An Iran in Flux Marks 35th Anniversary of Revolution

Thirty-five years ago today, millions of Iranians embraced a religious leader promising freedom from a corrupt monarchy and national independence. Now many want a better standard of living and improved civil rights.

Mexico Deputises Vigilantes in Cartel Wars

“In the long term, what benefit will regulation of the autodefensas [self-defence groups] bring us? Do you think I have an aptitude or professional vocation for police work?” asked Juan Carlos Trujillo, a peace activist in the Mexican state of Michoacán.

Philippines Makes Tentative Truce With Islamists

After two years of intensive negotiations, the Philippine government and the country’s largest rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), have signed a final peace agreement, which paves the way for a lasting resolution of one of the world’s longest-running intra-state conflicts.

Bursting the ‘Blood Bubble’

The longstanding Israeli practice of labelling settlement products “Made in Israel” is leading to mounting opposition to the occupation.

Small Ray of Hope in Mexico’s Forced Disappearances

Tita Radilla is waiting, somewhat sceptically, for Mexican military personnel accused of carrying out forced disappearances to be brought before civilian courts. It is a demand that has spanned the past five decades.

Economic Crisis in Mali’s North as the South Recovers

Under the harsh Sunday afternoon sun, Daouda Dicko washes his client’s clothes on the shore of the Niger River, which runs through Mali’s capital, Bamako. “I started doing this to survive two years ago. Now, I am used to it and I don’t mind the extra money it brings,” Dicko, who also works as a gardener, tells IPS.

Carbon-Neutral Costa Rica: A Climate Change Mirage?

Meeting Costa Rica’s self-imposed goal of being the first country in the world to achieve carbon neutrality by 2021 will depend on the priority given this aim by the winner of the second round of the presidential elections in April.

OP-ED: Egypt’s Revolution Teeters as Sisi Seeks the Presidency

Abdul Fattah al-Sisi is set to run for president and is expected to win handily. The ruling junta and the interim government have taken several steps to make this happen.

Pakistan Caught Between Talking and Fighting

Whether to make war or peace with the Taliban has become a dilemma for the Pakistani government.

Moral Monday Protests Inspire Truthful Tuesdays

Moral Monday, the populist movement in North Carolina that saw a diverse coalition of thousands of progressive activists descend upon the state legislature, is now spreading throughout the U.S. South.

Living Again With the Ways of Tito and Stalin

One of the best kept secrets of former Yugoslavia is out in the open after the online release of the names of 16,101 inmates of Goli Otok, or the Naked Island, the country’s only gulag – a Soviet system of forced labour camps – created 65 years ago.

Protesters Resist an ‘Indian Fukushima’

Activists opposed to India’s plans to massively increase civilian nuclear power production are aghast that a plan for an Indo-Japanese nuclear cooperation deal is gaining pace even while Japan is struggling to cope with the fallout of the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Greater Transparency Urged for U.N.’s South Sudan Mission

As South Sudan’s fragile ceasefire threatens to unravel, human rights groups are calling on the U.N.’s mission there to make public its human rights reporting, a step they say will help lay the groundwork for reconciliation that never took place following independence in 2011.

CELAC Summit Targets Inequality

Heads of state and government at the Second Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) made a joint commitment to reduce poverty, hunger and inequality, and declared their region a “zone of peace”.

Education Is Key to Bachelet’s Chile

For 14-year-old Isadora Riquelme and thousands of other Chilean teenagers, the chance of getting the university education they want depends on the reforms that Michelle Bachelet has promised to undertake when she takes office as president again in March.

Nowhere to Come In From the Cold

As the temperature dips to zero degrees Celsius, a chill has set into the lives of people like 44-year-old Rasool Khan at the Jalozai camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Pakistan. Huddled in tiny tents, with just a plastic sheet over their heads and no heat, they pass sleepless nights in the bitter cold.

A Tale of Two Worlds

As violence rips through South Sudan and ongoing conflict plagues the Central African Republic and Syria, developing countries stand at a difficult crossroads – struggling to grow economically and politically, yet fielding deep inequalities within their own borders.

Tajik Intellectuals Finding Little Room for Reasoned Discourse

Last July, authorities in Tajikistan confiscated the only manuscript of a little-known novelist’s latest book. In what can only be described as an Orwellian sequence, after the manuscript was seized at a Dushanbe printing house, the author was hauled in for interrogation and asked questions like, “who ordered you to write this book?”

Political Duels Collapse Into Sexist Squabbles

Supaa Prordeengam, a 48-year-old businesswoman, came to take part in the anti-government rallies that have been continuing in the Thai capital for nearly three months now. But disturbed by the sexist speeches emanating from the protest platforms, she said, “We need to be critical, not invade women’s rights.”

New Writing on a School Wall

Welcome to Bridge Over the Wadi primary school, one of five bi-national schools under the "Hand-in-Hand" initiative of the Centre of Jewish-Arab Education in Israel. The centre strives to bring children from both communities to learn together in Hebrew and Arabic in the hope that they’ll bridge the divide between the two peoples.

When the Suicide Pilots Said Goodbye

They were known as the Kamikaze who swooped down on enemy ships with their bomb-laden planes – with the pilots inside. A museum here is now planning to register the last letters of Japan’s famed World War II suicide bombers as a Unesco Memory of the World document. The museum is calling these records “symbolic” of the country’s commitment to peace.