Tous les articles et traductions

In India, a disabled girl-child is usually at the receiving end of a lot of contempt and neglect. Women with disabilities have been consistently denied their rights. In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court (SC) of India recently allowed a 19-year-old mentally challenged orphan girl to carry on (…)

‘Whatever our culture, we must treat animals in a humane way,’ William Gumede writes in this week’s Pambazuka News, following the recent approval of South African courts for the sacrifice of a bull as part of a traditional thanksgiving ritual. ‘African culture has a long tradition of democratic (…)

In her new book, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the origins of contemporary optimism from nineteenth-century healers to twentieth-century pushers of consumerism. She explores how that culture of optimism prevents us from holding to account both corporate heads and elected officials. Read more here (…)

Immanuel Wallerstein comments on the global financial crisis from a long-term historical perspective, and on the opportunities it offers for global justice movements (Harold Wolpe Lecture, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 5 November 2009). Read more

Migrants’ rights have to be addressed on two fronts: end the neoliberal policies that are responsible for creating poverty in their home countries, thus forcing them to emigrate, and demand that they are given full rights in their host countries. Read more

Financial wizards, economists, business persons and social activists around the globe have been challenging the free market orthodoxy. They seek to recover the virtues of bazaars from the tyranny of a market model that emerged about two centuries ago. This book is a chronicle of their (…)

Global initiatives have in recent years stressed the contribution that arts and culture can make to development. This has led African and European artists, bureaucrats and policy makers to increasingly confront the unequal relations in North-South cultural and artistic exchanges. Read more

The biggest roadblock standing in the way of many people’s recognition of the importance of the commons came tumbling down this week when Indiana University professor Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize for economics.
Over many decades Ostrom has documented how various communities manage common (…)

On June 28, the democratically elected President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, was forcibly removed from power and exiled to Costa Rica by the Honduran military in a coup d’état. On September 21, Zelaya returned to Honduras with the support of the government of Brazil and has taken refuge in the (…)

Multiculturalism is the official policy that countries adopt to legally protect racial, ethnic and cultural diversity. But multiculturalism is going awry in a world that encourages the free movement of capital across borders while guarding against the free movement of people who threaten our (…)

It is common knowledge that the African continent has been hit hardest by the HIV and AIDS epidemic. Over the past 25 years, Africa has been the prime victim of a small, but highly intelligent virus, which has infected and killed millions of people, and significantly hampered the growth and (…)

Moldova is the country known in the world as one of the poorest ex-Soviet states, like Armenia and Georgia. It is also one of the most multi-cultural and multi-lingual countries, with a long tradition of mixed marriages and hybrid identities. According to the latest census conducted in 2004, (…)

A correspondent looks back at the deterioration across the country over the past three years: the resurgence of both the Taliban and the old corrupt elites, the failure of the occupation forces, and the worsening conditions of life for everybody else.
As the summer of 2005 faded, everyone in (…)

Xenophobia and racism are intellectual constructs that have taken root in the human mind over the centuries. Legal measures are proving inadequate, as they only touch the visible tip of the iceberg. An intellectual strategy is needed, in order to reach into the historical and cultural depths of (…)

Last year’s row between two pan-African policy bodies is feeding a split between regional and federal approaches to science, says Linda Nordling.
Research and innovation is an area that could benefit from coordinating projects and pooling resources between nations. So it was disappointing last (…)

The essential paradox about a globalised world is that as global business and micro politics have relentlessly spread across the globe, there has been a tendency for many people to get closer to the ethnic, national, religious and racial identities. This nestling within a known identity has been (…)

A mid-term assessment of where the world stands on its commitment to provide basic education for all children, youth and adults by 2015.
What education policies and programmes have been successful? What are the main challenges? How much aid is needed? Is aid being properly targeted? Read

Far-reaching strategic debate is underway about how to respond to the global financial crisis, and indeed how the North’s problems can be tied into a broader critique of capitalism.
At minimum, the ongoing chaos offers new ideological space and material justifications for African finance (…)

Two Palestinian views
– The only alternative to two states is conflict
by Ghassan Khatib
Israel is interested in and working on a future for the Gaza Strip that is different from that of the West Bank. Read more
Two Israeli views
– One state definitely not an option (…)

Assaulted on all sides owing to its entanglement in the ZTE-NBN corruption scandal, the administration has confronted its critics with the image of an economy that is purring along, that is doing just fine except for the rise in the price of rice, for which it says it is blameless. Read more