In the name of ‘traditional values’ and raisons d’état, authoritarian governments and dictators around the world are targeting the civil-society organisations who animate the public square. Democratic states and the UN must stand up for international legal standards.
Pope Francis's fresh, informal style has been met with popular acclaim during his first year in office. But his planned reforms will be hard for many in the Catholic Church to accept, says Michael Walsh.
With the referendum the military secures its privileges, but its main challenge is the economic crisis.
There is a central Hungarian political paradox: it is the conservative governing party (FIDESZ) which has made successful use of the rhetoric of anti-establishment social movements in other countries, and which disposes of the means to do so.
To focus only on the sexual politics misses the critical dimension of the unfolding debates in India about secularism and sovereignty.
Are we now witnessing a third phase in Hamas’s response towards the Syrian Uprising?
Cambodian garment workers make around $80 a month, taking on long hours of overtime in harsh conditions. Now workers across the country are standing up for themselves to demand more—but the fight for a better wage in Cambodia is a dangerous one. At least four garment workers were killed this month
By ignoring expressions of people power in the Egyptian constitutional referendum, some western political commentators and the media are showing a disconnect with the pulse of the citizenry and engaging in a dangerous politics of omission, argues Mariz Tadros
‘If representative democracy is only to choose every four, or five, or six years the person who’s going to do everything they want without taking popular will into account... we are in a sort of trap and I think that’s certainly the case today for Europe and elsewhere.’
What is to happen in Greece in the forthcoming European elections, which, not without a certain irony of history, will take place while this country holds the EU presidency? Euro elections landscape, 2014.
