disappearances, were young male Tamils, while Tamils were estimated to be only 16 percent of the overall population. Credible reports cited unlawful killings by paramilitaries and others believed to be working with the awareness and assistance of the government, assassinations by unknown perpetrators, politically motivated killings, and disappearances.

An August report from State also (cautiously) expressed concern about the integrity of the government's commission. In short, Butenis's assessment is generally consistent with what humanitarian workers on the ground in Sri Lanka at the time of the conflict thought State's position was -- one that may not have been shared by American defense and intelligence personnel, who were believed to be less squeamish about the military campaign against the Tigers.

I asked Alan Keenan, Sri Lanka project director for ICG, about the cable. He says it contains few surprises:

It's certainly consistent with how the embassy and the State Department are looking at the situation. They knew bad things happened -- they're calling them "alleged" war crimes, but I think in a quiet moment they would say they were war crimes. They recognize that that happened. But they don't think there's the space internally for it to be addressed. So I don't think we're learning a whole lot new. What would tell us more, and what will be more interesting, and where the issues are a bit more gray, is what happened during the war -- what did the U.S. government know, and what did it do, or not do, to prevent the worst abuses and suffering?

This morning the U.N.'s new umbrella agency for women's rights issues elected its board members. The election had attracted controversy because two of the candidate countries were among the world's most notorious abusers of women's rights, Iran and Saudi Arabia. 

This morning, with strong lobbying from the United States, Iran's election to the board was blocked. Human rights groups had strongly opposed Iran's election, pointing in particular  to the recent death sentence of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani for the crime of adultery.

The 54 countries who sit on the UN’s Economic and Social Council did, however, accept the membership bid by Saudi Arabia, where women are forbidden from driving and barred from many public places.

In fact, according to the U.N. Development Program's own Gender Empowerment Measure, Saudi Arabia is actually a worse country for gender equality than Iran. Neither does particularly well, but of the the 93 countries ranked, only Yemen scores lower than Saudi Arabia.

Iran's candidacy for the 41-member executive board had been part of a slate elected by the Asian region while Saudi Arabia was selected for one of the spots reserved for "donor" nations. Not a particularly auspicious start for an important new body.  

Life in Iraq isn't easy (and hasn't been for a while), but it's still rare to find community leaders imploring Iraqis to leave their home country. But that's exactly what Archbishop Athanasios Dawood of the Syriac Orthodox Church is doing.

"I say clearly and now -- the Christian people should leave their beloved land of our ancestors and escape the premeditated ethnic cleansing," Dawood said in a prepared statement to CNN. "This is better than having them killed one by one." In other interviews, Dawood, who lives in London, evoked the word "genocide" to describe the treatment of Iraqi Christians.

Fifty-eight people were killed in an attack on an Iraqi church last Sunday.

With the exception of the massive exodus of Iraq's large Jewish minority after the creation of Israel in 1948, there was little sectarian violence in Iraq before the U.S. invasion in 2003.

"You know, everybody hates the Christian. Yes, during Saddam Hussein, we were living in peace -- nobody attacked us. We had human rights, we had protection from the government but now nobody protects us," the archbishop told the BBC. "Since 2003, there has been no protection for Christians. We've lost many people and they've bombed our homes, our churches, monasteries."

Eden Naby and Jamsheed K. Chosky wrote in Foreign Policy last week that there may not be a Christian population left in Iraq by the end of the century. Iran, which also has a (shrinking) Christian minority, is suffering the same fate.

But it isn't only from those countries that Middle Eastern Christians are leaving. Long-time Middle East journalist Robert Fisk pointed out last month (before the massacre in Baghdad) that Christian populations are shrinking across the region, from Palestine to Lebanon to Egypt. "This is, however, not so much a flight of fear, more a chronicle of a death foretold," Fisk writes. "Christians are being outbred by the majority Muslim populations in their countries and they are almost hopelessly divided."

In Michigan, Iraqi Christians rallied today, calling on the United States to put a stop to violence against their coreligionists.

The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has affected every aspect of society in that country. As many people have written, the U.S. government seems to have been wholly unprepared for what lay ahead in Iraq. It's hard to imagine that George W. Bush, with his own deep Christian faith, expected the catastrophe in store for Iraqi Christians.

A fair amount, apparently. Just not for very long. Andreas Fuchs and Nils-Hendrik Klann of Germany University of Geottingen looked at 159 countries' trade patterns with China between 1991 and 2008 to see what effect a high-level meeting with the Dalai Lama had on bilateral trade. Here's what they found:

Empirical evidence confirms the existence of a trade-deteriorating effect of Dalai Lama
receptions for the Hu Jintao era (2002-2008). However, we find at best weak evidence to support the existence of such an effect in earlier years. While our results suggest that systematic trade reductions are only caused by meetings with heads of state or government, no additional impact is found for meetings between the Dalai Lama and lower-ranking officials. As a consequence of a political leader's reception of the Dalai Lama in the current or previous period, exports to China are found to decrease by 8.1 percent or 16.9 percent, depending on the estimation technique used. Furthermore, we find that this effect will have disappeared two years after a meeting took place. Analyzing disaggregated export data, 'Machinery and transport equipment' is found to be the only product group with a consistent negative effect of Dalai Lama meetings on exports across samples and estimation techniques.

"Meet with him and we will temporarily reduce our machinery and transport equipment imports!" doesn't sound like the scariest of threats.

The pattern seems similar to what happens with defense ties. China halted its military exchanges with the United States in January in response to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, but there are strong signs now that these ties will soon resume.

One way to read this is that President Barack Obama was right last year to postpone his meeting with the Dalai Lama until after a summit with Chinese leader Hu Jintao. If you know diplomatic relations are going to take a temporary hit, why not postpone it until a more convenient time. On the other hand, the fact that the punishments China inflicts on its trading partners don't seem to last that long lends credence to Vaclav Havel's argument that "When someone soils his pants prematurely, then [the Chinese] do not respect you more for it."

Hat tip: Marginal Revolution

As if the pressure was not mounting enough on India's mismanagement of the upcoming Commonwealth Games -- highlighted recently by a FP photo essay -- CNN uncovers fresh evidence that child labor is being extensively used to "beautify" and build for the games.

Knowledge and reports of the practice have been documented from early on this year, but the Indian government is apparently not completely aware of what is going on at its own construction sites. According to the CNN article,

"The [government] minister... went on to say that ‘she had wished' somebody would have come and told her of the allegations."

While this may be true, child labor is pervasive in India, and some argue it is better than the alternatives. Perhaps the government was really just looking out for the children.

In a summer full of sports news, from the World Cup to LeBron James, the event currently taking place in Cologne, Germany is particularly unique: all its participants are gay. The Gay Games, organized by the Federation of Gay Games, is a quadrennial gathering of LGBT athletes, featuring competitions in everything from bodybuilding and bowling to squash and swimming to cultural exhibitions in cheerleading and music. This year's Games began on July 31 and will end with a marathon, finals in badminton, basketball, soccer, and volleyball, and closing ceremonies on Saturday, August 7. Around 10,000 athletes from more than 70 countries are participating, although the majority of participants come from Germany and the United States.

The first games took place in San Francisco in 1982, founded by openly gay decathlete Tom Waddell, who died of AIDS in 1987. According to the Games' official website, 1,350 athletes participated in 11 different sports during the 1982 event. The New York Times published the results of men's wrestling, however, with a policy against the word "gay," referred to them as part of the "Homosexual Games."

This year's games include participants from less-than-gay-friendly countries including Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Mexico, and Zimbabwe. According to The Guardian, many of these participants have had to use false identities due to fears of persecution at home. Thorsten Moeck, a member of the organization committee, told The Guardian that the Games are an attempt to signal "that the exclusion of gays and lesbians, especially in the sporting world has to end." Moeck pointed to Mexico's participating soccer team, who are among those keeping their identities secret, noting that the Cologne Games are a "unique opportunity" for them to be part of a gay community.

While the gay rights battle in the U.S. has centered most recently on DADT and marriage equality, Amnesty International released a report on Sunday showing that 76 countries consider merely being gay punishable by law. In seven of these countries, same-sex acts can warrant a death sentence. That number contrasts with only 53 countries whose anti-discrimination laws apply to sexuality and 26 that recognize same-sex marriage.

Given how stubbornly Kim Jong-Il appears to be weathering his reportedly grave illness, you might think North Korean healthcare is more or less intact -- even the Dear Leader must get a boost from modern medicine. But a chilling report released today by Amnesty International is an all-too-clear reminder that the luxuries (or in this case, just the bare necessities) of royal treatment in Korea are a far cry from the horrors of everyday existence: based on the accounts of 40 North Korean defectors and health professionals, Amnesty investigators reveal just how backward the country's healthcare system truly is.

Drained of the most basic -- and most important -- resources (everything from pills to power), hospitals in North Korea are barely functional. Doctors make their rounds by candlelight, and patients endure major operations without even the mildest anesthesia. And that's only if the ailing can make it to a hospital in the first place: many patients must make many-hour treks to consult with their inept doctors -- appointments that invariably spell further trauma. One interviewee describes his harrowing amputation (anesthesia-free, of course):

Five medical assistants held my arms and legs down to keep me from moving. I was in so much pain that I screamed and eventually fainted from pain," said the man, identified only by his family name, Hwang. "I woke up one week later in a hospital bed.

Under North Korea's official health care program, all citizens are entitled to free medical treatment -- and state officials insist they truly receive it. Yet World Health Organization figures give the country a failing grade: North Korea spends less than one dollar per person per year on health -- a meager sum that makes it the world's worst performer.  First-person accounts in the report only confirm this picture. According to one defector and former doctor:

People in North Korea don't bother going to the hospital if they don't have money because everyone knows that you have to pay for service and treatment.

Without the right bribes - cigarettes, alcohol, or just plain cash -- most Koreans don't stand a chance. In short, says the doctor: "If you don't have money, you die.''