A call for political leadership.
On 29 June, after the spectacular takeover of Mosul and other Iraqi cities, the Islamic State (IS) declared a caliphate in Iraq and Syria. How can the sudden rise to power of IS be explained? What is the future of the caliphate, and of the region as a whole? Romain Caillet provides an assessment.
Uninformed public and low community participation have been the result of unsuccessful top down institutional approaches to implementing sustainable development plans, without incorporating local networks for cooperation mechanisms.
Desistance from violence can be to withdraw from a stance of violence through an act of violence, to leave off one form of violence by taking on another. Each Israeli attack on Gaza is simultaneously and implicitly recast by state subtext as a desistance from genocide.
Inspired by the 1960s Russell tribunal on Vietnam the ITC aims to document, clarify and publicise the treatment of political dissenters and members of religious and ethnic minorities by the Iranian government between 1981 and 1989.
US strikes against Islamic State fighters heading towards Erbil will not make a significant impact against a group that can fight across multiple fronts in multiple countries.
These options distract people from the real priority: to find (or strengthen) practical forms of pressure in support of international consensus.
The most prominent case is the extreme right political party Golden Dawn in Greece. While all cases are different, they all address exactly the same fundamental question: what are the limits of political activism within a liberal democracy?
Azerbaijan’s strategy over the disputed, Armenian-held territory of Karabakh is also aimed at eliminating domestic opposition. But the country's rising troubles make this a self-defeating strategy.
Political actors must address the place of religion and ethnicity, as defining identity markers, in the post-Arab Spring countries. The Arab Spring, after all, may have signaled the beginning of the end of exclusionary models of nationalism, and all the other isms that eventually lead to genocidal
Behind the Arab rhetoric of unity over Gaza - and Syria or Iraq - lie deep and dangerous fractures.
