This story, written and illustrated by John Cottrell from the Greek island of Lesvos, was a runner-up in the university category in News-Decoder’s inaugural reporting contest. Cottrell visited Lesvos in November 2015. By John Cottrell Travelling across the...
By Nelson Graves Beware misconceptions about Islam that can mar Western accounts of society and politics in Muslim-majority nations. That was the advice of Jonathan Lyons, an expert on the Islamic world, in a mini-course for students in News-Decoder’s pilot...
Our thoughts are with the victims of today’s attacks in Brussels and with their families and friends. Below is an article, updated with today’s events, that we published last November after terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. Although much...
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 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...
There are walls, fences, trenches and berms. In Iraq, Israel, Morocco, China and elsewhere. They are admissions of the breakdown of diplomacy and destined to fail. An Iraqi street vendor stands beside a concrete wall in Baghdad, 11 February 2016(EPA/Ali Abbas)...
The United States and Russia have brokered a truce in Syria in hopes of resuming United Nations-backed peace talks on March 9. Today News-Decoder correspondent Rashad Mammadov looks at what Russia hopes to gain in the five-year-old conflict. By Rashad Mammadov Once...
This is the latest article by a student from one of 11 academic institutions participating in News-Decoder’s pilot program. By Greg Venizelos As the United States ponders military intervention in Libya, it should reflect on how previous actions brought that...
There have been many failures in Syria, and youth need to find solutions to future conflicts, two women helping refugees tell a News-Decoder panel. Two Middle Eastern women helping Syrian refugees decried the failure of international institutions and governments to...
Mainstream media depicts conflict as a violent struggle between good and bad. A Danish professor suggests a different way of thinking about conflict. Syrian refugee children in Lebanon (Wikimedia Commons/Trócaire/Eoghan Rice) Do you find it difficult to understand...