The mode of contemporary living is in many ways dysfunctional. There are the obvious and painful daily signs that affirm this: the thirteen or so wars taking place; the fact that half the world’s population live impoverished lives on less than $2 a day, 80% on under $10 a day. Most of us live with financial anxiety and job uncertainty....
The landslide election earlier this month of Narendra Modi does not bode well for the 800 million or so Indians living in destitution, or the 120 million minority Muslims in the country, or the Adivasi (indigenous) people...
We live under the omnipresent shadow of a political/economic system, which promotes materiality, selfishness and individual success over group wellbeing. It is a model of civilisation that is making us miserable and ill...
There are tentative signs that the people of Ethiopia are beginning to organise themselves and stand up against the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) government, a brutal dictatorship, albeit one dressed in democratic western garb...
Internationally ignored, life in Eritrea is brutal and shrouded in secrecy. The world is indifferent. The regime trusts nobody – even the UN’s special rapporteur on Eritrea, Sheila Keetharuth, has been denied a visa. Last year she stated: “basic tenets of the rule of law are not respected.”...
A suffocating patriarchal shadow hangs over the lives of women throughout India. From all sections, castes and classes of society, women are victim of its repressive, controlling effects. Those subjected to the heaviest burden of discrimination are from the Dalit or Scheduled Castes,..
Since Independence (1947) endemic corruption has been part and parcel of daily life in India. The scale of corruption is immense, the cost to the country staggering; according to Global Financial Integrity (GFI), illicit financial flows since 2007 have averaged 52 million $ US. A staggering “$123 billion was lost in the last decade,...
Depending on who you listen to and how it is defined, worldwide income and wealth inequality is either more acute than it has ever been, or the gap between the rich and the rest is narrowing. The numbers may be distorted by conflicting statistics but what is indisputable is the shadow of extreme poverty...
Along with the choking fumes and piles of putrid waste, sound systems and a constant bombardment of honking horns from cars, lorries and screaming buses assault residents and the unprepared in towns and cities throughout India...
It was dark when I arrived at Wilson Airport, Nairobi for the 7am United Nations charter flight to Dadaab. I was in Kenya to meet refugees from the Ogaden region of Ethiopia and record their stories. Accounts of false imprisonment, murder, rape, torture at the hands of the ERPRDF government: stories, which would prove deeply distressing...
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