The news that Swiss authorities are freeing film producer and child molester Roman Polanski is simply sickening. The LA Times looked at the important question as to how Polanski’s original sentence for having sex with a 13-year-old girl compared against the sentences of others who committed the same crime and had the same plea deal, in which a person admits to [...]

Nate Henn, 25, was one of the victims in yesterday’s bombing in Kigali, Rwanda of a rugby field where the World Cup final was being televised on a giant screen. Nate listed himself as a 2007 graduate of the University of Delaware. When I was on the Inquirer’s editorial board writing about Northern Uganda from about [...]

Here’s part of a great story from IRIN that raises the same question: How can such a small group of rebels endure and cause such havoc in so many countries, including in the Democratic Republic of Congo as examined by IRIN. The story doesn’t give many satisfying answers, except to say that the LRA uses such brutal [...]

It’s the NGO’s annual State of the World’s Mothers report and it’s just out and available here from Save the Children. A cause being important and worthy, and a product about it, such as this report, coming from a well-regarded organization, doesn’t mean journalists and others will automatically give them attention. Advocates who want attention [...]

I got the following press release this morning from the International Crisis Group, which points out the continued, bloody existence of the Lord’s Resistance Army. As much as I respect the crisis group, the conclusions in its new report aren’t new at all. The LRA has been a regional menace for years. Think tanks and humanitarian groups [...]

This from a UNICEF press release:
UNICEF mobilizing for Qinghai earthquake disaster
Majority of primary schools collapsed, urgent need for tents, winter clothing
BEIJING, 15 April 2010 –UNICEF will send urgently needed relief supplies for children affected by yesterday’s massive earthquake. The response will be coordinated with other UN agencies. The quake heavily damaged parts of remote [...]

Just got this press release in my email today anf thought it was worth posting in its entirety. Even as the media spotlight on Haiti fails, let’s not forget the threats facing its children, who are multilayered vulnerable - on top of the vulnerability they had before the earthquake because of their poverty, they now [...]

The title of this post owes itself to the line I’ve put in bold in the IRIN story below. “…Most children who had one living relative were taken in by them,” local caretakers report. Why do I think that statement is so important? Because it runs counter to images among some outside of Haiti that [...]

The BBC reports this story today. Here’s a snippet of it:
Aid workers in Haiti have sent home all but one of the 33 children that US missionaries tried to take out of the country after the January earthquake.
They said all the children had parents to return to. Each family was given food, blankets and $260 [...]

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, 12 February 2010 (IRIN) - Some 300,000 people suffered physical injury during Haiti’s devastating earthquake, but as a day of national mourning was marked exactly one month later, the full extent of the hidden, psychological damage is still unclear in a country with the most rudimentary of mental health infrastructures. ”We are faced with an [...]