Edited by Nigerian activist Sokari Ekine, who runs the prize-winning blog Black Looks, the book brings together some of the best known and experienced developers and users of mobile phone technologies in Africa, including Juliana Rotich from Ushahidi in Kenya, Ken Banks of Kiwanja.net, and Berna (…)
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Urgent need for binding obligations on transnational corporations raised at the UN
By Brid Brennan
John Ruggie’s proposed guidelines to the UN on Human Rights and Transnational Corporations fail to bring TNCs under any binding law, thefore enabling human rights and environmental crimes to continue with impunity.
The Transnational Institute has joined many civil society organisations and (…)
Yemen: CSOs call the world to stop the massacre
The Human Rights Information & Training Cente (HRITC, national focal point of Social Watch) warned in a communiqué also signed by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the Sisters’ Arab Forum for Human Rights (SAF) about the risk of civil war in Yemen. This organisations (…)
Counter-terrorism: UN human rights expert concludes follow up mission to Tunisia
GENEVA (26 May 2011) – At the conclusion of his official follow-up visit to Tunisia from 22 to 26 May the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, Martin Scheinin, gave the following statement:
“I would like to extend my gratitude to the Transitional Government (…)
African Women Writing Resistance
An Anthology of Contemporary Voices
Edited by Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez , Pauline Dongala, Omotayo Jolaosho, Anne Serafin, £16.95, 360 pages.
Confronting entrenched social inequality and inadequate access to resources, women across Africa are working with determination and imagination to improve their material conditions and (…)
There can be no justifications for land grabbing!
“There can be no justifications for land grabbing!” social movements and CSOs tell World Bank, UN agencies and governments
17 April 2011
Today, on the International Day of Peasant Struggles, prominent farmers, fisherfolk, human rights and research organisations have sharply criticised the (…)
Refolution in the Arab world
A new word is needed to describe these events of recent months. They should be called ‘refolutions’, radical refusals of the old choice between reform and revolution - remarkably sensitive to the grave dangers and high costs of using violent means to get their way.
Great revolutionary (…)
Responsible travel means not "haggling over wooden beads"
By Hilaire Avril
Tourism as a concern found its way onto the agenda of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro because of its potential for development but also due to its adverse effects on some populations and natural resources, particularly in Africa.
Sustainable tourism was defined at the summit as tourism (…)
Smoke and mirrors: The case of Egypt and Ethiopia
By Yohannes Woldemariam
The dramatic upheavals in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Algeria, Libya and Yemen show what huge numbers of ordinary citizens can do when they rally bravely for democracy and human rights. In Egypt, we have witnessed the downfall of a seemingly invincible dictator, but as of yet the regime he erected (…)
WikiLeaks has provided the critical climate for political reform: Assange
Starting March 15, 2011, The Hindu became the first Indian newspaper to offer readers a broad spectrum of articles and reports based on a first selection from 5,100 India Cables aggregating six million words, made available to it by WikiLeaks. On April 8, Julian Assange, the brilliant and (…)
Gaza rally draws a diverse crowd calling for unity
By Rami Almeghari
Youth protests in Gaza continue to unfold after a call to rally was put out by Palestinian youth calling for an end to political division and for national unity.
A large rally was held on 15 March in Gaza City, followed by another at a university campus and one at the premises of the UN agency (…)
Jaitapur nuclear plant still far from being accepted
Lock-ups, prisons and court cases have become an integral part of the lives of Jaitapur’s residents. The scenic village in Maharashtra, which is to be home to the world’s biggest nuclear plant, has virtually turned into a state of dystopia. The people of the five villages that would be affected (…)
The World Social Forum, Egypt, and Transformation
The World Social Forum (WSF) is alive and well. It just met in Dakar, Senegal from Feb. 6-11. By unforeseen coincidence, this was the week of the Egyptian people’s successful dethroning of Hosni Mubarak, which finally succeeded just as the WSF was in its closing session. The WSF spent the week (…)
Egypt’s revolution and Israel: "Bad for the Jews"
Ilan Pappe
The view from Israel is that if they indeed succeed, the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions are bad, very bad. Educated Arabs — not all of them dressed as "Islamists," quite a few of them speaking perfect English whose wish for democracy is articulated without resorting to "anti-Western" rhetoric (…)
Women revolutionaries hope for greater say in post-Mubarak Egypt
In the days following the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, Egyptians have begun to outline the characteristics of their ideal country. The “New Egypt” will be clean, it will lack discrimination, it will be corruption-free. The initiative is the beginning of a push for specific demands that (…)
What next for Egypt?
by Lakhdar Ghettas
If there was ever a better time to read ‘Egypt: The Moment of Change’, a book edited by Rabab El Mahdi and Philip Marfleet which was launched in front of a packed audience at SOAS in 2009, then it is now. Made up of chapters by eight Egyptian and British academics, it catalogues the explosive (…)
Peoples Movement Assembly on Palestine
Dakar, Senegal, February 10, 2011
In Dakar, Senegal the Peoples ‘ movement Assembly on Palestine convenes at the World Social Forum (WSF) at a time of intense popular struggle in Palestine against Israeli apartheid, colonization and occupation, and for full implementation of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. For (…)
Inception: Dreams of revolution
by Larbi Sadiki
The idea of democratisation planted in Egyptian minds is beyond containment, yet Mubarak continues to resist.
The realist terminology of the ’domino effect’ does not capture the agency that Arabs are today assuming to unseat Arab hegemons, from Cairo to Sana’a.
This agency is unshackling (…)
Resisting indignity
Safai karmacharis (manual scavengers) are set to end their two-decade-long movement for a life of dignity on a victorious note. As revellers across the world prepare to celebrate the end of the first decade of the new millennium and the start of a new year, a million women across India will be (…)
Navigators Of Change
As government, corporates seek to engage with NGOs, they gain new significance
The jholawala is the latest lobbyist in town. He or she has top policymakers on speed-dial, is now feted by the media and sought out by companies eager to promote ‘India Inclusive’. It’s a remarkable, even heady, transformation. For long derided as irrelevant trouble-making activists largely (…)