Post-Protest Bangladesh: Restoration More than Renewal

Bangladesh’s first credible election in nearly two decades delivered a landslide win for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its leader Tarique Rahman, son of a former prime minister, just back from 17 years of self-imposed exile.

CSW70: Women’s Equality under Siege

On 19 March, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) did something unprecedented in its eight-decade history: it held a vote. The Trump administration, having spent two weeks attempting to defer, amend and ultimately block the session’s main outcome document, known as the agreed conclusions, cast the only vote against its adoption. That dissenting vote said a lot, as it came from the world’s most powerful government, backed by financial leverage, bilateral reach and a network of anti-rights states and organisations that are making inroads at many levels.

International Women’s Day 2026: A Resistance Stronger than the Backlash

Consider what International Women’s Day looked like a few years ago, and what it looks like now: the same date, the same global moment of reflection, but a vastly changed global landscape. Gender rights are facing the most coordinated and wide-ranging attack in decades. Anti-rights forces are dismantling protections secured after generations of struggle, destroying infrastructure built to address gender-based violence and realise reproductive rights and rewriting legal frameworks to roll back rights, with a specific focus on excluding transgender people. This is the result of a deliberate, carefully crafted, handsomely funded and globally coordinated strategy.

Iran: A Regime with Nothing Left but Force

The Islamic Republic of Iran has put down another uprising, with a ferocity that makes previous crackdowns seem restrained. The theocratic regime has survived, but it has done so by substituting violence for the economic security it cannot provide and the political legitimacy it no longer has. Its show of force is also an admission of weakness.

Venezuela at a Crossroads

When US special forces seized Nicolás Maduro and his wife from the presidential residence in Caracas on 3 January, killing at least 24 Venezuelan security officers and 32 Cuban intelligence operatives in the process, many in the Venezuelan opposition briefly dared hope.

Uganda: Democracy in Name Only

When Ugandans went to the polls on 15 January, the outcome was never in doubt. As voting began, mobile internet services ground to a halt, ensuring minimal scrutiny as President Yoweri Museveni secured his seventh consecutive term. Far from offering democratic choice, the vote reinforced one of Africa’s longest-running presidencies, providing a veneer of democratic legitimacy while stifling competition.

Guinea’s Path to Electoral Autocracy

In December, the dust settled on Guinea’s first presidential election since the military took control in a 2021 coup. General Mamady Doumbouya stayed in power after receiving 87 per cent of the vote. But the outcome was never in doubt: this was no a democratic milestone; it was the culmination of Guinea’s denied transition to civilian rule.

The Fight Against Femicide: Victories and Setbacks in 2025

Hours before world leaders gathered in Johannesburg for the 2025 G20 summit in November, hundreds of South African women wearing black lay down in a city park for 15 minutes — one for each woman who loses her life every day to gender-based violence in the country. The striking visual protest was organised by a civil society organisation, Women for Change, which also gathered over a million signatures demanding the government declare gender-based violence (GBV) a national disaster. Hours later, the government acquiesced.

Myanmar’s Sham Election: Trump Legitimises Murderous Military Dictatorship

Myanmar is heading for an election, beginning on 28 December, that’s ostensibly an exercise in democracy – but it has clearly been designed with the aim of conferring more legitimacy on its military junta.

Killer Robots: The Terrifying Rise of Algorithmic Warfare

Machines with no conscience are making split-second decisions about who lives and who dies. This isn’t dystopian fiction; it’s today’s reality. In Gaza, algorithms have generated kill lists of up to 37,000 targets.

Burkina Faso: Three Years of Broken Promises

Three years ago, Captain Ibrahim Traoré seized power in Burkina Faso with two promises that have proved hollow: to address the country’s deepening security crisis and restore civilian rule. Now he has postponed elections until 2029, dissolved the independent electoral commission and pulled the country out of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the International Criminal Court (ICC). Burkina Faso has become a military dictatorship.

Foreign Agent Laws: The Latest Authoritarian Weapon Against Civil Society

When thousands of Georgians filled the streets of Tbilisi in 2023 to protest against their government’s proposed ‘foreign agents’ law, they understood what their leaders were trying to do: this wasn’t about transparency or accountability; it was about silencing dissent. Though the government was forced to withdraw the legislation, it returned with renewed determination in 2024, passing a renamed version despite even bigger protests. The law has effectively frozen Georgia’s hopes of joining the European Union.

Mali’s Blocked Transition: Five Years of Deepening Authoritarianism

When Mali’s former Prime Minister Moussa Mara stood trial in Bamako’s cybercrime court on 29 September, charged with undermining state authority for expressing solidarity with political prisoners on social media, his prosecution represented far more than one person’s fate. It epitomised how thoroughly the military junta has dismantled Mali’s democratic foundations, five years after seizing power with promises of swift reform.

Outsourcing Cruelty: Trump’s Mass Deportation Machine

Thousands of Afghans who fled to the USA when the Taliban took over in August 2021 now face the prospect of deportation to countries they’ve never been to. People who risked everything to escape persecution, often because they helped US forces, now find themselves treated as unwanted cargo under the Trump administration’s anti-migration policy.

Togo’s Young Generation Challenges Six Decades of Dynastic Rule

In late June, thousands flooded the streets of Lomé, Togo’s capital, presenting the ruling dynasty with its biggest challenge in decades. The catalyst was constitutional manoeuvring by President Faure Gnassingbé to maintain his grip on power. In March 2024, his government pushed through constitutional amendments that transformed Togo from a presidential to a parliamentary system. This created a new position, the President of the Council of Ministers – effectively Togo’s chief executive – elected by parliament rather than by popular vote, and with no term limits. Gnassingbé assumed this new role in May, making it abundantly clear the changes were only about keeping him in power indefinitely.

The Right to Care: A Feminist Legal Victory That Could Change the Americas

On 7 August, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights delivered a groundbreaking decision that could transform women’s lives across the Americas. For the first time in international law, an international tribunal recognised care as an autonomous human right. Advisory Opinion 31/25, issued in response to a request from Argentina, elevates care – long invisible and relegated to the private sphere – to the level of a universal enforceable entitlement.

From the Margins to the Courts: St Lucia Joins Caribbean Fight to Dismantle Anti-LGBTQI+ Colonial Laws

When Kenita Placide co-founded United and Strong, St Lucia’s first LGBTQI+ organisation in 2001, death threats were routine. Over the years, several friends were murdered for being gay. But 24 years on, Kenita’s Caribbean island nation has become the latest to overturn a colonial legacy that criminalised LGBTQI+ people.

NATO’s Trillion-dollar Gamble: The Dangers of Defence Without Accountability

Donald Trump’s bullying tactics ahead of NATO’s annual summit, held in The Hague in June, worked spectacularly. By threatening to redefine NATO’s article 5 – the collective defence provision that has anchored western security since 1949 – Trump won commitments from NATO allies to almost triple their defence spending to five per cent of GDP by 2035. European defence budgets will balloon from around US$500 billion to over US$1 trillion annually, essentially matching US spending levels.

Bangladesh’s Democratic Promise Hangs in the Balance

When Bangladesh’s streets erupted in protest in mid-2024, few could have predicted how swiftly Sheikh Hasina’s regime would crumble. The ousting of the prime minister last August, after years of mounting authoritarianism and growing discontent, was heralded as a historic opportunity for democratic renewal. Almost a year on, the question remains whether Bangladesh is genuinely evolving towards democracy, or if one form of repression is replacing another.

Democracy under Attack: Why the World Needs a New UN Special Rapporteur

When tanks rolled through Myanmar’s streets in 2021, civil society groups worldwide sounded the alarm. When Viktor Orbán systematically dismantled Hungary’s free press, democracy activists demanded international action. And as authoritarianism returns to Tanzania ahead of elections, it’s once again civil society calling for democratic freedoms to be respected.