Active Citizens

Four Ways Women Bring Lasting Peace to the Table

By Lyndal Rowlands
2015 marks anniversaries for two significant commitments made to increasing women’s participation at peace tables.

Indonesia’s Palm Oil Industry in Need of a Makeover

By Amantha Perera
Over the past three decades, 50 percent of the 544,150 square kilometres that comprise Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo, has been taken over by the palm oil industry.

Opinion: Gender Equality, the Last Big Poverty Challenge

By Preethi Sundaram and Fiona Salter
It is estimated that women account for two-thirds of the 1.4 billion people currently living in extreme poverty. They also make up 60 per cent of the world’s 572 million working poor.

Canada’s Waste Still Rotting in a Philippine Port

By Diana Mendoza
Filipino Catholic priest and activist Reverend Father Robert Reyes, dubbed by media as the “running priest”, joined a protest of environmental and public health activists last week by running along the streets of the Makati Business District, the Philippines’ financial capital, to urge the government to immediately re-export the 50 Canadian containers filled with hazardous wastes that have been in the Port of Manila for 600 days now.

Meet the 10 Women Who Will Stop at Nothing

By Kanya D'Almeida
On Apr. 6, 2013, Nadia Sharmeen, a crime reporter, was assigned to cover a rally organised by Hefazat-e-Islam, an association of fundamentalist Islamic groups in Bangladesh whose demands included a call to revoke the proposed National Women Development Policy.

Anger Seethes in Gabon after Wood Company Sacks Protesting Workers

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
There is rising anger among trade unionists, environmentalists and civil society groups in Gabon after a wood company, Rain Forest Management (RFM), sacked 38 fixed-term workers last month in Mbomao, Ogooué-Ivindo province.

Sendai Conference to Move From Managing Disasters to Risk Prevention

By Jamshed Baruah and Katsuhiro Asagiri
As the world inched towards a crucial United Nations Conference in Sendai, Japan, Margareta Wahlström, head of the U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), assured that there was “general agreement” on the need to “move from managing disasters to managing disaster risk”. 

Opinion: A Radical Approach to Global Citizenship Education

By Wayne Hudson
Although global citizenship education has now received the recognition it deserves, much of the literature recycles old agendas under another name -  'education to promote peace and justice', 'sustainability', 'care for the environment', 'multi-faith' and 'multi-cultural understanding'  - and so forth.

Jailed Journalist’s Family Looks to Iran’s New Year with Hope

By Jasmin Ramsey
The lawyer for Jason Rezaian, the Iranian-American Washington Post reporter detained in Tehran since Jul. 22, 2014, has officially requested temporary bail for her client during Nowruz, the beginning of the Persian calendar year when some prisoners have customarily been granted furlough requests.

Eighty-Three Percent of Lights Have Gone Out in Syria

By Josh Butler
A single image can be more powerful, more descriptive and more potent than an entire essay – ‘ a picture says a thousand words,’ as the cliché goes.

Coal: Burning Up Australia’s Future

By Suganthi Singarayar
With less than a year to go before the United Nation’s annual climate change meeting scheduled to take place in Paris in November 2015, citizens and civil society groups are pushing their elected leaders to take stock of national commitments to lower carbon emissions in a bid to cap runaway global warming.

Women Make Progress in Politics, But Glass Ceiling Remains Unbreakable

By Thalif Deen
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a creature of the U.N.’s 193 member states and who serves at their will and pleasure, did not hesitate to fault 13 countries that kept women out of their national parliaments and governments in power.

Brazil – from the Droughts of the Northeast to São Paulo’s Thirst

By Mario Osava
Six million people in Brazil’s biggest city, São Paulo, may at some point find themselves without water. The February rains did not ward off the risk and could even aggravate it by postponing rationing measures which hydrologists have been demanding for the last six months.

‘Cli-Fi’ Reaches into Literature Classrooms Worldwide

By Dan Bloom
From Columbia University in New York to the University of Cambridge in Britain, college classrooms are picking up on the "cli-fi" genre of fiction, and cinema and academia is right behind them.

Bridging the Gender Inequality Gap in the Media

By Valentina Ieri
Despite the vast number of media outlets and news sources worldwide, women and girls are still not getting enough attention in the news.

From the Mountains to the Sea, Timorese Women Fight for More

By Lyndal Rowlands
In Timor-Leste, the gap between rich and poor is most keenly felt by rural women and children. But while women are working hard to help rebuild Timor-Leste, their contributions are not always recognised, in a country where men’s narratives still heavily dominate.

The 15 Journalists Putting Women’s Rights on the Front Page

By Lyndal Rowlands
Media coverage of maternal, sexual and reproductive health rights is crucial to achieving international development goals, yet journalists covering these issues often face significant challenges.

Opinion: A Legally-Binding Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons

By Ray Acheson
Five years after the adoption of the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) Action Plan in 2010, compliance with commitments related to nuclear disarmament lags far behind those related to non-proliferation or the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

World Misses Its Potential by Excluding 50 Percent of Its People

By Thalif Deen
The meeting is billed as one of the biggest single gatherings of women activists under one roof.

Opinion: Eco-efficient Crop and Livestock Production for Nicaraguan Farmers

By Kwesi Atta-Krah and Reynaldo Bismarck Mendoza
For Roberto Pineda, a smallholder farmer in the Somotillo municipality of Nicaragua, his traditional practice after each harvest was to cut down and burn all crop residues on his land, a practice known as “slash-and-burn” agriculture.

Newly Recognised Indigenous Rights a Dead Letter?

By Edgardo Ayala and Claudia Ávalos
Nearly three years after the rights of El Salvador’s indigenous people were recognised in the constitution, there are still no public policies and laws to translate that historic achievement into reality.
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