Active Citizens

Against All Odds, Indigenous Villages Generate Their Own Energy in Guatemala

By Edgardo Ayala
In the stifling heat, Diego Matom takes the bread trays out of the oven and carefully places them on wooden shelves, happy that his business has prospered since his village in northwest Guatemala began to generate its own electricity.

**UPDATED: Activists Spotlight Education for Development and Rights

By A. D. McKenzie
“Communicate something to your partner in silence.” The pairs of strangers or acquaintances who received this instruction gesticulated, smiled, shook their heads, touched their hearts and otherwise tried to transmit a message.

UN’s Empty Promises to World’s Indigenous Peoples

By Tupac Enrique Acosta
The United Nations, as in so many other areas, gives lip service in support of Indigenous issues while lacking the political will and enforcement power over individual member states to comply with the protection of fundamental human rights for the Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples of the world.

Pakistan’s Battle Against Climate Change

By Mushahid Hussain*
Pakistan, which has been listed as the 7th most vulnerable country affected by climate change, is now seriously tackling the vagaries of weather, both at the official as well as non-official level. Pursuant to an initiative launched by the Pakistan Parliament’s Upper House, the Senate, which specially entrusted a sub-Committee of the Standing Committee on Climate Change to focus on “Green and Clean” Islamabad, media, civil society and students have taken up the cudgels on combating climate change.

Q&A: Achieving “Togetherness”

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
Increasingly facing restrictions and assault, civil society from around the world have come together to celebrate and promote people power.

Civil Society Under Attack in Name of Counterterrorism

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
Counterterrorism measures are not only affecting extremist groups, but are also impacting a crucial sector for peace and security in the world: civil society.

When Youth Take on The Fight to Defend Rights

By A. D. McKenzie
Abraham M. Keita says he was nine years old when a girl of thirteen was sexually assaulted and strangled in his home community in Liberia.

No Story Worth Dying For?

By A. D. McKenzie
“Stay safe. There’s no story worth dying for.” That’s the message to journalists from Nada Josimovic, programme coordinator of Amsterdam-based media rights organisation Free Press Unlimited.

People Do Not “Deserve to Die”: Injustice of Death Penalty Persists

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
While figures have dropped, the “inhuman” use of the death penalty still remains too common worldwide, a human rights group said.

Fridays for Future – Following Greta Thunberg!

By Heike Kuhn
What happens worldwide on Fridays, a regular working day and consequently, a school day? We are all witnessing that students do not attend their classes: during the week of March 15, 2019, according to fridaysforfuture, there were at least 1.6 million striking students in more than 125 countries on all continents.

Smears, Laws, Lack of Cooperation: Tools Against Activists

By A. D. McKenzie
The murder of Brazilian politician and human rights activist Marielle Franco just over a year ago and attacks on other rights activists around the world have galvanised civil society organisations, with the United Nations heightening its own strategy to protect rights defenders.

Civil Society, Once the “World’s New Superpower,” is Battling Against Heavy Odds

By Thalif Deen
A former UN Secretary-General, the late Kofi Annan, once described civil society organizations (CSOs), as “the world’s new superpower” – perhaps ranking behind the US and the former Soviet Union.

Migrant Farm Workers, the Main Victims of Slave Labour in Mexico

By Emilio Godoy
"They mislead the workers, tell them that they will be paid well and pay them much less. The recruiters and the employers deceive them," complained Marilyn Gómez, a migrant farm worker in Mexico.

Rise in Cyberlaws Across Southeast Asia Spell Bad News for Human Rights & Democracy

By Josef Benedict
Around the globe, cyberspace has become the new battleground in the fight for the heart and soul of democracy. And Southeast Asia is fast becoming one of the global hotspots where the screws are being tightened on freedom of expression online.

Latin America Resets Its Strategy against Femicides

By Fabiana Frayssinet
Several initiatives are seeking to strengthen the fight against femicides in Latin America, a region which, despite growing popular mobilisation and pioneering legislation against gender-based murders, still has the world's worst rates in what has been described as a "silent genocide," says U.N. Women.

An Indigenous Nation Battles for Land and Justice in Bolivia

By Franz Chávez
The ancient Qhara Qhara nation began a battle against the State of Bolivia in defence of its rich ancestral lands, in an open challenge to a government that came to power in 2006 on a platform founded on respect for the values and rights of indigenous peoples.

Human Rights Defenders Need to be Defended as Much as they Defend our Rights

By Michel Forst
They are ordinary people – mothers, fathers, sisters, sons, daughters, brothers, friends. But for me they are extraordinary people – the ones who have the courage to stand up for everyone else’s rights. They are the human rights defenders.

The NPT & Conditions for Nuclear Disarmament

By Daryl G. Kimball
Fifty years ago, shortly after the conclusion of the 1968 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), the United States and the Soviet Union launched the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT).

Monoculture Crops Threaten Community Water Projects in El Salvador

By Edgardo Ayala
For nearly three decades, several communities in southeastern El Salvador have collectively and efficiently managed the water they consume, but monoculture production and climate change put their water at risk.

9 of the 10 Worst Global Risks are Linked to Water

By Jens Berggren
Every year, the World Economic Forum asks some 1,000 decision-makers from the public sector, business, academia and civil society across the globe to assess the risks facing the world over the decade to come.

Guinea’s Returnee Migrants Harness the Strength of Unity

By IPS Correspondent
Elhadj Mohamed Diallo was a prisoner in Libya between October and November 2017, but he was not helpless. Far from his home in Guinea he understood the power of an organised union.
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