Professor Wendy Savage argues that the pause in the passage of the Health and Social Care Bill, which claims to reform the NHS, is just a cynical PR exercise — but citizens should exploit it and act now to save the NHS
Security is impossible without people’s freedom to organize and defend their rights, a cornerstone of the exercise of citizenship. History gives us ample evidence of this, say Lydia Alpizar and Masum Momaya
From May 23-25, women activists and scholars from around the world will gather in Quebec at the invitation of the Nobel Women’s Initiative to discuss 'Women Forging a New Security: Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict'. Jenny Morgan and Jessica Horn will be reporting for openDemocracy 50.50
The Africa Centre in London has been a refuge and cultural beacon for four decades. After a secret deal to sell the building was leaked, a campaign was launched to save the Centre reaching across Africa and the diaspora. Yet the people are not being heard, reflecting the failures of democracy in t
The gang-rape of Mukhtaran Mai launched a nine-year court battle that concluded with a verdict by the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitting all but one of the accused. Her case illustrates how both the formal and informal systems of justice share the same hostility to women who defy social norms an
If we are to articulate a ‘politics of hope’ in contemporary Europe, then we must revisit such problematic concepts as ‘populism’, ‘democracy’ and ‘Europe’, formulating a new language that can register the fact that the coexistence of an antidemocratic Europe, and an anti-European exploitation of
Liberalism does not evolve and progress according to some internal process, but because of the historical challenges it has faced. Slavery, colonialism, anti-semitism have all been a part of this. How do religious fundamentalism, environment and immigration challenge Liberalism today? A conversati
Startling wage inequality, shocking child poverty, but thankfully – to date - low support for fascism. Danny Dorling presents a snapshot of Britain’s more unusual features
The ritual slaughter of animals has become the last of many areas of contention that are changing the shape of our public domains. The way in which Islamophobia is becoming a part of our public ‘common sense’ has complex knock-on effects, not least for our Jewish minorities.
Europe’s civilizing mission is humanitarian - its duty to intervene to spread the good word, protecting the oppressed against local tyrants. The conditions by which this protection is granted are always dictated by the protector and never the protégé. Though this is not said, it is a given.
