Tous les articles et traductions

Over the past three decades, in the shadow of hostile nationalisms fuelled by radical Islamic and Hindu politics, military crises, a runaway arms race, nuclear weapons and war, an amazing set of civil society initiatives has been taking root in India and Pakistan. A citizens’ diplomacy (...)

Nonviolent rights activits in Gujarat are being branded maoists and jailed, reports Parvaiz Bukhari. Dangs is the smallest and perhaps the most scenic Adivasi district of Gujarat. As you soak in the beauty and breathe the fresh air, Ashish Pawar, a young Adivasi activist acting as a guide, (...)

In Nigeria, patterns of “religious” massacre are many decades old, but it is wrong to see this as simple “sectarianism”. A poor society facing modernisation at the hands of corrupt elites is vulnerable to the use of violence as a means of asserting economic and political power and the (...)

There is a lot of news about nuclearism these days. But to cut through the verbiage of treaties and agreements and summits, and move people from fear to action, we need to focus on three concepts. The United States is the biggest problem when it comes to nuclear weapons. We need a new treaty (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)

Since Afghanistan now grows the opium poppies that provide more than 90% of the world’s opium, the raw material for the production of heroin, it’s not surprising that drug-trade news and war news intersect from time to time. More surprising is how seldom poppy growing and the drug trade are (...)

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 (...)

African pastoralism has been dismissed as outdated and inefficient. But awareness of its social and environmental benefits is growing. Read more here (Part 1) and here (Part 2).

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

What if defeating the enemy was the justification for war, but not its real goal? What if its goal was a certain kind of power-brokerage? On Opendemocracy.net, Mary Kaldor attempts a redefinition of war in line with contemporary developments:
"Clausewitz defined war as an ‘an act of (...)

Despite his pledge to seek nuclear disarmament, Obama is investing big in the nuclear complex.
On February 1, the Obama administration delivered a budget request calling for a full 10 percent increase in nuclear weapons spending next year, to be followed by further increases in subsequent (...)

If Pakistan’s deteriorating civil service is not urgently repaired, public disillusionment and resentment could be used by the military to justify another spell of authoritarian rule.
Reforming Pakistan’s Civil Service, the latest report from the International Crisis Group, analyses the (...)

Even as the people of Jaffna – and those who were displaced – make use of their new freedoms of movement, they are confronted with the effect of decades of political stagnation. Read more

In post-conflict societies, histories of exclusion, racism and nationalist violence often create divisions so deep that finding a way to agree on the atrocities of the past seems near-impossible. This project seeks, first, to ensure that transitional justice measures are sensitive to the ways (...)

One year after the devastating attack on Hamas in Gaza a new wave of reports castigating Israel for war crimes has emerged.
Now, Israel is fighting back with a report on the reports, picking on international NGOs such as Amnesty, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Trocaire , Finn Church Aid, Diakonia and (...)

According to the Chinese calendar, 2010 is the Year of the Tiger. We don’t name our years, but if we did, this one might prospectively be called the Year of the Assassin.
We, of course, think of ourselves as something like the peaceable kingdom. After all, the shock of September 11, 2001 (...)

ON December 26, 2004, giant waves lashed coastal India and left behind a trail of death and destruction. It also left behind lessons in resilience for many. The tsunami anniversary kindles memories of loss and offers, for the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that helped the victims in (...)

The road to stability runs through Kashmir. With its latest surge, America has taken a terrible diversion.
Meeting George Bush at the White House to discuss Afghanistan, the Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid once marvelled at how a "US president could live in such an unreal world, where the (...)