This year’s International Human Rights Film Festival (FIFDH ) in Geneva is dedicated to cinematographers such as Tibetan director Dhondup Wangchen and all those who run grave risks making their films.
Journalist Pamela Taylor explores the issue in this piece pulished by Infosud , the Geneva-based humanitarian and development news agency. Infosud also publishes the Human Rights Tribune.
This blog is contributed by Peter Hulm from his personal blog: Crosslines.ch
Geneva - The 8th International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH) in Geneva (5-14 March 2010) offered the Nobel Literature Prizewinner J.-M. G. Le Clézio and a reading from his work, the UN Rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak, French star Juliette Binoche and diva Barbara Hendricks for a day of solidarity with Africa, several debates with leading human rights campaigners, and 10 days of films from the afternoon and evenings.
The following is a published piece by Susan Adams of the American business magazine Forbes and a friend of The Essential Edge.
New York -- A manager can't figure out how to tell her colleague to stop staring at her chest when they talk. An employee is afraid to ask her supervisor not to yell at her in meetings. A boss can't figure out how to let his assistant know that he gets complaints from clients about her attitude. Situations like these plague workers and managers everywhere. They are what drove Donna Flagg, a human resources consultant, to write her new book, Surviving Dreaded Conversations: Talk Through Any Difficult Situation at Work. Flagg's main message: Stop procrastinating. "If we allow ourselves to be verbally constipated by a belief that speaking the truth is bad," she writes, "then bad is what we will indeed get."
Geneva -- Stained Glass, Fallen Angels and other events in the Lake Geneva Region provided by Know-it-All Passport .
STAINED GLASS EXPOSITION:
Vernissage: Friday, 12 March, 18h-20h
Expo open Saturday, 13 March, 10h-19h
Sunday, 14 March, 11h-18h
Maison du Charron
6, rue des Moulins
1290 Versoix, Geneva. www.versoix.ch and www.aeqv.ch
Come and see Lisa Cirieco’s stained glass as well as other students of Ruth Vermot. Some will be on sale.
Divonne-Les-Bains, France -- Over the past several weeks, visitors to the colourful Sunday market of Divonne, one of the most popular in the Lake Geneva region, have had their pleasant meanderings disturbed by loud and highly intrusive music interspersed by incomprehensible radio chatter blasted over pubic loudspeakers. The culprit is Divonne Info Musique, one of the Divonne town council's latest initiatives to “animate” this touristic spa town in the Pays de Gex at the foot of the French Jura mountains. Last December, the council headed by deputy mayor Etienne Blanc, voted 26 to 1 with one abstention to allow the new Divonne Info Musique FM radio association to inundate the weekly market and all other “public gatherings” with music and promotional information, whether people like it or not.
Journalists covering conflicts, humanitarian crises, or natural disasters often have a different perspective from those seeking to provide humanitarian relief.
They tend not to be involved personally or are seeking to provide aspects of the story that will attract audiences. The aid agencies play along with this because such coverage can be good for fundraising. Increasingly, however, there is a realization that media has a critical role to play. Not just in helping the public-at-large gain a better understanding of what is happening, but also to communicate with the crisis-affected populations themselves.
Paris-based American film-maker and producer Tom Woods of Woods TV travelled to Haiti soon after the
earthquake but this time not as a network producer fettered with agenda
constraints. He also takes a hard look at the severe shortcomings of
many of the mainstream media. Here is the last in his three reports for
The Essential Edge.
Nick Mills, Associate professor of Journalism, Boston University, is an old Afghan hand and a friend of The Essential Edge. This piece taking a sober look at the international recovery effort in Afghanistan - and the military intervention accompanying it - initially appeared in The Huffington Post.
Boston, Mass. -- Even as the United States has ramped up its military presence in Afghanistan with the Obama Surge, other forces are poised to withdraw: the Dutch and my friend Liza. And if Liza pulls out, the war is all but lost.
The Taliban have succeeded in toppling one government, though not yet the one in Kabul.
Charged with interrogating those who collaborated with former Liberian President Charles Taylor and later listening to the voices of Khmer Rouge victims in Cambodia, Geneva attorney Alain Werner is one of the pioneers of an evolving international justice system.
Carole Vann, an editor and writer with InfoSud , a non-profit news agency focusing on humanitarian, human rights and other global issues, interviews Werner about his experiences. Readers can also take part in a presentation by Alain Werner on
his experiences as prosecutor against Taylor and
for the victims of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge : Friday, March 5th at 18h20
à 19h30, Maison des Associations, rue des Savoises, Geneva.
This year’s International Human Rights Film Festival (
Geneva - The 8th International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights 
The following is a published piece by Susan Adams of the American business magazine 
Geneva -- Stained Glass, Fallen Angels and other events in the Lake Geneva Region provided by 
Divonne-Les-Bains, France -- Over the past several weeks, visitors to the colourful Sunday market of Divonne, one of the most popular in the Lake Geneva region, have had their pleasant meanderings disturbed by loud and highly intrusive music interspersed by incomprehensible radio chatter blasted over pubic loudspeakers. The culprit is Divonne Info Musique, one of the Divonne town council's latest initiatives to “animate” this touristic spa town in the Pays de Gex at the foot of the French Jura mountains. Last December, the council headed by deputy mayor Etienne Blanc, voted 26 to 1 with one abstention to allow the new Divonne Info Musique FM radio association to inundate the weekly market and all other “public gatherings” with music and promotional information, whether people like it or not.
Journalists covering conflicts, humanitarian crises, or natural disasters often have a different perspective from those seeking to provide humanitarian relief.
They tend not to be involved personally or are seeking to provide aspects of the story that will attract audiences. The aid agencies play along with this because such coverage can be good for fundraising. Increasingly, however, there is a realization that media has a critical role to play. Not just in helping the public-at-large gain a better understanding of what is happening, but also to communicate with the crisis-affected populations themselves.
Paris-based American film-maker and producer Tom Woods of 
Nick Mills, Associate professor of Journalism, Boston University, is an old Afghan hand and a friend of The Essential Edge. This piece taking a sober look at the international recovery effort in Afghanistan - and the military intervention accompanying it - initially appeared in The Huffington Post.
Charged with interrogating those who collaborated with former Liberian President Charles Taylor and later listening to the voices of Khmer Rouge victims in Cambodia, Geneva attorney Alain Werner is one of the pioneers of an evolving international justice system.
Carole Vann, an editor and writer with 
