Earlier this month, I participated in a workshop on statelessness and the right to nationality at a UN conference in Paris, France. The three-day conference was an experience full of contradictions, but the event’s theme, “Reaffirming Human Rights for All: The Universal Declaration at 60,” compels one to focus wearily but ultimately on the positives. After all, human rights are as important now as they have ever been.

Sanctions – economic embargoes, travel bans, freezing of assets – are popular measures used by diplomats to target countries, organizations and individuals violating international law. The effectiveness of sanctions is a matter of debate, but what is clear is that it is the commitment to enforcement that determines success. It’s one thing to ban the import of Cuban cigars; it’s another to prevent small arms from entering a country with porous borders and 3,200km of unguarded coastline.

Last Friday the State Department held a press briefing to celebrate the fact that it will exceed its goal of resettling 12,000 Iraqi refugees this year. The celebration is justified.

My colleague Andrea Lari and I just visited Burundi to take stock of the condition of Burundians repatriated from Tanzania. Some of those repatriated were children when their parents fled Burundi in 1972. Some of those repatriated were children when their parents fled Burundi in 1972. However, many of them were born in Tanzania and had known Burundi only through their parents and grandparents’ stories. Out of the different challenges these people have to face before they can resume their lives, two require particular attention.