Progress has been made on gender issues in almost all countries, and everything possible must be done to keep the economic crisis from leading to a 'backlash,' warns Barbara Prammer, president of the Austrian parliament.

Even while India goes to the polls in a lumbering show of democracy, human rights activist-doctor Binayak Sen remains in prison on unproven terrorism charges.

When the 192-nation General Assembly meets next week to elect 18 new members to the Geneva-based Human Rights Council (HRC), most of the candidates will win their seats without breaking a political sweat because of the almost entirely non-competitive nature of the vote.

Media organisations this week dug in their heels over boycotting a national media conference in the resort town of Kariba. State-owned media reported that the much-postponed conference finally opened on May 8, with information minister Webster Shamu lamenting the deep divisions within the media fraternity in Zimbabwe.

Trade unions from Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait came together with their Sri Lankan counterparts here to strike an unprecedented agreement on the welfare of migrant workers.

Jeffrey Owens, the tax 'point person' of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), was stung by activist critics of the OECD standards under which countries will be put on a tax haven blacklist and targeted for sanctions.

Climate change will further marginalise Australia’s Aboriginal communities, forcing them out of their traditional lands, destroying their culture and significantly affecting their access to water resources, indigenous rights advocates warn.

Last month in Prague, President Barack Obama vowed that he would seek a world without nuclear weapons. On Tuesday, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller spelled out that this policy would apply to Israel, as well.

Too bold for some tastes and too dissident for others, some of the Cuban exhibits at the recent Havana Arts Biennial brought to mind the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the visual arts were in the vanguard of national culture.

Thousands of people are stranded in violence-wracked Swat and Buner districts in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) because the Pakistan Taliban have refused to allow them passage to safer places.