by News Decoder | 26 Aug 2016 | Europe, Islam, Paris attacks, Terrorism, Women's rights
What are we to make of France and the burkini? Should we be outraged that towns have banned the swimsuit? Or glad as it is a symbol of oppression? A woman wearing a burkini at a protest in London, 25 August 2016. (EPA/Hannah McKay) By Nelson Graves What are we to make...
by News Decoder | 25 Jul 2016 | Africa, Economy, Human Rights
We publish this on July 25, which is Republic Day in Tunisia. Tunisia abolished the monarchy on that day in 1957, and Habib Bourguiba became its first president. By Hafawa Rebhi “Down with corruption!” “The amnesty bill will not pass!” “¡No...
by News Decoder | 21 Jul 2016 | Asia, Human Rights, Student Posts
By Lukas Jansen Ayu is a 13-year-old girl from a village in Indonesia, one of five children in a family that cultivates tobacco and other crops. All of the children help with the tobacco crop. Ayu says she vomits every year while harvesting tobacco. “My stomach...
by News Decoder | 21 Mar 2016 | Human Rights, Middle East
By Alistair Lyon A year ago, Saudi Arabia and its allies unleashed a Western-backed military intervention in Yemen’s civil war. It has gone horribly, and predictably, wrong. Twelve months of bombing, backed by a naval blockade and some ground troops, have failed...
by News Decoder | 18 Mar 2016 | Human Rights, Middle East, Syria
By Urvashi Bundel This weeks marks the fifth anniversary of the outbreak of Syria’s civil war. Since March 2011, so much has been swept away including respect for basic human rights. Now the world needs to work on restoring respect for those rights around the...
by News Decoder | 10 Mar 2016 | Africa, Asia, Women's rights
India and South Africa are thousands of miles apart but share a struggle against discrimination and inequity. Mahatma Gandhi spent his formative years in South Africa, where he forged his identity as a political activist before returning to his native India. Nolwazi...
by News Decoder | 19 Jan 2016 | Asia, Eyewitness, Human Rights
By Caroline Crang and Hannah Bedford Saying good-bye to Kathmandu, we left behind lines of cars, trucks, motorbikes and school buses outside the few open gas stations, empty kerosene containers outside shops and uneasy faces of people facing a winter without...
by News Decoder | 12 Jan 2016 | Asia, Human Rights, North Korea
North Korea has defied the world again. What does its latest nuclear blast mean for regional and global security? North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Pyongyang, 10 October 2015. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E, File) North Korea highlighted its ability to surprise and defy...
by News Decoder | 26 Nov 2015 | Africa, Middle East, Women's rights
(November 25 marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, designated as such by the United Nations General Assembly in 1999.) By Urvashi Bundel It’s been 22 years since the UN adopted a declaration urging states to end all violence...
by Kate O'Rourke | 24 Nov 2015 | Americas, Europe, Human Rights, Indiana University, Middle East, Refugees, Syria, United States
It seems that the U.S. media just recently stumbled upon the Syrian refugee crisis, more than four years after it began in March of 2011. I consider myself a well-informed college student. But it is worrying that young adults in the United States, myself included, are...