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Wednesday, November 11, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
Active Citizens
ENVIRONMENT-RUSSIA: Activists Face Former KGB’s Unwelcome Attention
Russian radioactive waste bears all kinds of dangers, as ex-naval sea captain turned journalist Grigory Pasko has found.HEALTH: Arctic Russians Grow Sicker As Free Market Freezes Them Out
Russia's Arctic regions have been hit by a major dysentery epidemic -- just one of the current crises in the area reflecting the rapidly deteriorating social and economic conditions in the country's far north.DEVELOPMENT: Turkmenistan Pipeline Plugs U.S. Bid To Isolate Iran
Monday's inauguration of a Turkmen-Iranian pipeline by presidents Saparmurad Niyazov and Muhammad Khatami to carry Turkmenistan's natural gas to north-east Iran was a geopolitical as well as an economic achievement for both sides.RIGHTS: Young Draftees Tortured In The Russian Armed Forces
Late on the night of Nov. 22, 1997, Vladimir Maltsev finally snapped. A young soldier based at Radar Post 11 in the Trans-Baikal Frontier District, he took his gun and killed five of his fellow soldiers before escaping into the night.RIGHTS-RUSSIA: Chief Investigator Fired From Norwegian Eco-Spy Case
Boris Utkin, the head of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) team investigating the case of environmentalist Alexander Nikitin, has been dismissed from the inquiry and the rest of the team has been reshuffled.DEVELOPMENT-KAZAKHSTAN: President Seeks Support For New Plan
Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev comes to Germany Nov. 25 to 27 seeking financial and political support for his newly announced national development plan.RUSSIA: Environmentalist Maintains That ‘Portable Nukes’ Are Missing
Russian president Boris Yeltsin's former environmental safety adviser claims to have new evidence that some of Russia's 'portable' nuclear bombs might be missing, as earlier asserted -- and officially repudiated -- this year.AZERBAIJAN: Happy Azeris Turn On The Oil, But More Work Is To Come
Schools are out and the nation celebrates with a holiday in Azerbaijan, Wednesday. The cause? Start of production from the giant Chirag-Guneshli-Azeri field, first of the massive offshore projects being developed by the world's major international energy companies in the Caspian Sea.ENVIRONMENT: Beautiful Tajik Lake Threatens Lives Of Thousands
Scientists fear a mountain lake could flood large areas of Central Asia if hit by an earthquake. The Sarez lake was formed in 1911 when an earthquake set off a landslide which blocked the flow of the Murghob river in the Tajik Pamir mountains.RUSSIA: Nuclear Power Boosted To Break ‘Addiction’ To Gas
Nuclear power is very much back in favour in Russia more than a decade after the Chernobyl disaster. The country's nuclear engineers are once more starting work on new technology in a bid to cut the country's dependence on gas.TURKMENISTAN: Breaking Central Asia’s Anti-Taleban Front
Last week's secret visit to Turkmenistan by a high level delegation from the Afghan Taleban exposed a breach in the common front that the five former Soviet Central Asian republics had up to then maintained on the Islamist radical force.RUSSIA: Secret Service Scores Victory Against Eco-Investigators
A revision to Russia's law on state secrets enforced this month may seriously impede efforts to solve the long- running problem of nuclear safety at the former Soviet naval bases in the country's far north.RUSSIA: Communists Step Back From Showdown With Yeltsin’s Government
Communists and nationalists dominating the Russian lower house of parliament backed down on a no-confidence vote in the country's government Wednesday, despite earlier threats to vote against the cabinet and its tough draft budget for 1988.RUSSIA: New Religious Law Criticised At Home And Abroad
Russia's efforts to rein in religious sects with new legislation may be unconstitutional and could open up churches to arbitrary persecution by local officials, says Sergei Zuev, chairman of the country's Hare Krishna Society.RUSSIA: Nuclear Poisoned Village Must Endure A Little Longer
Decades after their government decided that they alone would have to remain in their nuclear waste polluted village while others were evacuated, the villagers of Muslimova finally have the papers they need to leave -- but not the money.RUSSIA: ‘Rigged’ Privatisation Row Will Not Die Down
The Russian government is still considering legal action to reverse what one Moscow daily called "the obviously rigged" sale of the state's 38 percent stake in the giant Norilsk metals combine, the world's largest producer of nickel.TAJIKISTAN: Uzbekistan Distances Itself From The Tajiks’ Chief Rebel
By sealing off his country's border with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan's president, Islam Karimov, has distanced himself from the chief rebel in the neighbouring republic, Colonel Mahmoud Khodabardiyev, son of an ethnic Uzbek father.CAUCASUS: Kidnappers Make Easy Money Trading In Aid Workers
Six more foreigners have been kidnapped in the last two weeks in the troubled Caucasus region, bringing the total of Russian and foreign hostages, mostly journalists and aid workers, held in Chechnya to 14.RUSSIA: Pacific Coast Health Strikes Raise Spectre Of Cholera
The combination of a strike by both doctors and garbage collectors in the Pacific coast city of Vladivostok raise the very real threat of an outbreak of cholera or equally dangerous disease, warn local health experts.RUSSIA: Forgotten Far Eastern Defence Plants Brought To Heel
Out on Russia's far eastern Pacific coasts a forgotten arms industry is finally being brought to heel by its government. Infuriated by years of fraud, failure, wasted funds and opportunities, Moscow has ordered a top to bottom shake-up.AZERBAIJAN: Changing The Agenda For Settlement /SPECIAL SERIES/
Azeri president Haidar Aliyev began a key visit to the United States Monday with the aim of securing greater U.S. support for its efforts to resolve its stalemated conflict with Armenia.« Previous Page — Next Page »
Global Citizen Festival in New York. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
Active citizens are committed to social change because they know that it is achievable. However, major political challenges face active citizens across the world. For example, in authoritarian regimes in Latin America where the hegemonic party has been in power for decades on end, protestors and human rights activists face enormous repression and struggle to materialize their advocacy into concrete results. The same can be said for Africans, where a shift towards elected government in recent decades has yet to translate into an effective voice in decision-making. Now, the Strengthening Citizen Demand for Good Governance, which uses evidence-based approaches – funded by DFID's Governance and Transparency Fund – seeks to raise their voices.
In 2025, the CIVICUS Monitor’s People Power Under Attack report revealed that civic freedoms are severely limited in 122 of 198 countries and territories, and only 7.2% of the global population now lives in countries where civic space is open. Through partnership with the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and CIVICUS, IPS reporters across the continent will seek to define the extent and limits of state capability, government accountability and the responsiveness of leaders to the needs of citizens.
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