"Our approach … is to use the ‘soft power’ of business," he says. "These businesses have influence as powerful economic actors and in countries in Africa and Southeast Asia; they are often very important to the local economy. [...] Soft power is one option, but companies could potentially use their economic clout by threatening to pull out of a country. 

Three political parties and two independents running in the Australian federal elections set out their human rights priorities in response to a Human Rights Watch questionnaire, Human Rights Watch said today. The parties gave their positions on a range of domestic and foreign policy human rights issues, including whistleblower protection and offshore asylum policy, in advance of polls on July 2, 2016.

Anticipating criticism about including a country like Russia in the top-30, the report’s authors claimed that Moscow’s role in combatting ISIS – as well as the fact that it didn’t advance its position any further into Ukraine – appeared to help international perception. “Russia performed markedly better on the international polling in 2016, compared with 2015,” the report’s authors noted.

International Day of the African Child has been celebrated on June 16 every year since 1991, when it was first initiated by the Organization of African Unity, now the African Union. It honours those who participated in the Soweto Uprising in 1976 on that day in South Africa where thousands of black school children took to the streets in 1976, in a march more than half a mile long, to protest the inferior quality of their education and to demand their right to be taught in their own language. 

No one at the high-level United Nations conference devoted to ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 denies serious scientific and financial challenges remain, but cultural sensitivities may prove the toughest stumbling block on the way to achieving that goal.

According to Parni, civic diplomacy involves “people to people” contact through all means, involving social media and conventional media ( press diplomacy ) with particular emphases on social ( humanitarian ) and concrete cultural activities.

Ten refugee athletes will act as a symbol of hope for refugees worldwide and bring global attention to the magnitude of the refugee crisis when they take part in the Olympic Games Rio 2016 this summer. The athletes will compete for the Refugee Olympic Team (ROT) – the first of its kind – and march with the Olympic flag immediately before host nation Brazil at the Opening Ceremony.