One can use a number of metaphors to describe the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) today. It is like a wounded animal, less capable but still very dangerous. It is like a vulture, feeding off the existing misery it finds in countries otherwise troubled by conflict. The LRA is like a fire that is tamped down but not extinguished and can reignite at any time. However, the danger posed by the LRA is not metaphorical. It is very real to those who still live in fear in eastern and central Africa and certainly to the hundreds of child soldiers whose lives have been harmed by its work. The LRA is a...

The Great Lakes region of Africa is troubled. Burundi is experiencing continued turmoil due to a recent contentious election. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, or DRC, has had some level of conflict since the late 1990s. The Lord's Resistance Army, also known as the LRA, has plagued several of these countries. Alleged plundering of DRC resources by Rwanda and Uganda has never been fully resolved. Nations in the region have been preoccupied in the last 2 years with resolving the South Sudanese Civil War. Definitions vary, but the Great Lakes region, as defined by the U.S. Department of...

H.Res.290 recognizes that blasphemy laws position governments as arbiters of truth or religious rightness as they empower officials to enforce particular religious views against individuals and minorities. H.Res.290 Calls on the President and the Department of State (Department) to make the repeal of blasphemy laws a priority in their relationships with countries that have such laws. H.Res.290 Encourages the President and the Department to oppose any efforts at the United Nations (U.N.) or other international or multilateral fora to create an international anti-blasphemy norm, or attempts to...

Over the past 20 years, much has changed in Vietnam. Some Vietnamese are a little richer, but universally recognized human rights remain elusive for most. The Vietnamese Communist Party has opened up a bit to the outside world but remains closed to the idea of democracy and the rule of law. U.S.-Vietnamese relations have warmed because of Vietnam's fears of China's increasing economic power and its incursions into the South China Sea. But human rights improvements have not come from so-called better relations. The Obama administration has included Vietnam, a dictatorship, among several...

Currently, more than 35 million people worldwide live with some form of dementia, a figure that is greater than the number of people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS, which is about 33 million. By 2050, this population is projected to triple, in effect, to more than 115 million people. The total cost of dementia, treatment and care is estimated to be somewhere on the order of $604 billion, with about 70 percent of those costs now occurring in Western Europe and North America. As populations age across the globe, today's crisis may become tomorrow's, and will likely become, unless action is...

In January 2014, ISIS terrorists captured the city of Fallujah in central Iraq a decade after it had been won at the cost of so much American, Iraqi, and British blood. ISIS moved north, taking more territory, and conducting its genocidal campaign again Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities. By early August, Yazidi men, women, and children were trapped on Mount Sinjar facing annihilation when the U.S. initiated airstrikes to save them. On March 17, 2016, Secretary Kerry declared that ISIS is "responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis,...

In 1993, the citizens of Eritrea, then a province of Ethiopia, voted to become an independent nation. The citizens of Eritrea, which been had annexed by Ethiopia in 1962, no doubt believed that they were well on their way to controlling their own destiny. Unfortunately, their hopes would soon be dashed. Elections have been repeatedly postponed. Opposition political parties are no longer able to organize. The initial hopes for democracy and good government in Eritrea were also held by the international community. In March 1997, in a report by the U.S. Agency for International Development...