 | Too Young to Smoke but Old Enough to Harvest Tobacco?
 Photo © 2013 Marcus Bleasdale/VII for Human Rights Watch
by Margaret Wurth
The Guardian
Cigarette makers can't market to kids. Why do tobacco farms employ them?
Grace, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy, doesn't smoke – at 15, she's too young to buy a pack of cigarettes, anyway – but she might as well have had a regular habit. At her job on a tobacco farm last summer, she handled tobacco plants for up to 12 hours a day, steadily absorbing nicotine through her skin.
Though precise numbers are hard to come by, it's fairly common to find kids working on US tobacco farms in the summer months (the height of the growing season). Yet while the US has laws to protect kids from the harms of nicotine in cigarettes, there are no restrictions to protect them from nicotine exposure in tobacco fields – despite evidence that such exposure may be especially harmful to children, whose brains and bodies are still developing.
 | In Syria, Strong Evidence Government Used Chemicals as a Weapon
Syria's apparent use of chlorine gas as a weapon – not to mention targeting of civilians – is a plain violation of international law. This is one more reason for the UN Security Council to refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court.
| | | | | |  | How do you beat Boko Haram with an army that's almost as evil?
By Sarah Margon
Politico In 2009, Nigerian police forces fighting Boko Haram in the northern city of Maiduguri lost about 30 officers in a violent firefight. The next day, they executed many of the men they had rounded up and detained as suspected Boko Haram fighters. The retaliatory killings often happened right outside police headquarters in full view of the public. Bodies piled up outside the building while the executions continued. The incident illustrates the quandary the United States and international community face in helping the Nigerian government rescue the nearly 300 girls Boko Haram, an unquestionably brutal armed group, kidnapped last week. | | | | | |  | Dispatches: A Victory for Colombia's Sexual Violence Victims
By Amanda Klasing Last week, Colombia's senate passed an important bill that is a major step in aiding and protecting sexual violence survivors – especially those who are raped or assaulted by guerillas, paramilitaries, Colombian forces, or others in the context of the country's decades-long conflict.
|  | Dispatches: Truth a Casualty in Ukraine Conflict
By Anna Neistat In every conflict, information becomes part of warfare, and Ukraine is no exception. Each side creates its own narrative and comes up with casualty figures, which at times have little to do with reality. It gets worse when journalists fuel the propaganda machine, disseminating unconfirmed or plainly invented "facts." Through social media, such distortions get amplified, reaching tens of thousands within minutes and, for some, become a call to action.
| | PHOTOS |  | |  | | Strong Evidence Syrian Government Used Chemicals as a Weapon
View Now >> | | | | TWEET OF THE WEEK | | |  | | Next week #UNSC will vote on #ICC4Syria. Here are all the arguments for saying yes: http://www.hrw.org/middle-eastn-africa/syria, @hrw pic.twitter.com/POwhIqPmsX.
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