Suite or Slum? Ghana's Serious Shortage of Affordable Housing

Due to a lack of mid-price housing, urban Ghanaians are often confined to two options: plush penthouse or crammed shanty town. When filmmaker Leslie Amponsah was shown round a squalid and waterlogged property up for rent in a suburb of Accra, Ghana, he was quoted a monthly rate that was barely affordable, even on a decent income, and was told that the landlord wanted two years up front. The estate agent would also be charging a 10% commission, he was reminded, and was already being paid a fee for every viewing. As frustrating as this experience was, it is nothing out of the ordinary...

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Hamas's Human Shield Strategy

The current Gaza conflict is likely to be remembered as a terrible tragedy. Not Because the IDF has unintentionally killed Palestinian civilians but because Hamas has made the use of human shields a despicable primary military strategy. encouraged by the unforgivable silence of leading international NGOs, Hamas deploys two complementary tactics that mock and debase the humanitarian core of international law: firing hundreds of rocket targeting Israeli population centers (including Jews, Muslims and Christians) and the massive use of Palestinian civilians—including women and children—as human shields. While Israel makes an effort to fight with accurate surgical air strikes directed against Hamas militant and it's terrorist sites,...

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A Girl’s Escape

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — She was a 13-year-old girl who said she was beaten daily by strangers who forced her to work unpaid in their home, and she wanted to escape. Marilaine was one of 200,000 or more Haitian children called restaveks, typically serving as unpaid maids in strangers’ homes, working for room and board. It is a vast system of child trafficking that is often characterized as a modern form of slavery. I followed Marilaine for a week in Haiti as she tried to flee, find her parents and start life over — and this is her story. Marilaine grew up in a remote village where...

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Never again? : Crimes Against Humanity In North Korea

North Korea's leadership is committing systematic and appalling human rights abuses against its own citizens on a scale unparalleled in the modern world, crimes against humanity with strong resemblances to those committed by the Nazis, a United Nations inquiry has concluded. The UN's commission on human rights in North Korea, which gathered evidence for almost a year, including often harrowing testimony at public hearings worldwide, said there was compelling evidence of torture, execution and arbitrary imprisonment, deliberate starvation and an almost complete...

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