From the Editor:

Recently while attempting to justify Nato’s actions in Kosovo in the name of human rights, in light of America’s dismissal of similar abuses in other locales, Clinton said that he regretted having declared that the US had no business trying to resolve the ethnic animosities in the Balkans: "We do no favors, to ourselves or to the rest of the world when we justify looking away... demonizing the whole Balkans by saying that these people are simply incapable of civilized behavior with one another." Clinton even said that he regretted not taking action sooner in the African nation of Rwanda, where the Tutsis and the Hutus were left to slaughter one another earlier this decade.

The irony is that while NATO is attempting to protect ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo from ethnic cleansing and mass expulsion in the name of human rights, America has spearheaded a UN-sponsored sanctions policy in Iraq that is grossly violating the human rights of the Iraqi people. Sanctions have now killed over 1.5 million Iraqis since 1990— including a half-million children under the age of five. Not only is this humanitarian disaster seriously underreported in the American media, but traditional coverage has rarely questioned the efficacy of sanctions as a foreign policy tool. Our cover story on Iraqi sanctions poses this question. It also explores the ramifications of U.S./U.N. sanctions and U.S. bombings of Iraq, while examining and assessing the motives behind the policy.

Indeed, our second issue of Beyond Borders examines several important matters rarely addressed in the American media. In addition to our cover story on Iraqi sanctions, we discuss human rights issues in two countries friendly to the U.S.—Saudi Arabia and Tunisia. Because the media so often takes its cues from the government, it conveniently overlooks human rights abuses committed by our allies, or those practices that appear to ensure the stability of a regime that America supports. While Tunisia has made praiseworthy advances regarding rights of women in recent years, human rights activists and journalists are still harassed and intimidated by the government. In our experience, even Tunisians living outside the country did not feel comfortable speaking about these issues to the press, fearing the government would subsequently deny them the right to return to their country.

Our second issue also addresses the plight of foreign workers, especially domestic servants, in Saudi Arabia. Under the employee sponsorship system, certain basic freedoms are contingent on the workers’ sponsors. Another important issue often overlooked in human rights discourse is the Hudood ordinance in Pakistan. This law blurs the distinction between rape and extramarital sex, allowing women who have been raped to be prosecuted for adultery.

Finally, we were fortunate to conduct an interview with Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Associate Professor of Legal Studies at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Mayer discusses the compatibily of Islamic Law with human rights, and offers several insights that often contradict popular conceptions in the West.