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Reconfiguring the youth justice prison system
The youth justice system is failing our young people. It's time for a more humane approach.wikimediaThe majority of children in custody are themselves victims of abuse. The figures are staggering: 39%...
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Suffering happens, but Pakistan's Afghan refugees are more than just victims
The word 'refugee' conjures up images of rows of tents, barefoot children and saddened faces. The reality is more complex. My research shows that Afghan refugees have developed lives alongside...
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What's a funder to do?
If international funding compromises the work of domestic human rights groups, what should international donors do? It is admirable for local groups to refuse international aid on principle, but the...
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Putin’s political triumph - but economic impasse
Global attention is focused on Russia’s hosting of the Winter Olympics, a PR coup for President Putin. But all is not well on the economic front and the scenario the Russian government will probably...
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The heavyweight guide to Ukraine
Don't know your Klitschko from your Titushki? Can’t remember which oligarch is which? What or who is a ‘Maidan?’ With our heavyweight guide, you won’t have to buy the next round…Ukraine – Not ‘The...
View ArticleSochi = Syria: boycott the Olympics
The crimes of Bashar al-Assad's regime and its support by Vladimir Putin demand an answer, says Martin Shaw.The revelations of massive torture, starvation and executions by the regime of Bashar...
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Between exit and voice: refugees' stories from Lampedusa to Hamburg
European politics currently serves to reinforce the ‘Fortress’, leaving refugees vulnerable and futureless, battling a system which is waging war against them. But 'Lampedusa in Hamburg' demonstrates...
View ArticleThe golden age of journalism?
It took the arrival of the twenty-first century to turn the journalistic world of the 1950s upside down and point it toward the trash heap of history. So when was the golden age?It was 1949. My mother...
View ArticleBe clear who Britain is great for
Whilst campaigners against Scottish independence like to romanticise Britain, Britain is not the greatest political union in the world, and has failed most of the people who live here. It's important...
View ArticleSyria at Geneva II: the missing proxy
A way forward in Syria must address the rival positions of Iran and Saudi Arabia. In this context, the Geneva talks offer little hope.The first day of the Geneva II talks, 22 January 2014, was marked...
View ArticleGambling with public safety: privatising probation
In England and Wales the probation service works. The Coalition government is privatising it anyway, at speed. A former probation officer assesses an oversight committee's anxious report on government...
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Participation Now: patterns, possibilities, politics
At one end of this spectrum we have started to place initiatives that offer to rationalise public engagement and make the participatory self-organisation of publics more efficient. At the other end,...
View ArticleNot everybody’s business: corporate crowding into the tents of global governance
As invitation-only Davos gets under way, our public space and politics shrink that little bit more across the globe. Rolling back state authority will turn today’s accountability gap into a yawning...
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Europe and France, the missing link
Searching for information on the upcoming EU elections in France, not only did we find very little but what little we found was about politicians, the strategies of political parties, polls, anxieties...
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Selling dictatorship
Liberal opinion has been outraged by the disclosures about US and UK electronic surveillance. Yet the most unpalatable revelation is that, in an unregulated capitalist economy, liberal democracy is...
View ArticleTranslating out for our readers
In the second in a series of blogs on openDemocracy's editorial partnerships, the importance of introducing ideas to a wider audience whilst retaining respect for the original voice.When we work with...
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Death of a Canadian
Some deaths in UK immigration detention get more media attention than others."He was on his way to see his estranged daughter. Instead, he disappeared in the maws of the British detention system." So...
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A letter from Alaa
Alaa Abdel Fattah, a prominent Egyptian blogger and activist, was arrested on 28 November 2013. This is a letter he wrote on 24 December 2013, from his prison cell to his sisters. openDemocracy is...
View ArticleAddress of Beelzebub: Robert Burns in defence of migrants
As political rhetoric against migrants reaches a new height, it's Robert Burns' birthday. We're re-publishing a letter he wrote in 1786 to the representative of Scottish Highland landlords, as if from...
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Presidential elections: key step in Egypt’s roadmap
People who are keen on the democratic political process in Egypt share certain convictions as to who should fill the presidential role, and these convictions have become stronger than ever in favour of...
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