Crime & Justice

Erdoğan’s Race to Avoid Orbán’s Fate

By Inés M. Pousadela
When Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán lost by a landslide to a unified opposition in April, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was watching. The lesson he drew was not that he should be more moderate; it was that he needed to crack down harder. He had already arrested Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP)’s leading presidential contender, in March 2025. After Orbán’s defeat, he has accelerated his campaign to fracture the opposition and rewrite the rules before the next election in 2028.

The World Cup of Human Rights

By Simon Adams
This planet’s biggest sporting event—the FIFA Men’s World Cup—will soon kick off. Millions of people around the world will sit up, bleary eyed, watching matches at unreasonable hours and inventing feeble excuses for why we won’t be at work in the morning. More than one billion are expected to watch the finale on TV in mid-July. That’s a bigger audience than any Olympic sporting event and more than the number of people who have viewed Squid Game on Netflix.

UN Urgently Calls for Increased Aid in Yemen Following IPC Warnings of Food Insecurity

By Maximilian Malawista
In Yemen, increasing funding constraints on humanitarian operations have put millions of civilians in dire need of life-saving assistance amid overlapping crises. Acute food insecurity is a persistent issue, as recent reports from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) give a stark warning of conditions without urgent intervention.

Violence, Climate Shocks, and Hunger Push The Sahel To The Brink of Collapse

By Oritro Karim
Over the past few years, the humanitarian crisis in Africa’s Sahel region has expanded considerably, largely driven by a surge of violence—particularly in the Central Sahel. Although the crisis has been described by the United Nations (UN) as having “largely faded from the headlines” since its wake in 2012, millions of people across the region are in dire need of humanitarian assistance as civilian displacement, climate shocks, and widespread hunger rapidly spill across borders.

Trump Administration Weaponises Sanctions Against Human Rights

By Andrew Firmin
For a few days in May, Francesca Albanese could live more easily. On 13 May, a US federal judge ruled that sanctions the Trump administration imposed on her violated her right to free expression. The government was forced to remove the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories from its sanctions list. But the reprieve lasted barely a week. On 27 May, after an appeals court suspended the ruling, the US Treasury restored sanctions.

World Bank Enables Corruption in Bangladesh

By Anis Chowdhury
The World Bank considers corruption a major obstacle to eradicating global poverty. The Bank officially has a zero-tolerance policy against fraud and corruption in its projects. Concerned with widespread corruption in Bangladesh, the Bank and the Government agreed on the Governance-oriented Country Assistance Strategy (GCAS) in 2006 and the Bank’s subsequent Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) ostensibly has been more selective on governance and anti-corruption (GAC) issues. Ironically, however, the Bank’s funding enables corruption. The Bank’s recent decision to advance a US$350 million loan allegedly for enhancing energy security is a glaring example.

GAZA: ‘If Civilians Can Get This Close to Establishing a Humanitarian Corridor, Then Governments Can Do It’

By CIVICUS

 
CIVICUS discusses the interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla on its mission to bring humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza with Musa Roshdy, a humanitarian activist who took part in the flotilla.

UN Climate Resolution: Time to Protect Activists

By Andrew Firmin
Ahead of World Environment Day, the UN General Assembly made a vital commitment to protect people from climate impacts, adopting a resolution on the climate change obligations of states. The resolution follows up on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion issued last year, which found that states have a legal duty to prevent activities that cause environmental harm. Most states voted for the resolution despite a concerted campaign by the Trump administration to block it.

PERU: ‘For 20 Years, Voters Have Had to Choose the Lesser of Two Evils’

By CIVICUS

 
CIVICUS discusses the outlook ahead of Peru’s runoff presidential election with David Hidalgo, journalist and executive director of OjoPúblico, a Peruvian digital investigative journalism outlet.

Iran War Exposes Limits of US Power Projection

By Dan Smith
The outcome of the current Iran war is still in doubt, but one consequence is already becoming clear: it has weakened America’s capacity to project power. Many are asking who won. The more important question may be what the war has cost.

What the Sino-Russian Declaration Exposes

By Jordan Ryan

 
The joint declaration issued by Russia and China on 20 May, Joint Declaration of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the Establishment of a Multipolar World and a New Type of International Relations, has been read in sharply different ways. Some welcome its language of sovereign equality, multilateralism and a UN-centred international order. Others dismiss it as legal rhetoric deployed in bad faith. Both responses miss the more important point.

Increased Rates of Deaths, Displacement and Diesel Amid New Ceasefire Escalations in Lebanon

By Maximilian Malawista
Last week on May 28, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) issued an evacuation order to Lebanese civilians ordering them to move north of the Zahrani River, approximately 25 miles from the Israeli border, and roughly 20 percent of the Lebanese territory. These new escalations bring the displaced population to more than 1.3 million people, including more than 300,000 of those people being children. 1.3 million people represents approximately 1/4th of the nation's population of 5.3 million.

US-Israeli Ceasefire: You Cease, We Fire

By James E. Jennings
If you have been paying attention to the ongoing wars in Ukraine, Iran, Lebanon, and many other places, perhaps you have noticed that battles today are far different from those of the last century. Now it’s not only tanks and planes but also scores of long-range missiles and massive flights of drones linked to cybernetic warfare.

Ebola Outbreak in the DRC Raises Global Health Concerns Amid Conflict and Displacement

By Oritro Karim
Since May 16, there has been a significant increase in the number of laboratory-confirmed and suspected Ebola cases reported across the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), primarily in Ituri Province, with additional unrelated cases identified in Kampala, Uganda. Although the outbreak has remained largely confined to that region, it has been heavily linked to areas affected by insecurity, civilian displacement, and mining-related migration, raising concerns among global health experts that the outbreak could spread without effective monitoring and response efforts.

How the Global Anti-Rights Movement Is Targeting Women’s Rights in Africa Through Family Laws

By Deborah Nyokabi
The theme of Africa Day 2026, “63 years of unity, integration and development," offers a stark reminder of the gap that often exists between rhetoric and reality. While commendable regional legal frameworks have advanced legal protections for millions of women and girls, injustice remains written into the fabric of national family laws in many African countries, entrenching gender inequality in the home.

Iran War Deepens Activist Dangers

By Andrew Firmin
Narges Mohammadi, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her human rights activism in Iran, has been allowed to go home. After guards found her unconscious in her cell, the apparent victim of a heart attack, she was granted temporary release from prison and transferred to a hospital. However, she still faces the threat of being taken back to jail once her condition has improved.

Stop the Madness: Civil Society Cannot Thrive on Burnout

By Hannah Wheatley, Joanna Makhlouf and Taís Siqueira
In an era when civil society funding is in decline, it’s time to rebel against a broken system.

Civilian Casualties Grow Amid Russian and Ukrainian Drone Strikes

By Oritro Karim
Four years after the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War, 2026 has marked a significant escalation in hostilities, with intensified bombardments from both sides causing immense destruction across the region, complicating humanitarian operations, and deepening an already severe humanitarian crisis. As exchanges of attacks have intensified in recent days, the United Nations (UN) warns that women and girls will be disproportionately impacted as violence disrupts access to basic, lifesaving services.

The Global Epidemic of Violence in an Age of Impunity

By Alon Ben-Meir
Violence has metastasized into humanity's baseline condition. Yet international institutions remain paralyzed by vetoes and rivalry, offering hollow declarations while dehumanization becomes normalized. Coordinated action, not gestures, is desperately needed.

The Iran War Is Costing Children’s Lives in Somalia

By Mohamed Omar
When war erupted in the Middle East in late February, the most visible consequences were playing out in the Persian Gulf, with smoke rising from Dubai's Jebel Ali port and shipping traffic across one of the world's most critical maritime routes grinding to a near halt.

Food Systems and Policies Undermining Food Security

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Felice Noelle Rodriguez
Transnational agribusinesses increasingly shape food policies worldwide. Claiming to best address recent food security concerns, they seek to profit more from innovations in food production, processing, and distribution.
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