By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network NEW YORK (IDN) – Death sentences are rare in northern Nigeria where Sharia law is implemented alongside secular law in most states. But the recent sentence of a 22-year-old singer to die by hanging has revived an emotional debate in the West African nation. An upper Sharia court in […]
Democracy-Seeking Opposition Prepares To Fight ‘Coups’ In Two African States
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network NEW YORK (IDN) – Citizen activists in two West African countries, Ivory Coast and Guinea, are rallying their troops on social media to defend the constitutional limit of two terms which current office-holding presidents seem determined to defy. In Abidjan, the Ivory Coast’s commercial capital, police have been firing […]
Russia Sees Neocolonialism as An Investment Barrier in Africa
By Kester Kenn Klomegah MOSCOW (IDN) – Russia not only supported African countries in liberating themselves from the yoke of colonialism and attaining political independence but also facilitated in the UN General Assembly adopting in 1960 the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. It’s a landmark document which states that […]
Challenging the Dogma of Community Approach to Development
Viewpoint by Dr Yossef Ben-Meir The writer is a sociologist and president of the High Atlas Foundation, a U.S.-Moroccan not-for-profit organization dedicated to sustainable development in Morocco. MARRAKECH (IDN) – Systems devised to organize local community participation in development emerged more than 70 years ago as a means to address poverty by involving people in […]
Powerful Rajapaksa Brothers’ Landslide in Sri Lanka Election Should Get “Liberals” Thinking
By Kalinga Seneviratne SINGAPORE (IDN) – The landslide victory of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP – Sri Lanka Peoples’ Front) led by the Rajapaksa brothers throws a challenge to so-called “liberals” everywhere whose ideology may not be in sync when a huge portion of the electorate vote for a “strong” government rather than a […]
Three More Countries Ratify the UN Treaty to Ban the Bomb
By Tony Robinson The writer is Humanist Movement activist, coordinating committee member of Abolition 2000 – Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons, author of the book “Coffee with Silo and the quest for meaning in life” and producer of the film “The Beginning of the End of Nuclear Weapons”. The article originally appeared on Pressenza, […]
Why Taiwan Is at the Heart of a Geopolitical Struggle to Produce Cutting-Edge Computer Chips
Viewpoint by Marshall Auerback The writer is a market analyst and commentator. This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. NEW YORK (IDN) – The media likes to dabble in war game fantasies between the 21st-century great powers China and the U.S., but it’s a distraction from the […]
Trump Managed to Lead the World With the Worst Response to COVID-19 Pandemic
Viewpoint by Vijay Prashad * This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute. NORTHAMPTON, Massachusetts (IDN) – Six months ago, on January 30, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). Ten days before this, the Chinese […]
Nigerian President’s Nephew Is Not the Problem
Viewpoint by Azu Ishiekwene The writer is the Managing Director/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview magazine based in Abuja, Nigeria. ABUJA (IDN) – I’ve been amused by the strenuous efforts to explain exactly what Mamman Daura, President Muhammadu Buhari’s nephew, meant or did not mean when he said that rotating the Presidency was no longer useful. Daura […]
Embedded in Beirut: A Communion with Ancestors
Recollections by a Nigerian journalist who toured Lebanon two years ago By Louis Odion *The writer, Fellow of Nigerian Guild of Editors, is the Senior Technical Assistant on Media to President Muhammadu Buhari. ABUJA (IDN) – Many wished they were allowed to capture the moment with the camera, but the literary amazon from Borno beheld […]