2021: our year in review

2021: our year in review

In this 24 September 2021 photo, climate activists from Youth Advocates for Climate Action Philippines (YACAP) join the Global Climate Strike from Manila Bay, where they called for urgent climate action and the protection of local marine resources.

(Alamy/Aileen Dimatatac)

In what feels like a time-honoured tradition of the last decade, it has been a dizzyingly eventful year. The storming of the US Congress in January appears to have had a talismanic effect on anti-democratic forces around the world, with coups taking place in Myanmar, Mali, Guinea and Sudan, the Taliban retaking control of Afghanistan, brutal, militarised borders the world over leading to an ever-increasing number of unnecessary and cruel deaths, while the drums of war continue to beat in Yemen and Ethiopia. There has also been a significant uptick in state repression in a growing number of populist, nationalist and authoritarian states and a significant deterioration of fundamental rights, even in the world’s established democracies. All of this has occurred against the backdrop of a global pandemic that has seen millions of people lose their lives and millions more lose their jobs, a pandemic which shows no sign of abating due to the failure of the world’s most powerful nations and corporations to end this emergency, or the global inequality that perpetuates it.

In response, this year has seen Equal Times dive deeper than ever to explore these various, overlapping crises, with a particular focus on the crucial role that trade unions play in resisting these abuses of democracy. Around the world unions are facing enormous obstacles – threats of and actual violence, harassment, imprisonment and legal attacks on the right to strike, freedom of association and freedom of assembly. We’ve provided in-depth reports on the fight for labour rights in countries as diverse as Brazil, Egypt, the United States, Colombia, Myanmar and Belarus. We’ve explored the civil society organisations and community activists that are facing down wider human rights abuses such as the reversal of women’s legal protections in Turkey, the attack on land rights in Kenya and the crackdown on environmental protests. And we’ve joined the dots between the power of organised workers and wider social movements, demonstrating that there can be no democratic freedom in society or human rights in general without workplace democracy and workers’ rights – and vice versa. We also covered COP26, with a series of articles on trade unions and just transition. Although the concept of just transition was finally integrated into the operational part of the Paris Agreement at the meeting, many feel that the so-called Glasgow Climate Pact has not done enough to limit global warming to 1.5° C compared to pre-industrial levels, but activists continue to fight to save people and planet.

On a happier note, next year will mark the tenth anniversary of Equal Times - a meaningful timespan in a human life, and a respectable age for a ‘new media’ outlet. We look forward to sharing our work of the past ten years with you, along with our plans for the next ten. Given that we live in a moment where the demands on one’s time, attention and ability to process information and reflect are in greater demand than ever, we thank you for the time and attention that you give to our work, and the myriad ways in which you support us.

Before you go, however, we have one last appeal for concentration so that you can read a selection of some of our favourite stories from 2021. We will be back in mid-January with more news and perspectives from around the world. Until then, we wish you a happy, healthy and peaceful end to 2021 and all good wishes for the new year.

 

End of year round up

If you want to read the most popular story of 2021 across the three languages…
https://www.equaltimes.org/jose-mujica-digital-civilisation
In this exclusive interview with Equal Times, former Uruguayan president José Mujica talks about the grave dangers posed by the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a tiny minority and what the pandemic has exposed about modern society.

If you want read about an astonishing, decades-long fight to end modern slavery….
https://www.equaltimes.org/in-ecuador-abaca-workers-are
In a crowded field of excellent, in-depth reports on the violation of workers’ rights around the world published on Equal Times this year, this report from first-time contributor Amal Benotman paints a searing picture of Ecuador’s abaca plantations.

If you want to read about the challenge of pursuing just transition when you are still dependent on coal…
https://www.equaltimes.org/getting-serbia-s-much-needed
In this stand-out piece from our series on trade unions and just transition, Louis Seiller explores the Serbian trade unions walking the tightrope between the need for decent work with the urgent call for decarbonisation.

If you want to make sense of why feelings seem to have trumped facts in modern politics and society…
https://www.equaltimes.org/understanding-the-era-of-emotion
Part-essay, part-investigation and part-call-to-arms (for more critical thinking), in a typically thoughtful and stimulating article, María José Carmona probes how and why “the balance between reason and emotion has definitively tipped towards the latter” – and what can be done about it.

If you want to see what happens when good policy is thwarted by poor implementation…
https://www.equaltimes.org/in-2019-the-democratic-republic-of
In 2019, the Democratic Republic of Congo introduced tuition-free education to great acclaim but within two years, trade unions were calling for a return to fee-based schooling. In this fascinating in-depth report, Bernadette Vivuya finds out why.

If you want to know what it feels like to watch your fundamental rights being stripped from you in real-time…
https://www.equaltimes.org/over-90-000-people-have-left-hong
From Hong Kong, Shirley Lau reported on the pro-democracy activists, trade unionists, journalists and lawyers being persecuted by the Chinese state as Beijing tightens its grip on the special administrative region and obstructs its bid for full democracy.

If you want to know why making water a tradable commodity is [spoiler alert] a bad thing…
https://www.equaltimes.org/water-futures-the-latest
Published shortly after the US state of California allowed water to be traded on the futures market, Daiva Repečkaitė examines why water should be managed as a human right and what happens when it isn’t.