The trade-off offered by authoritarianism to its client-constituents is security and high growth rates. After Meles challenges may force change, or build the case domestically for a new strong man.
The death penalty has been dropped from a highly controversial bill which seeks to strengthen Uganda’s already stringent anti-homosexuality laws.
President Morsi’s latest constitutional declaration, even if it is cloaked in democratic and revolutionary rhetoric, presages a slide to authoritarianism, argues Mariz Tadros.
Why isn’t anybody doing anything? Attempting to curb sexual harassment by targeting the harassers is very challenging in Egypt since the driving forces are complex and compounded. We need to focus on the bystander, says Eba’a El-Tamami.
Bouazizi’s desperate act of self-immolation in response to his humiliation seems to be replicated once again under the rule of a legitimate government that came to power through the ballot box.
Morsi has shown that his policy on the Palestinians is no more imaginative than Mubarak-era policies and, partly as a result of US approval, he has undertaken a democratic rollback that has ignited Egypt’s streets.
Libyans asked for assistance during the revolution and they received it: the Syrian opposition has been asking for international assistance for eighteen months yet has received little or no response.
It is reported that in Tunisia under Ben Ali, no prisoner died on hunger strike – some prisoners died under torture. This is a first.
While the eighteen day uprising saw Egypt’s men and women equally contribute to the greater good of the country and fought side by side in the face of violence and drastic uncertainty, women’s rights are being undermined.
The UN Refugee Agency must not be the facilitator of a permissive attitude towards continued corruption and the absence of democracy in Rwanda. By calling on refugees who fled before 1998 to return home to the threat of persecution it risks legitimising Kagame’s autocratic regime.
They pressured his father into revealing his whereabouts, warning that otherwise they would also arrest his younger brother M.
