In honor of Valentine’s Day I attended a benefit production of Eve Ensler’s award-winning play The Vagina Monologues. This year the V-day global campaign focus is “Stop Raping our Greatest Resource: Power to Women in the DRC.” Over 5.4 million people have died in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) since 1998 – currently 45,000 people die each month. Thousands of women experience brutal sexual violence on a daily basis. Thankfully journalists like Nicholas Kristof are keeping the DRC in the news – most recently with this moving video of a Message for President Obama. However, as one Congolese woman says, “we speak but nothing changes.” The Enough Project highlights how our demand for conflict minerals – the material in the cellphone in your pocket – fuels this deadly war. Congolese women and men risk their lives so we can talk on our cellphones, check our email and update our Facebook status. What will we do for them?

When this woman would not be quiet in the face of her perpetrators, they shot her three times. Photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The rights of those serving within the ranks of the U.S. military (or employed by its contractors) made the news this week. On Monday, the 2011 Defense budget proposal was released and included prohibitions against defense contracts with companies that deny court hearings for sexual assault victims. The prohibitions mirror Sen. Al Franken’s Anti-Rape Amendment, which was adopted in December in spite of opposition from the Defense Department. On Tuesday, during a Senate hearing top U.S. military officers endorsed the gradual repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” the policy which “forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.” Controversial statements by Sen. John McCain speak to some of the issues at hand: “Many gay and lesbian Americans are serving admirably in our Armed forces, even giving their Lives so that we and others can know the blessings of peace…{this is} military life which is characterized by its own laws, rules, customs and traditions.” How much longer will the U.S. military exempt itself from the very values that it purports to defend?

Photo Credit: Johnny Symons, Ask Not

Last week, the United Nations released its first report on “The State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.” The report finds significant disparities in basic human rights and development standards for indigenous peoples as compared to non-indigenous populations. For instance, in terms of economic rights in the United States, more than twice the percentage of Native Americans and Alaska Natives were found to live below the poverty line as compared to the total U.S. population. And women’s rights standards are even more disconcerting: Native American women are 2.5 times more likely to be raped or experience sexual violence than other women in the United States. Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International are working to pass several bills in Congress this upcoming year to address these severe and pervasive human rights disparities. Of course, Native American communities have long been aware of these injustices, and groups such as the Alaska Native Justice Center and the Native American Rights Fund have worked to promote and defend Native American human rights.

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and women’s right advocate Shirin Ebadi released a statement on December 29th declaring: ”my sister Dr. Noushin Ebadi who is a Medical lecturer at Azad University of Tehran was detained by four officers from the counter-intelligence agency of Islamic Republic of Iran.” Dr. Noushin Ebadi is not politically active nor is she a member of any human rights organizations. Her only crime seems to be that she is Shirin Ebadi’s sister. This attempt to silence an internationally-known human rights activist by targeting an innocent family member comes amidst violent crackdowns on protesters and opposition figures in Iran. Several hundred people were arrested following protests during last Sunday’s holy day of Ashura, and at least eight killed. The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran and Reporters Without Borders have up to date information about the systematic clampdown on human rights activists and journalists in Iran. The Feminist School highlights the targeted harassment and arrest of women’s rights activists.

Yesterday, the Senate passed an amendment that bans federal funds from corporations that prohibit sexual assault litigation because of clauses for binding arbitration they have with their employees. In effect, if a woman is gang raped by KBR (a Halliburton subsidiary) employees in a war zone, as was the case of Jamie Leigh Jones, she will have the right to a fair trial to prosecute her offenders, regardless of the fine print of her employment contract. The Minnesota Independent has written a great short piece on this legislation, and Huffington Post blogger, Howie Klein, shares his views on the topic.

Mexican journalist and human rights defender, Lydia Cacho Ribeiro, is facing increasingly dangerous threats for her work exposing organized crime rings and sexual violence in Mexico. Ms. Cacho Ribeiro received Amnesty International’s Ginetta Sagan Award on International Women’s Day in 2007 and was the laureate of the 2008 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. What is the role of the journalist in advancing justice? What does this reflect about freedom of the press and its relationship to securing other human rights? Most importantly, how can U.S. journalists support the work of colleagues in other parts of the world who often risk their lives by exposing human rights violations?