On 12 January, Arif Yunus, the distinguished Azerbaijani scholar, will ‘celebrate’ his 60th birthday in a prison cell.
There was much hope in the international community that the Hague war-crimes tribunal on former Yugoslavia, allied to domestic proceedings, could point the region to a reconciled future. It was not to be.
The Charlie Hebdo attack was an act of violence by deranged individuals. It should not be interpreted as a replay of the Huntingtonian clash of civilisations, somehow justifying past stigmatisation and future backslash against Muslim populations.
It is comforting and politically expedient to claim that “we” are attacked because “they” cannot deal with “our” freedoms, particularly freedom of speech.
As 2015 opens, the Sahrawi people of Western Sahara have been waiting for a self-determination referendum for four decades. They will wait longer due to the passivity of the international community.
The Cold War is over. Scaremongering campaigns on the part of German and European officials make no sense, as Syriza is not a threat to Europe, but a breakthrough.
It’s been a year of searing images of horrifying mass civilian injury and death, from Gaza to eastern Ukraine. The world must set standards to curb resort to weapons with wide-area effects where many civilians are at risk.
Security think-tanks and expert communities in the Western world are perpetuating the dangerous myth that Muslim radicalisation is rife in Central Asia.
It is these solidarities, across factory and across contract, which the factories and indeed Modi’s Government fear, which must not be forgotten once the dust settles over the current round of labour 'reforms'.
The conflict of radical Shi'a-Sunni forces is fuelled by unyielding absolutisms that oppose the world's leading trends over the past century.
In the absence of effective political institutional input to set up mechanisms able to handle terrorism, Pakistan has given the military a free hand to maintain the status quo.
Lebanon hosts the largest number of Syrian refugees worldwide. The large number of refugees only serves to reveal the troubled political, economic and social problems of the country.
