International Human Rights Day...

is today. It's the 61st anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Holocaust and Modern Day Genocide

Foreign Policy has an article by Andrew Stroehlein about what the Holocaust can't teach us about modern-day genocide.

I suspect too many people in the wider international community still only
recognize genocide in this one most specific sense. They are always looking for
Birkenau -- expecting industrialized killing rather than seeing genocide the way
it unfolds today. They ignore the evidence that in the right environment, simple
machetes can be just as effective as rail networks and gas chambers.

"Genocide" is too limiting a term in any case. In recent years,
governments have not necessarily been exterminating entire subgroups en masse
with crystal-clear intent. Yet some governments show no qualms about shelling
huge numbers of ethnic minority civilians trapped in confined war zones, as we
saw in Sri Lanka earlier this year. More common still are governments that kick
one ethnic group off its land and force the people into displacement camps where
they become permanent wards of international humanitarian agencies -- think
Darfur, for example, to mention just one place commonly labeled a "slow-motion
genocide."

Gay and Lesbian Asylum Seekers

Newsweek has an article on the anecdotal evidence that suggests that there has been an increase in sexual orientation-based asylum claims in the US.

"When sexual orientation became an option [as a basis for asylum
claims] in 1994, the Internet was in its infancy, and it was difficult for
people to find out they could seek safe haven in the U.S.," says Rachel B.
Tiven, executive director of Immigration Equality [http://www.immigrationequality.org/]. "Now we are seeing a steady
increase." Last week the nonprofit won its 60th case of the year, and it has
several others still pending. Immigration Equality won 55 cases in 2008 and 30
cases in 2007.