Last week's class, in my opinion, was highly interesting. We started off with Sean displaying the IFLA site and using it as a springboard to talk about human rights and the policy positions on this topic and the related one of Intellectual Freedom for both IFLA and ALA. From this he provided some background about the Cuban struggle by activists to provide access to banned books via the Independent Library movement. Leslie followed with remarks about the role of information in easing ethnic conflict. She provided the eight stages of genocide and spoke of how information could be provided at any stage to ameliorate the situation. She spoke of a journal named Colors but I can't locate it. Shifting from the "rights" topic, Cynthia provided some frightening statistics about the socio-economic impact of AIDS in Africa, a disease which is decimating the country. This led into Chad's consideration about the extent to which estimates of the world population is continuing to increase or or whether it shows signs of flattening out within the next 25-50 years. Kim followed up on the topic of the education of girls and the impact this has on fertility (the "TFR" - Total Fertility Rate) as girls who are educated not only delay their child-bearing years but tend to have fewer children and to contribute to the economic benefit of their communities.

Although all the presentations contributed to our understanding of aspects of human rights as they are practiced (or not) in various parts of the world, we still need some time to ground ourselves in the arguments pro and con the human rights approach taken by the United Nations. I've made a few notes about the genesis of the UN's Declaration of Human Rights on the Course Notes page. I have a simple exercise comparing the UN document to the American Bill of Rights I'd like to use as a lead-in to the class. Also, I mentioned last week that Leslie has identified an excellent article entitled "Are Human Rights Universal? The Rise of Cultural Exceptionalism" by Thomas Franck that appeared in Foreign Affairs (Jan/Feb 2001). It discusses "the convergence of gloabalization and differing cultural beliefs pertaining to human rights." The lead paragraph concerns the Taliban's treatment of women in Afghanistan. I know you are all following the current news about the Taliban's plans to destroy all the statues to Buddha in Afghanistan including two of the largest statues in the world. Many protests by various international culture groups. The article is available in the MasterFILE Premier database but as Leslie was kind enough to send it to me via email I will forward that copy to all of you the same way.

In addition, we have another five people who will be providing overviews of their issues this week:

• DeeDee Dockendorf -- The Spread of the Internet to Developing Countries.
• Jessica Kilfoil -- Agricultural/Land Management and Technology
• Kristen McConnell -- The Problem of Illiteracy
• Karen McPhaul -- The "Anti-Globalization Movement" [Note: This will be a good lead-in to next week's topic about Globalization and the Information Society]
• Nicole Urquhart -- Information and Communication Technology and Sustainable Development.

We should have another busy and productive session.

Revised 3/5/2001.