Category: Human rights

Middle East’s ‘distasteful theocracies’ under fire for rights abuses

     

  The prominent human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh’s draconian sentence for her peaceful activism shows the threat posed by Iran’s revolutionary courts to human rights work, the Center for Human… Read more »

Human rights advocate killed in Ethiopian Airlines crash

     

  Democracy and human rights advocates are mourning the loss of Josefin Ekermann from the East Africa Regional Office of Civil Rights Defenders, the Stockholm-based  international human rights group. Three Austrian physicians. The… Read more »

Iran’s power struggle ‘an opportunity for civil society & democratic forces’?

     

In historical examples of successful transitions to democracy, there has always been an alliance of democracy and civil society activists with centrists. The two must band together to prevent the… Read more »

Is Tunisia really democratizing? Progress + resistance = uncertain outlook

     

While Tunisia’s eighth anniversary celebrations of the end of the Ben Ali dictatorship were marred by social protests, opinions differ about the country’s state of political development as it gears… Read more »

Autocracy’s Advance, Democracy’s Decline: National Security Implications

     

At the heart of the new era of geopolitical competition is a struggle over the role and influence of democracy in the international order, according to two prominent analysts. Recent power… Read more »

‘Claws of the Panda’: China model going backwards?

     

Can pandas fly? The trade war is biting and growth is slowing. Time to reform China's economy. Our cover this week https://econ.st/2SQknUx Posted by The Economist on Saturday, February 23,… Read more »

Cuba’s leaders adopt social media, not democracy

     

Cuba‘s Communist regime is tweeting, but that does not mean it is more tolerant of dissent, despite attempts to cultivate on-line dialogue with citizens, the Economist reports: Lately, though, the… Read more »

Losing legitimacy: Iran’s Islamic Republic ‘on brink of collapse’?

     

“Is the Islamic Republic on the brink of collapse?” was the title of a long interview published by the Iranian news agency Tasnim. To fully appreciate the true explosive power… Read more »

Towards a ‘Fourth Wave’? Prioritize democracy support to reverse global retreat

     

Democracy is in retreat, facing an “ominous decline” across the world, according to the latest “Freedom in the World” report from Freedom House. It is a global retreat and it is… Read more »