Rachel Weisz plays Kathryn Bolkovac, the whistleblower of the title, an American police officer facing intertwined personal and professional challenges and sees working for “Democra Corp” (a pseudonym for the real-life Dyncorp military contractors) in Bosnia as a potential way out. Knowing little about Bosnia or peacekeeping, Bolkovic soon discovers the lawlessness that pervades the post-conflict Bosnia. The conflict between her moral outrage, the evil of the apparatus of trafficking, and the ugly realpolitik that enables it, forms the basis for the film’s plot.

The film is at its often agonizing best when it is focused on the story of Bolkovic and the teenage sex slaves she attempts to help. Weisz is convincing and the direction of co-writer Larysa Kondracki pulls comparatively few punches. When it moves into the realm of the diplomatic/corporate politics that protected the slaves’ UN enablers, it is perhaps less so. A story that, in real life, evolved over more than a year, seems compressed into weeks, and senior UN officials and the Democra boss are portrayed as cartoon besuited villains.

For all that, the film shines a very bright light on the twilight zone of impunity that surrounds the operations of private military contractors, and the repugnant consequences. If not surprising, it’s certainly still has the power to shock in the right hands, and the story is well told here.

The Whistleblower opens on September 29, but there’s a preview in Melbourne at the Kino Cinema tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon at 4:15. Full disclosure: yes, I got a free ticket from Hopscotch Films.

The bovine equivalent of measles, rinderpest is described in ancient Chinese writings and in documents from the Roman Empire. It hobbled Charlemagne when he moved herds to support his armies in the 8th century. When it entered Ethi­o­pia in 1889, it caused starvation that killed one-third of the country’s human population, even though the microbe does not infect people. …

Rinderpest, which means “cattle plague” in German, is highly contagious and has a fatality rate of about 80 percent. It is the only animal disease to have been eradicated; smallpox occurs only in human beings.

Amazing what humanity can do when we, collectively, choose a goal and stick to it. It also helps that the bovine anti-vaxxer movement can usually be dealt with by not standing directly behind the bovine concerned whilst the injection is given…

It’s also a reminder that, for all their flaws, if UN agencies that coordinate efforts like this didn’t exist, we’d have to invent them.

Next stop, polio and guinea worm.

In the run-up to the 2007 election, then-Australian Prime Minister John Howard decided to repeat his successful racial wedge tactics with Aborigines as the victims, declaring a “state of emergency” in Northern Australia, taking over townships, and suspending anti-discrimination laws so it could subject aborigines to authoritarian and paternalist controls on the basis of race. Now, James Anaya, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of indigenous people, has pointed out the obvious: that this was fundamentally discriminatory. And he didn’t mince his words in saying so:

“There is entrenched racism in Australia,” Anaya told reporters in the capital, Canberra, after visiting several Aboriginal townships in the past week. “These measures overtly discriminate against Aboriginal peoples, infringe their right of self determination and stigmatize already stigmatized communities.”

The Australian has more:

Compulsory income management and blanket bans on alcohol and pornography were “overtly discriminatory” and further stigmatised already stigmatised communities, he said.

“People who have a demonstrated capacity to manage their income are included.

“It’s inappropriate to their circumstances but is also, as expressed by them, demeaning.”

The indigenous rights expert was also scathing of federal Labor’s insistence that housing funds would only flow if indigenous communities signed over their land.

“It’s a mistake to assume that indigenous peoples … aren’t capable of taking care of their homes,” Prof Anaya said.

“Indigenous control can be appropriate to indigenous peoples’ development, to their aspirations, to indeed being in control of their lives like all others.”

As for compensation for indigenous people taken from their families by government agencies, the UN rapporteur was unequivocal: “There should be reparations,” he said.

That’s a pretty stunning condemnation of a government we all expect to behave better. It will be interesting to see how the Rudd government, which has moved a long way from Howard’s position, responds.

On Thursday, 66 countries supported a landmark declaration in the UN General Assembly calling for full equality regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, the legalisation of homosexuality, and an end to “violence, harassment, discrimination, exclusion, stigmatisation and prejudice” against gay, lesbian, bi and transgender persons. The declaration was widely supported by European and South American countries (who are leading the struggle for human rights at the moment). Notably absent from the list of supporters? The United States. They were the only country in the civilised world who refused to sign.

Still, it could have been worse. At least they didn’t sign the competing declaration, backed by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the Vatican, which claimed that ending anti-gay bigotry could lead to “the social normalization, and possibly the legitimization, of many deplorable acts including pedophilia”. And people wonder why religion is associated in the public mind with bigotry…

The declaration isn’t any sort of official UN treaty. But now the issue has been broached (yes, really, it took them 60 years to start talking about it), and we can start pressing for real action. And hopefully soon we’ll see a UN Convention on gay rights, or an optional protocol to the ICCPR and ICESCR to bring gender identity and sexual orientation fully within the UN human rights system.

Elsewhere: [by Mark] More at The Global Sociology Blog.

The level of controversy that still surrounds not just the UDHR (and right wingers just love to cast stones at the UN) but also the universality and indeed nature of human rights shows that they are inherently political and not grounded in any natural, philosophical or theological foundation. The key thing is that they have to be fought for, and their universality comes from the recognition afforded to others. Some times that recognition is granted by the state, and embodied in law. Australia now has a government which appreciates the need for a framework of human rights jurisprudence which goes beyond rights granted or afforded by particular legislation or in the common law. So Professor Frank Brennan SJ has been commissioned to report to the Rudd government by July 2009. You can read about it here at Andrew Bartlett’s place.

There’s no doubt that part of the reason for the defeat of the Howard government was the desire for human rights to be better respected. But that fight isn’t over now that Labor in power. While the conditions for the recognition of rights are now more favourable, they will always be forged in struggle.

It might not have escaped folks’ attention that Kevin Rudd minimised his focus on climate change at the UN in favour of the plan he and Gordon Brown cooked up for saving the world’s finances. Rudd himself mentioned that it would be difficult to concentrate world leaders’ attention on climate change. This rhetoric also provided him with some convenient cover for disguising the switch in focus for the justification of his trip as it came under opposition attack. But it does raise the broader question of which way Kevin Rudd will jump on climate change and emissions trading – perhaps more in terms of the international negotiations (which however can’t be separated from the domestic politics, with the whole question of the significance and timing of Australia’s ETS being crucial to the “argy bargy”).

The Lowy Institute Poll being released today might pose some dangers ahead. It’s being spun as “hip pocket more important than climate”. I’m not particularly impressed with the finding on how much respondents would pay on electricity bills – it seems to me to be more than usually an artefact of the questions asked. But there’s no doubt the shift in the relative ranking of climate change as an issue will concentrate some political minds. Of course, it would be quite possible politically to articulate the two issues together and make the case for climate change action as an economic issue. Whether Rudd does this or not will bear close attention.

Elsewhere: Graham Young at Ambit Gambit.