By Lindsay Murdoch 13 February 2018 (The Sydney Morning Herald) – Women’s groups and human rights advocates have condemned Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte for encouraging soldiers to shoot female rebels in their genitals, the latest in a series of violent, misogynist remarks. Duterte, a former provincial mayor, told a group of former communist rebels to […]
By Justine Calma 5 February 2018 (Grist) – The unprecedented brutality of the 2017 hurricane season showed the potential that natural disasters have to destroy livelihoods, displace families, and uproot entire communities. The most recent example, of course, is the situation in Puerto Rico post-Maria. Experts estimate the U.S. territory will lose close to 500,000 […]
By Jonathan Watts 2 February 2018 (The Guardian) – The slaughter of people defending their land or environment continued unabated in 2017, with new research showing almost four people a week were killed worldwide in struggles against mines, plantations, poachers and infrastructure projects.The toll of 197 in 2017 – which has risen fourfold since it […]
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, 31 January 2018 (AP) – Soldiers in northeastern Cambodia, an area where illicit logging and smuggling are rife, killed a forest protection ranger, a military police officer and a conservation worker in apparent retaliation for their seizure of equipment from illegal loggers, officials said Wednesday. Keo Sopheak, a senior environmental official in […]
25 January 2017 (The Economist) – America, which has long defined itself as a standard-bearer of democracy for the world, has become a “flawed democracy” according to the taxonomy used in the annual Democracy Index from the Economist Intelligence Unit, our sister company. Although its score did not fall by much—from 8.05 in 2015 to […]
By Lindsey Bever, Sarah Kaplan, and Abby Ohlheiser 25 January 2018(The Washington Post) – Alexa, what time is the apocalypse?Ulp.The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced the symbolic Doomsday Clock a notch closer to the end of humanity Thursday, moving it ahead by 30 seconds after what the organization called a “grim assessment” of the […]
By Jonathan Watts 20 January 2018 Mananhão, Brazil (The Guardian) – Sairá Ka’apor patrolled one of the most murderous frontiers in the world, a remote and largely lawless region of the Brazilian Amazon where his indigenous community has fought for generations to protect their forest land.Armed with clubs, bows and arrows, GPS trackers and crude […]
By Michael J. Abramowitz 18 January 2018 (Freedom House) – Political rights and civil liberties around the world deteriorated to their lowest point in more than a decade in 2017, extending a period characterized by emboldened autocrats, beleaguered democracies, and the United States’ withdrawal from its leadership role in the global struggle for human freedom. […]
By Brietta Hague 8 January 2018 Lahou-Kpanda, Ivory Coast (Al Jazeera) – Diplo Anacle stands in the doorway of an old prison, once one of dozens of stately seafront buildings erected by French colonialists on this sliver of sand between the Atlantic ocean and a giant lagoon. Today, the structure in the centuries-old village of […]
By Lauren Said-Moorhouse and Amanda Coakley 1 January 2018 (CNN) – As the world began to ring in 2018, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for global unity to overcome growing challenges. In his New Year message on Sunday, Guterres said the world appeared to have “gone in reverse” before adding, “On New Year’s Day 2018 […]
