The availability of funding for international development is on the decline.The United States, the world’s largest international development donor in historical terms, recently announced massive foreign aid cuts. It also dismantled much of its institutional capacity to deliver development programs and humanitarian assistance and announced...
When I started to think about World Press Freedom Day (3 May) this year, my mind – and fingers on the keyboard – went first to the existential crisis facing the traditional media industry, battered as it is from so many economic, political, technological, and...
Water and digital technologies – we can’t live without them. But while people in many parts of the world are running short of water, digital technologies are consuming more and more. Amazon, Microsoft, and Google operate data centres that take vast amounts of water from some...
A socially isolated young person in the United States turns to ChatGPT for advice on how to deal with depression. A coffee entrepreneur in Finland asks AI for the exact mix of beans to blend the perfect cup. Robots take food orders from diners in...
Conservative attacks on “DEI” and “woke”* policies and practices in the United States intensified in the run up to the presidential election. So, it should not come as a complete surprise that from the moment of Donald Trump’s inauguration, an assault on “diversity, equity, and...
2025 is a year of notable international anniversaries. This past Saturday, March 8, was the 50th anniversary of International Women’s Day being held on that date. (The commemoration of women’s day itself goes back over a hundred years ago.) In July, the World Summit on the...
Politics-informed developments in the United States of America this year so far confirm that rights and entitlements can be rolled back with the stroke of a pen. And there is a significant segment of society that is happy to cheer on a blanket erasure of constitutional...
The question has been raised internationally: who is going to rebuild Gaza and who will pay? As yet, no one knows. There may be three options: Israel, in which case Israel would likely take over the land and sell it to settlers. Saudi Arabia, in which...
The right to freedom of expression alone is not enough to protect democratic communication and public debate, which are the cornerstones of society. This right, while essential, does not create avenues to address power imbalances in how people communicate and shape public opinion. A tech mogul...
We expected 2025 to be a challenging year for human rights defenders, if only from the global political turmoil U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump is promising. For many, though, Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement on 7 January that Meta would replace fact checkers on Facebook and Instagram with the...