Daniel Bertossa:“All governments and actors have an obligation under the Geneva Conventions to protect civilians, especially those providing lifesaving services in conflict zones. Making human rights law optional or context-dependent sends a dangerous message, endangers public service workers and undermines the [...]Read the full article
The Egyptian government is launching a plan to “export Egyptians abroad” in order to increase remittances from Egyptian expatriates, which have become the country’s number one source of foreign currency.Read the full article
Europe is ageing. Fewer and fewer Europeans are being born, and while younger generations increasingly concentrate in large cities, much of the remaining territory is falling behind in development. Long an existential problem in Eastern Europe, these trends are increasingly fuelling inequality [...]Read the full article
Eastern DR Congo is once again faced with a major influx of people displaced by the war. With authorities failing to respond adequately, the local population has taken matters into their own hands, providing concrete solutions and reinventing political [...]Read the full article
“Both countries have one thing in common: the absence of social protection policies. This exacerbates social exclusion and poverty of the populations in both Lebanon and Afghanistan.”Read the full article
Bettina Zourli:“While the repatriation of goods stolen during the colonial period is a key issue, the word ‘restitution’ in the DRC refers to a much broader concept. The term refers more readily to a long process involving not only the reconstruction of history but also the reconstitution of knowledge, [...]Read the full article
“Maybe it’s not the right to the city that we need. […] the city represents a form of accumulation that feeds on the extraction of everything around it: the favelas, the occupations and the countryside.”Read the full article
Venezuela ranks number nine in the world in renewable freshwater resources. However, the state, which is responsible for supplying these resources, guarantees neither their quality nor their availability.Read the full article
Jesús A. Núñez Villaverde:Global military spending has continued to rise for the eighth year in a row. Seen from a traditional state security perspective – which generally assumes that more weapons means more security – this could be interpreted as good news. But is [...]Read the full article
The disintegration of Lebanon’s police force is undermining law and order in a country ravaged by crisis after crisis. Many of the non-governmental initiatives emerging to restore a sense of security on the streets are reminiscent of some of the dark chapters of the Lebanese civil [...]Read the full article
The earthquake was the final blow for an already overstretched health system in Idlib province, exhausted by ten years of war, bombing, and the recent outbreaks of coronavirus and cholera.Read the full article
The guiding principle of the public library is that everyone deserves free and open access to our common cultural heritage. This places the institution at fundamental odds with capitalist consumer ideals. From New Delhi to Los Angeles, we visit seven ‘palaces for the [...]Read the full article
Workers and trade unions have long argued that the management of dependency care – like health and education – should be public. They argue that as public sector employees, not only would their working conditions improve but so too would the care they [...]Read the full article
According to experts, deaf children should be exposed to sign language as early as possible. In addition to ensuring access to education, it also helps to prevent the development of various types of mental illness.Read the full article
In recent decades schools around the world have become increasingly obsessed with grades, competitiveness and measurable and comparable results, while other important aspects of the education of our future citizens are being [...]Read the full article
Experts have applauded the Canadian government’s decision to move toward a universal childcare system, but are also warning that it will exacerbate geographic disparities and create long waiting lists for subsidised childcare.Read the full article
Nadja Salson:The use of consultancies often goes unnoticed because it is seen as a transfer from the public to the private sector that also generates jobs. The fact that they provide much more than advice is raising concerns about transparency, accountability and the cost of public [...]Read the full article
When excessive levels of debt are reached, the dialogue between creditors and debtors is often broken. In Belgium, debt mediators are at hand to re-establish this dialogue and enable both parties to reach an agreement.Read the full article
Steve Rushton:By taking on corporate power, cities – in concert with the climate movement – can build a new system out of the shell of the old.Read the full article
a cross-party alliance of Members of the European Parliament:Collective bargaining is essential. It’s time we ensured essential workers benefitted from it. We join over 100 MEPs across party lines to call for companies to only be awarded public contracts if they have implemented collective agreements. Here’s [...]Read the full article
A report by Alzheimer Europe estimates that around 1.3 million people in Italy suffer from dementia. If ageing trends continue at their current pace, this figure could double by 2050. The country faces a major challenge in providing care for this growing number of [...]Read the full article
Brazil’s Public Labour Prosecutor’s Office is fighting on all fronts to defend the country’s workers. At the centre of this battle, which has intensified since the onset of the pandemic, are the institution’s prosecutors. Since President Jair Bolsonaro came to power in 2018, they have been faced [...]Read the full article
Yasmine Osman:While the Sahel remains plagued by recurrent conflicts, there are nonetheless positive signs of economic and social development in the countries of the region.Read the full article
“The dismissal of employees belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood is just the tip of the iceberg. This law targets any public employee who opposes the regime, regardless of their affiliation.”Read the full article
The land-locked country of Paraguay, located in the geographic heart of South America, has the continent’s lowest Covid vaccination rate and one of its worst health systems. Fed up, Paraguayans have taken to the streets in numbers rarely seen over the last [...]Read the full article
Elderly dependants have been hard hit by recent blows to the Lebanese economy. They feel abandoned by the state and are having to turn to charity to survive. Even before the recent crises, the country’s public health and social services were hugely lacking and care for the elderly was almost [...]Read the full article
Nicolás Sartorius:This health, economic and social pandemic has shown the need for strengthened welfare states, and the political risks associated with weakening them, as well the need to build welfare states where they do not exist in order to avoid permanent conflicts and the crisis of dislocated [...]Read the full article
Rental intermediation allows the state, or an approved association, to guarantee private landlords that the rent will be paid on one hand, and to offer tenants affordable rent on the other.Read the full article
Robert Maisey:This cosy relationship between private companies and government, leveraging a national crisis to facilitate an accelerated transfer of wealth from public to private, can only be given one name: corruption.Read the full article
Before the coronavirus arrived in Belgium, around 600 families were being evicted from their homes every year. The impact of the health crisis has made the universal right to decent housing a virtual chimera, particularly for the most [...]Read the full article
The worst dictatorship in the world could never even dream of having a mechanism that would allow it to get into people’s subconscious, and what’s worse is that it’s in the hands of private companies that sell their services.Read the full article
Chloé Maurel:Every year, US$88.6 billion leaves Africa in the form of illicit capital flight, according to the UN. Africa is affected more than all other continents, making it a net creditor to the rest of the world, contrary to the popular belief of an Africa aided by the countries of the [...]Read the full article