If our universities can’t stand up to the Israel lobby and uphold free speech, how will the international community ever stand up to the state of Israel and uphold international law?

A renewal of democracy should be the means to cleanse Latin America of its history of corruption and abuses of power. But as the Mexican case shows, unless democracy is extended by enhancing civil society, its promise will not be realised.

The neoliberal paradigm is economically dead but ideologically still very active especially in the education sector, which has assumed a far more business-like and 'entrepeneurial' value system.

Does the term ‘occupation’ delegitimize movements by casting participants as short-term guests, instead of representatives communicating grievances held by a wider society within a public forum that is theirs?

Are we entering the ‘bear hug’ phase in the political and economic Spanish elites’ strategy to beat Podemos, or have they begun to realise that Podemos could win?

The collision of well-intentioned western activists and imperilled activists in the Global South illustrates the hazards of using global “naming and shaming” campaigns to apply pressure to developing nations with the hope of improving human rights practices.

In Mexico, government officials have often been accused of planting violent protesters in nonviolent movements in order to justify the use of police force. But teachers know that they are stakeholders in the country’s future. Like citizens in Brazil, Egypt, Turkey, Mexican teachers want to play their part.

Despite a rising consciousness throughout the continent of the problems of increased militarization, coinciding with an increased appreciation of the power of creative nonviolent conflict, these conditions have not yet led to a rising movement of South African peace protesters.

These are democratic protest movements in societies experiencing rapid change where the public’s demand for better services and more democracy at local as well as national levels grow at a faster pace than their governments’ ability to provide.  

The protests on the streets of Brazilian cities are by no means anti-Brazil (or even anti-football). Rather, they are unquestionably patriotic: people believe that Brazilian public education, healthcare, and democracy should be every bit as admirable as the national football team.

Contrary to the dominant narrative of a vibrant democracy with a strong record of integration, many in India are in effect non-citizens. Citizenship cannot reach its potential unless there is a commitment to achieve equality and justice in practice. (Video, 33 mins)

The second verdict handed down by Bangladesh's war crimes tribunal is life imprisonment. Now a death sentence is being demanded in mass protests supported by the ruling regime, with calls for violence that extend into Bangladeshi society. Yet the guilty verdict itself may be a far cry from sound.

The Dalit community of India is at the bottom of the social hierarchy, assigned to do the least desirable menial jobs. Their rights are systematically and regularly violated. India is at a crossroads in how it will treat this social group going forward, shaping the quality of democracy in this country.

From the student protests in Chile, to the protests of the 'Arab spring' in the MENA region, the debate among young feminists about how to reclaim public space reveals tensions between an individualist model of autonomy and a collectivist reclamation of public space. Jenny Allsopp reports on day two of the AWID Forum 2012

The governance formula that characterized the Concertación governments and now the current centre-right administration was created to transition from the Pinochet regime rather than to allow for citizen participation in the policy-making process. The most important success of the current protests has been to trigger debates on long-neglected issues.