I’m surprised by how so many countries like Myanmar (Burma) get away with so many human rights abuses without much international scrutiny. Why isn’t the media exposing these violations on a continual basis? We, as citizens of the free world, should be outraged and demanding action of our governments against these perpetrators of evil.

So where is the global uproar? I’m guessing that part of the reason why there is no uproar is because most people are in the dark that these things are even occurring.

Organizations like Human Rights Watch and The Carter Center have a pretty good handle on the world’s troublespots where human rights violations are rampant. But not the average citizen. For example, which countries in Africa are rife with human rights violations? I don’t know, do you?

Contrast that with the ‘War on Terror’, which is hugely visible in the news and on websites. You can even have a real-time display of the current Homeland Security threat level on your website or on your PC or on your Mac. (Talk about feeding the paranoia!)

Wouldn’t it help raise awareness of human rights violations if there were a “Human Rights Violation Watch” badge/sticker for blogs and websites that showed the current human rights hotspots in the world? A slick way of presenting the data might be as a “tag cloud” or “buzz cloud” (see example buzzcloud below).