“Everyone should have their own Zelenskyy!” my interlocutors joke as they talk through the “political technologies” being used in their constituencies. I’m talking to Konstantin Reyutsky, Ivetta Kuzmina and Yevhenii Vasyliev, who are running as candidates in Luhansk in this Sunday’s parliamentary elections. In all three constituencies in the eastern region where they are standing, […]

Jeremy Corbyn’s announcement last month that a Labour government would replace social mobility with social justice as a policy benchmark raised more than a few eyebrows. It goes against received wisdom and bipartisan consensus that social mobility is a good thing. But Corbyn is right to insist that singling out the lucky few leaves the […]

A year ago today, the Electoral Commission found that Vote Leave broke the law. Next week, the man who fronted that campaign is almost certain to become prime minister. The finding came on the back of months of investigative journalism. Alongside Carole Cadwalladr at The Observer and reporters at Buzzfeed, we gathered documents and spoke […]

In support of ‘Academics for Peace,’ more than a hundred academics, including Seyla Benhabib, Noam Chomsky, Nancy Fraser, Fredric Jameson, Steven Pinker, Michael Löwy, Wendy Brown, Bertell Ollman, Warren Montag and Saskia Sassen, have reported themselves to the Attorney General’s Office in Ankara. This action started with the court's decision to sentence Noemi-Levy Aksu to […]

My name is Umar Ahmad Umar. I work with the Development Research and Project Center (dRPC) in Nigeria, an intermediary non-profit established to strengthen the capacity within civil society organisations and government agencies to work together for inclusive development. The dRPC was founded in 1994 in Kano State, northwest Nigeria. Our work focuses on public […]

This is a long overdue review of a book that could not be more important. I read Gough’s Heat, Greed and Human Need: Climate Change, Capitalism and Sustainable Wellbeing soon after it was published, and I have taken my time to digest and reflect on its messages. Since then, the book’s messages have only become […]

A former Taliban envoy taught me a valuable lesson one day. As we sat in an academic institution in a European capital, he told me his story, or perhaps it was somebody else’s story, but it was representative of the story of his people, living in large extended families in rural areas with minimal facilities […]

Most central bankers think that there is a tenuous connection between the operations of central banks and human rights. They think that this is not a problem because, as unelected officials, it would be inappropriate for them to take policy decisions that require political judgements. Their responsibility is to concentrate on the relatively narrow set […]

This is a response to the above debate. The editors of Beyond Trafficking and Slavery have convened a provocative debate on the question of human trafficking awareness campaigns. We are especially heartened by the commentators responding ‘no’. While some valuable points have been raised, there nonetheless remains a critical yet neglected problem of representation at […]

In May 2018, the Colombian Congress approved the construction of the Port of Tribugá, as part of package of improvements in connectivity linked to the four-year National Development Plan (PND) and the Multi Year Investment Plan (PPI) proposed by President Ivan Duque. This gives the project the political legitimacy it needs in the medium term, […]