• Tala Dowlatshahi

    About Tala Dowlatshahi

    Tala Dowlatshahi is based in Zurich, where she runs the communities team for the International Relations and Security Network, an online information-services project. She formerly worked as the United Nations bureau chief for Talk Radio News Service. Since 2002, Dowlatshahi has also worked as a US representative for Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans Frontieres), the Paris-based media watchdog group. Dowlatshahi has reported from Afghanistan, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Turkey, South Africa and Uganda. Her work has been featured on CNN International, BBC World News, Al Jazeera, Voice of America, Reuters and in humanitarian news programs. She is member of New York Women in Film and Television and the Overseas Press Club of America as well as a recipient of the 2011 Visual Artists Guild champion for the right of freedom of speech and expression award. She as a B.A. in mass communications from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.A. in international development from New York University.

     

    In Iran, the Point of Torture Is to ‘Break the Human Soul’

    by  • April 8, 2013 • Asia, Human Rights, Women's Issues • 1 Comment

    Iran 2009 Election Protests

    Iran has remained prominent on the radar screen of the United Nations Human Rights Council and other international human-rights groups that are concerned with the poor treatment of Iranians who dare to speak out against repression and corrupt laws. Human-rights groups are waiting to see if similar abuses will increase before the presidential election on June 14, 2013. The current [...]

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    Domestic Workers: Long Hours, Backbreaking Jobs and Few Rights

    by  • February 28, 2013 • Asia, Human Rights, Middle East, Women's Issues • 4 Comments

    Children selling postcards in Petra, Jordan.

      Two years ago, commemorating International Domestic Workers Day on June 16, governments, labor unions and employers’ associations voted overwhelmingly to create global labor standards to help promote the rights of the 50 to 100 million domestic workers worldwide. The United Nations International Labor Organization, or ILO, adopted such a convention, No. 189, in 2011, [...]

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    The Glory of Self-Learning, Discovered by Children in India

    by  • February 6, 2013 • Asia, Education • 

    An Indian student in front of a Hole in the Wall education kiosk.

    Imagine a new world of innovative, inexpensive and successful learning, where dusty streets in rural towns in developing countries are lined with self-powered computer kiosks and children from poor neighborhoods have the same ability to work with new technology as children in richer areas do. That dynamic is the goal of new education policies put [...]

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    Nursing Fellow Burmese in Thailand Against Many Odds

    by  • June 21, 2012 • Asia, Human Rights, Refugees • 3 Comments

    Dr. Maung

    GENEVA — Dr. Cynthia Maung doesn’t care that much about the high-level Rio+20 United Nations conference on sustainability this week. And it doesn’t matter to her that the country she lives in, Thailand, is advancing a green agenda. Dr. Maung, a general practitioner, prefers to see action on the ground to help the refugee and [...]

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    A Long, Long Way to Walk in Myanmar

    by  • May 17, 2012 • Asia, Human Rights • 3 Comments

    Myanmar dissident

    GENEVA — The victory of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and Myanmar dissident, in winning a seat in Parliament has indicated a rapid shift toward democratic reform in the country. But Zoya Phan, a longstanding advocate for the Karen ethnic group in Myanmar, is cautious about the developments. Phan was here [...]

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