In the past, scholars tended to believe that the internet was an effective tool to challenge authoritarian regimes and facilitate the development of civil society. However, as an expert that has been investigating the issue for a number of years, I disagree with this widely held belief.
Russia’s foreign NGO laws have delivered another hit — this time to one of the U.S.’s largest foundations.
The last time Zimbabwe made widespread international headlines occurred as the country descended into violence following the contested 2008 presidential elections. That chapter in Zimbabwean history ended with the Global Political Agreement (GPA) that split power between President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The final conditions of […]
Do women leaders matter for women? Not at the national level suggests Nicholas Kristof in a recent New York Times article focused on a specific woman leader he doesn’t care for very much. According to him, she’s bad for everyone in her country, but especially for the women. Kristof points out that, “metrics like girls’ education […]
Pakistan’s prospects careen from bad to worse, but there is still some possibility that it might one day evolve in a more liberal and moderate direction Events over the last few weeks have amply demonstrated the growing decrepitude of the Pakistani state, providing fresh justification for its perennial ranking at the top of the world’s […]
It is important to keep Gandhi untarnished. The Gandhian can be negotiated with. Two developments in India during the past week convinced me of the above approach in Indian politics. American journalist Joseph Lelyveld’s book The Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India created furore in the country. The book has been banned […]
Last week I attended the annual meeting of the UN Development Program (UNDP)’s Civil Society Advisory Committee. The significance of this committee for UN accountability merits attention. The UN – and most donor countries, for that matter – spends a good deal of time preaching the importance of civil society. As the line goes, civil […]
Tomorrow marks the 20thanniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which is typically seen as the end of the Cold War. I expect that the blogospherewill be filled with far more in-depth commentary on the subject tomorrow, but for today I would just like to point out one of the articles that is already […]
Representatives from governments, civil society, and the diamond industry met this past week in Namibia for the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme’s seventh plenary meeting. The Kimberley Process was established in 2003 as a way to regulate the trade of so-called conflict diamonds that came to prominence during the wars in Angola, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. […]
Human Rights Watch has landed back in the news, though not in the way that it likes. For the last few months the organization has endured controversy over its coverage and position on Israel. First, news broke in July of a fundraising trip that Human Rights Watch undertook to Saudi Arabia where the representatives allegedly highlighted […]
Southeast Asia has officially joined the ranks of Europe, the Americas, and Africa in launching their own regional human rights commission. Speculation on the proposed human rights body for The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has dominated political commentary in the region for the past year. Yet, now that the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights […]