Tous les articles et traductions

In Timbuktu, Islamic Africa is rediscovering its written culture. Charlotte Widemann travelled to the site of the oldest library south of the Sahara to report on the race for influence over this ancient heritage, played out on a small stage of sand and parchment. Read (...)

On the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day: the good, the bad, and the potentially ugly. Read more

Helen Thomas, a veteran reporter, asked the question at a White House press conference on al-Qaeda and terrorism. US administration officials stonewalled. “In these times” asked several contributors with various profiles, including Noam Chomsky and Gaytari Chakravorty Spivak, to provide some (...)

The IBSA (India, Brazil and South Africa) and BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) Summits were held this week in Brazil, both aimed at securing a greater say for top emerging economies in world affairs. Six forums were held in parallel, bringing together women, researchers, journalists, (...)

With piracy raging in the Indian Ocean, international disputes over undersea oil and gas, and chronic overfishing, the oceans have rarely been subject to such varied and environmentally damaging conflict outside a world war. In Who Rules the Waves? Denise Russell gives us a rare insight into (...)

With the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) deciding in favour of Kenya’s Endorois people, Korir Sing’Oei Abraham hails an unprecedented court victory. The Endorois were forcibly evicted by the Kenyan government in the period 1974–79, and their victory suggests positive (...)

The ambitious desire to close Guantánamo hailed the coming of a new era, a feeling implicitly recognised by the Nobel peace prize that President Obama received. Unfortunately, what we witnessed was a false dawn. The lawyers for the Guantánamo detainees with whom I am in touch in the US speak of (...)

The first decade of the 21st century has been dominated by wars that have killed or injured close to half a million people, wars that arose after determined paramilitaries used parcel-knives to exploit the weaknesses of the world’s most advanced state. That incident might in principle have been (...)

The Stockholm Programme, the latest in a series of EU agreements on security policy, was endorsed in December 2009. Based on the "principle of availability", the Programme plans to enable the cross-border collection, processing and sharing of data on a massive scale. Supposedly promoting (...)

Shifts in global power, ongoing or potential, are a lively topic among policy makers and observers. One question is whether (or when) China will displace the United States as the dominant global player, perhaps along with India.
There is yet another significant shift in global power: from the (...)

In the London Review of Books, Tariq Ali tells about his recent trip to Yemen, after Obama and other US politicians started hinting that this country might become a new frontline yet in the ’war on terror’.
Recounting the country’s history since World War II, and in particular the war and (...)

UN-HABITAT launched its report State of the World Cities 2010/2011: Bridging the Urban Divide in the run up to the World Urban Forum 5 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The world’s mega-cities are merging to form vast "mega-regions" which may stretch hundreds of kilometres across countries and be home (...)

It might be the world’s largest free trade area, writes columnist Walden Bello, but Southeast Asia is still getting a raw trade deal from China. Read

The antiwar movement must go beyond challenging one war at a time. We need a deeper analysis of the structures that underlie militarism and war. Read more

Corporate globalization in the ‘real’ world economy lay behind what appeared at first to be a strictly financial crisis. It was hooked on debt, a deadly vice which eventually crushes everything in its grip, to the point where no-one knows the value of anything. So it could be that, in August (...)

IPS - TerraViva reports on Beijing+15 Conference with articles on the situation of women and women’s rights worldwide as well as reports on women’s issues progress in international institutions. Read more

Jason Hickel asks whether ‘environmental determinism’ – the theory that Africa’s development has been hindered as a result of ‘the environmental conditions that Africans inhabit’ – accurately explains Africa’s poverty. While he commends its attempt to stop blaming underdevelopment ’on the presumed (...)

The birthplace of the World Social Forum (WSF), conceived as an alternative to international meetings pursuing free-market economics, Brazil is on its way to becoming a major economic power, analysts say. The question is, what kind of model will it adopt to avoid the behaviour it has previously (...)

On Democracy Now!, a tribute to the late historian, writer and activist Howard Zinn, who died suddenly on Wednesday of a heart attack at the age of eighty-seven. Howard Zinn’s classic work A People’s History of the United States changed the way we look at history in America. It has sold over a (...)

Under the title “Haiti: Microcosm of the crisis of development”, issue 467 of Pambazuka News, "the authoritative electronic weekly newsletter and platform for social justice in Africa", features several articles on the Haiti quake, its causes and the political lessons to be drawn from this (...)