human rights and international development

I've subscribed to yet another podcast. It's named Human Rights Watch. So far I've only listened to one of the podcasts and it focused on women's rights. What was so interesting to me was that they talked about a woman's right to abortion. My instant reaction was, "What about the rights of the unborn child?" It is, after all, 'Human Rights Watch.' These 3 women were talking about how in the early 1990's they had to convince people that women's rights were human rights and how absurd that was back then. Is it not just as absurd to talk about unborn children as non-humans? Would it bother us more if they used guns? I believe that's on a shirt/ad campaign by some pro-life group. It certainly makes you think, though, doesn't it? Human rights should include all humans, both born and unborn. I realize this is a highly controversial subject but I cannot be in the middle on this subject. A lot of human rights talk centers on your rights as a human as long as it doesn't infringe on another human's rights. Well, a woman's right to abortion infringes pretty heavily on an unborn child's right to have a life. I'm interested to keep listening to this podcast, there are only a few.

Another podcast I've subscribed to is titled 'Global Prosperity' and I listened to a podcast about oil in Ghana. This podcast is mainly concerned with international development so it obviously appeals to me on that level. The podcast I listened to talked about how Ghana is going to start bringing oil 'on-line' sometime in 2011 and what that can do to a country. They talked about the resource curse in Africa that has happened every time there has been a resource found there that can be exploited. They gave the example of Alaska, who has a deal where every resident is paid dividends on the oil and how they creates instant citizen concern and participation. The author who they interviewed said that Ghana should do something similar to get their citizens involved with how the oil is excavated and brought to market and how the profits are redistributed among the people. Critics said the government needs the money for infrastructure projects but this guy's point was that there would still be money left over for that even after giving residents some of the profits from the oil. It makes me wonder if Africa couldn't leap frog over the dependence on oil and other fossil fuels the way they've leap-frogged over some technology, like going straight to cell phones for instance. What if they went straight to renewable energy technology instead of becoming heavily dependent on oil like the rich world has become? I think it would save them a lot of potential trouble, but that's just my humble opinion.