Foreign Policy Blogs

Women

Girls On Board

Girls On Board

With August coming to a close here’s something short and inspiring to remind us that unconventional approaches make a difference. Skateboards and Afghanistan sound like an unlikely combination but reality is proving otherwise. Skateistan is an international non-profit charity providing skateboarding and educational programming in Afghanistan (as well as Cambodia and Pakistan). It was set […]

read more

The Summer Floodgates

The Summer Floodgates

Summer 2012 will be most likely be remembered for the London Olympics, the Republicans’ awkward, gaffe-prone run-up to the US presidential election and the situation in Syria. What also made Summer 2012 was the number of female-led stories the media picked up on and which got people talking. It feels like the floodgates opened…but for […]

read more

An Olympic Achievement?

An Olympic Achievement?

The opening of the 2012 Olympics in London on Friday were definitely a spectacle to behold. Perhaps the show was enough to divert attention from the gaffes and muddles reported by the media, such as the South Korean flag being displayed as the North Korean women’s football team were about to take to the field.

read more

The Quiet Election

The Quiet Election

After some spectacular financial fireworks and a volcano that caused havoc throughout western Europe, Iceland is back to its usual position in the international system: mostly overlooked.

read more

Nursery Rhymes and Fashion Icons

Nursery Rhymes and Fashion Icons

It’s an oft-repeated saying that, in the fashion world, “what goes around, comes around”. On a much grander scale, this is what has happened in the South Pacific in a clothing role-reversal. When missionaries ventured into the region in the early 19th century hoping to convert the various island populations to Christianity, they naturally brought […]

read more

Sex and World Peace

Sex and World Peace

It’s a pretty provocative title, no doubt about it. Unfortunately, “The very best predictor of how insecure and unstable a nation is not its level of democracy, but the level of violence against women in society” is just not quite catchy enough. Sex and World Peace was published in April of this year (available here), […]

read more

Who Hates Whom?

Who Hates Whom?

When I first came across Mona Eltahawy’s article, questioning “Why do they hate us?”–“they” being the misogynistic rulers of Middle Eastern and Muslim nations, and “us” being the female population–I have to say my instant reaction was one of apprehensive agreement. Apprehensive, because I’ve seen womenfolk suffer cruel injustice in my part of the world […]

read more

The Age of Democracy (Part II)

The Age of Democracy (Part II)

In Part I of this blog I set the scene for the challenges ahead as societies continue to travel along the demographic highway. In this second installment I look at the novel solutions trying to add color to a greying democracy. In a letter to the The Economist in January 2011, Reiko Aoki, Director of […]

read more

The Age of Democracy (Part I)

The Age of Democracy (Part I)

Whilst ‘growing up’ is admirable and desirable, ‘getting old’ is often framed in a more negative light. What words come to mind when you think about the elderly? Frailty, weakness, health problems? A burden to society? Or rather politically engaged, motivated and experienced? It is now these latter qualities that are a cause for concern […]

read more

The Middle East: Hate and Courage

The Middle East: Hate and Courage

If you have not read Mona Eltahawy’s article, “Why Do They Hate Us?” published in the new edition of Foreign Policy – go do it now. Maybe the Aztec prophecy that the end of the world is nigh is encouraging people to speak up, maybe enough is simply enough; whatever the reason, this week sees […]

read more

Pakistan and America – All the Same

Pakistan and America – All the Same

image lifted from http://cdnnews.onepakistan.com Pakistan and the United States of America may seem like polar opposites, but when you push aside the semantics, you’ll find the same people everywhere: insecure, intolerant, injudicious and irrational. In Pakistan: The Domestic Violence Bill was first proposed in the Senate in 2009 and has since been lying dormant and the […]

read more

Missing in the Holy See

Missing in the Holy See

When it comes to the Vatican, all eyes recently have been on Pope Benedict XVI’s tour to Mexico and Cuba, and the adulation that followed. In his Easter vigil mass he noted that “Today we can illuminate our cities so brightly that the stars of the sky are no longer visible…With regard to material things, […]

read more

Women Do Deliver

Women Do Deliver

The month of March is one of ups and downs – we should beware the Ides but then cut loose on St Patrick’s Day; remember victims of slavery and detained/missing UN staff members – and also celebrate women, women’s achievements and progress. Women Deliver, an NGO working globally to generate political commitment and financial investment […]

read more

The Power Game Where Women Always Lose

The Power Game Where Women Always Lose

  Last year, a girl named Amina El-Filali was raped in her town of Larache, Morocco, where her parents filed a criminal complaint. The case was taken to court where, in accordance with Article 475 of the Penal Code the judge ordered the rapist to marry his victim, thereby absolving him of his crime. Since Amina […]

read more

Canadian NGO Launches Campaign to Fund Girls’ Clubs in Swaziland

Canadian NGO Launches Campaign to Fund Girls’ Clubs in Swaziland

Last year, I traveled to Swaziland, a country roughly the size of New Jersey surrounded by South Africa and Mozambique. Swaziland has about 1 million people, and has the unfortunate distinction of having the world’s highest rate of HIV/AIDS, 25.9%, and therefore a life expectancy of 48 years of age. I met an amazing cross […]

read more