The aid and development world likes to deal in simple certainties. Africans are starving (1985)? Feed the world. Communism has failed (1989)? Privatize the world. A new mantra that has found wide acceptance in recent years runs something like this: Your country is still poor? You’re probably sexist.
Human rights
After Beheading, Indonesia Bars Maids from Work in Saudi Arabia
A woman, beheaded by the sword thousands of miles from home. This, at last, proved too much for Indonesia. For years, this Southeast Asian nation has been sending its citizens to work in Saudi Arabia and, for years, migrant workers there complained of poor working conditions, abuse and violence. But the surprise execution of Ruyati …
What’s So Scary About the Muslim Brotherhood?
Essam Erian throws his hands up in mock surrender. “I cannot answer this question,” he says, smiling broadly. “This is a question for me to ask, for you to answer.”
The question: What does the Muslim Brotherhood have to do to stop being portrayed as the bogeyman? The Egyptian Islamist movement has been trying very hard to shake …
In Saudi Arabia, Hip Hop Takes On Weighty Subjects, Like The Mall
Anywhere else in the world, a hip-hop song about going to the mall would be laughed off the airways. In Saudi Arabia, it gets banned. Mamno3 al Shabab (“guys not allowed,” in the transliterated lingo of international texting, which uses numbers like 3 for sounds that don’t exist in English), one of the latest hits the latest single …
Has Ban Ki-Moon Lived Up to His Goals as UN Chief?
Ban Ki-Moon won a second term as United Nations Secretary General yesterday, affirmed by applause as he was the only candidate. Ban pitched himself as a mediator and bridge-builder, so it’s not surprising that he has been a less visible, less controversial and, his critics would say, less charismatic Secretary General than his …
The Trials of Adel al-Gazzar: Former Gitmo Detainee Ends Up Back in Prison
Adel al-Gazzar is possibly the last person who deserves to go from the frying pan into the fire. After losing a decade of his life to the cruel exigencies of the war on terror, the 46-year-old returned to his native Egypt for the first time last week, only to be seized by security officers and flung into jail upon arrival. Al-Gazzar had …
World Refugee Day: Three Things You Must Know
Today marks 60 years since the founding of the UN refugee agency. Initially tasked with assisting 2.1 million Europeans displaced by World War II, it now works in 120 countries and is charged with helping millions more. In a cover story for TIME last year, Krista Mahr reported that the system is over-stretched and under-funded. The …
Making History: TIME Sits with a Woman Behind the Wheel in Saudi Arabia
Maha al Qatani settles herself in the driver’s seat, adjusts her headscarf, and with a quick prayer turns the key in the ignition. “I’m not nervous,” she says, even if the uneven tenor of her voice betrays tension. “When we lived in the U.S. I always drove my kids to school.” But this is Saudi Arabia, the only country in …
Clinton Condemns Use of Rape, Sexual Violence in Libya Conflict
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi are using rape as a weapon of war. In a statement released Thursday, she says the United States is “deeply concerned” about reports of “wide-scale” rape in the Libyan conflict. Citing the International Criminal Court’s findings and the case of Eman al Obeidi, she …
Honk If You Support Saudi Women!
If a group of Saudi activists get their way, this Friday June 17 will mark the start of Women2Drive, a campaign to get the country’s women behind the wheel. The call to action came after the arrest and detention Manal al-Sharif, a 32-year-old tech specialist, who last month posted a YouTube video of herself driving a car. Saudi …
Violent Migrant Protests in Guangdong: The Latest in a Wave of Chinese Social Unrest
Take a map of China, and begin pressing thumbtacks into it for each spasm of violence: an eruption of ethnic Mongol anger against majority Han citizens in the northern region of Inner Mongolia a few weeks ago; bomb blasts set off last month by disgruntled citizens in eastern Jiangxi province and northwestern Gansu province; and …
Video of Extrajudicial Murder Raises the Heat on Pakistan’s Under-Fire Military
[youtube=http://youtu.be/Rx-nifsdD00] Warning: Video contains graphic footage.
A video of Pakistani paramilitary soldiers shooting an unarmed young man in Karachi and leaving him to bleed to death has stoked growing anger at the country’s military. Sarfaraz Shah was stopped by soldiers in the Sindh Rangers, an outfit of the army …
Where’s a Deposed Dictator to Go? Five Top Tyrant Retirement Homes for Gaddafi
With NATO ever more confident of, and explicit about, deposing Muammar Gaddafi and the Libyan leader losing even some of his longest-standing supporters in Africa, the question increasingly becomes not whether he will go but, assuming he survives, where. Here’s five possible retirement homes for the 69-year-old.
1. Zimbabwe. Even if …