Iran trying to shut down UN Human Rights investigation

     

Iran executed nearly 1,000 prisoners last year, the highest number in two decades, and hundreds of journalists, activists and opposition figures languish in custody, a United Nations investigator said on… Read more »

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Turkey’s Erdogan must reform or resign

     

Under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has steadily descended into authoritarianism and instability, according to Mort Abramowitz* and Eric Edelman, both former U.S. ambassadors to Turkey, and… Read more »

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Ecuador and Bolivia show Venezuela no longer a model

     

Like Venezuela, the administrations in Ecuador and Bolivia have taken decisive steps to concentrate power in the executive branch, weaken independent institutions, persecute political opposition, and close media space. Keeping… Read more »

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China’s NGO law remains a work in progress

     

  It has been more than two years since the Chinese government proposed tighter controls on foreign nongovernmental organizations, prompting fears for the future of a wide range of groups active… Read more »

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‘Unprecedented’ pressure on Russia’s opposition, as NDI deemed undesirable

     

The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has declared the activities of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs to be undesirable in the latest of a series of measures designed to… Read more »

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Moderates’ election gains ‘a setback to Iranian democracy’

     

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Thursday hailed last month’s elections that saw gains for allies of moderate President Hassan Rouhani, denying they lacked competition, AFP reports: The February… Read more »

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Why illiberal democracies?

     

The rise of illiberal democracy in Central Europe is at least partly due to incomplete or inadequate democratic transitions from Communist rule, Le Monde’s Sylvie Kaufmann writes for The New… Read more »

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The Obama Doctrine: advancing democracy, but….

     

President Barack Obama is a democratic internationalist, he tells The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, but experience has also taught him to temper his idealism with a pragmatic, realist approach to foreign… Read more »

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