Kosovo faces a host of challenges in its fourth year of independence, not least the quest for diplomatic recognition.
We begin a three-part account of the experiences of ethnic Albanians seeking asylum. Part One begins in Macedonia, which recently lifted visa restrictions towards Europe
Two decades after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Balkan countries have a complicated relationship with their Communist past. Two recent events in Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina highlight the complexities of regional identity, and the negative effects of compulsory ethnic identification.
openDemocracy's UK Section, OurKingdom, has published a 350 page Reader on the Winter of Protests that swept into British politics in November last year. They began as a student opposition to the tripling of fees for university education but immediately escalated, because of a much wider protest a
The Reader on the Winter Protests in Britain is now up! Freed download or scan its 350 pages
The risk that Kenya will face another round of electoral violence during next year’s presidential elections may have increased following the African Union summit held in Addis Ababa
We lead this weeks report with promising news of the launch of the new Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, Chaired by Professor David Nutt - former chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. In other news we assess 40 years of the war on drugs; the harassment of drug users in Ukr
It is the deeper process of social transformation which should spread from one country to the other and not just some hollowed out ‘pro-democracy movement’.
The uprisings sweeping across the Middle East portend a political transformation as significant as those of 1989. The economic stagnation of the region, the failures of corrupt and repressive autocratic regimes, conjoined with a disenchanted youthful population wired together as never before, have
In thinking through the issues we were struck by how often failures happen at the level of the national state nowadays and remedies, responses, the making of solutions… all tend to happen at more local levels, from cities and villages to translocal networks and neighbourhoods.
The similarities between the Egyptian and Russian regime are striking, says Grigorii Golosov. Arguably, Mubarak’s was the more liberal one.
Updated 11am. After Mubarak's refusal to stand down, attention must turn to what the armed pillars of the state will now do.The army may well be divided between loyalists and reformers; but the police and the Presidential Guard are also armed. The right kind of foreign pressure must continue.
