Our webinar Feminist Realities – Transforming democracy in times of crisis explored the ways the pandemic intersects with patriarchy, corporate power and a global division of labour that is both gendered and racialized. Can this crisis provide a window of opportunity to re-organize and shift power to build radical democratic systems that genuinely care for the environment and our collective well-being?
Our webinar States of Control: the dark side of pandemic politics focused on the securitization of COVID-19. Measures such as the expansion of powers for military, police, and security forces and increased digital surveillance are being rolled out with little or no democratic oversight. How can we prevent the normalization of these practices and ensure that COVID-19 doesn’t become a new milestone in authoritarian states of control?
Peru, Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia and Guatemala are just some of the Latin American countries being hit by the investment protection regime in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Foreign investors are threatening to bring claims before international arbitration tribunals due to the measures states are taking to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. Arbitrators are refusing to accept states’ requests to postpone ongoing arbitration cases and are obliging governments to disburse millions to investors at a time when public funds are required for more urgent priorities. Once again, the current crisis reveals the perverse consequences of the investor-state dispute settlement system and the urgent need to break free from it.
Following its first-ever critical review of cannabis, in January 2019 the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a collection of formal recommendations to reschedule cannabis and cannabis-related substances. 53 member states of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), two of which are Caribbean states, are set to vote on these recommendations in December 2020.
Dubbed the ‘year of protest’, 2019 saw millions of people take to the streets on every continent.
There was plenty to protest. Deepening inequality, rising cost of living, autocratic governments, discrimination, and the concentration of wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands. Many protests were met with brutal repression, but this did not quell the fight for dignity and freedom.
TNI stood alongside and in support of these movements, as we have consistently done for all 46 years of our existence. We have provided research and logistical support and put forward proposals that can bring about social and ecological transformation. Read more.
Our webinar Taking Health back from Corporations: pandemics, big pharma and privatized health brought together international activists and healthcare experts at the forefront of struggles for equitable universal public health. What needs to change in terms of access to medicine, the pharmaceutical industry, and the global governance of health?
How can we begin to understand the complex relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and our food systems? How is this crisis impacting communities and transformative strategies for a future founded on international solidarity, agroecology and food sovereignty? Our recent webinar A Recipe for Disaster: Food systems, inequality and COVID-19 addressed these questions and more.
Counter-terrorism and the Arts is a framing paper, aiming to set out the main concerns regarding the impact of counter-terrorism policies, legislation and national security measures on freedom of expression, specifically in relation to the arts.
According to UNODC figures as of December 31, 2019, 154,000 ha of coca were detected in Colombia, which means a reduction of 15,000 ha, that is, 9% less compared to the 169,000 ha detected in 2018. President Duque’s government set a goal of eradicating 130,000 hectares of coca leaf crops during 2020, 62.5 percent more than 2019, when the goal was set at 80,000 ha.
This briefing takes a look at the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for refugees and migrants and its anticipated influence on the border security and control market. What are the direct effects on migrants and refugees who are already living in vulnerable situations? What does it mean for people crossing international borders, seeking asylum and transiting the deadly and treacherous migrant routes across regions, continents and seas? And how are they affected by government responses to the outbreak?
There is genuine hope that by sharing her story as a woman who grows opium, Nang Kham could help encourage other women farmers to speak out, and encourage the wider community to realise the collective benefits of gender equality.
In a country that was ruled by dictatorship for several decades, the local administration units are also no stranger to emergency-like authoritarian measures. Many thought there is no option but detention to deal with the situation. It is easier for the authorities even at the village and ward levels to ensure authoritarian submission if the country is in panic.
How do we make sense of the diverse realities that exist at the intersection of migration and fisheries in Europe? This brief article is an initial attempt to understand the different ways that people who migrate interact with the European fisheries sector, and to contextualise this question by providing some background about the structural changes in the European fisheries sector which may shape who migrates, who fishes and under what conditions.
A great global panel of activists, social movement leaders and thinkers discuss how to make this pandemic a turning point towards system change that we need not just to deliver social justice but increasingly to defend our very survival. This insightful conversation examined what we can learn from previous major global mobilisations, how can we build cross-sectoral and intersectional movements and what strategies and tactics we need to confront entrenched corporate power and authoritarian governments.
The current economic crisis is merely triggered by COVID-19, argues Jan Douwe van der Ploeg. The real causes reside in the specificity of today’s global economic structure and especially in three key features that lie at its core. In this policy brief he discusses these key features with reference to farming and food and presents building blocks for the construction of resilient alternatives to the current crisis.
COVID-19 has laid bare many of the problems with the global food system. Even in ordinary times, migrant farmworkers live and work in overcrowded and dangerous conditions. COVID-19 has ravaged many farmworker communities. Even as states closed their borders to halt the spread of the virus, they found ways to allow farmworkers to migrate. In circumstances where undocumented workers were promised regularization, the measures introduced have been inadequate.
The database Public Futures is an open place for creating and exchanging knowledge about de-privatisation of basic services and infrastructure at the municipal, regional, and national levels. Relevant organisations, public authorities, academics, and interested individuals are invited to access and amplify the dataset. The database offers a user-specific visualisation of the data through a global mapping tool, as well as through graphs and diagrams. The dataset can be downloaded to be used for further educational, academic or professional purposes. If you are able to provide additional information on specific cases, or if you can contribute new cases, we would welcome you to submit new data to be reviewed and added to the dataset by our researchers.
Today marks the Silver Jubilee of the ceasefire agreement between the New Mon State Party (NMSP) and the military (Tatmadaw) government of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) on 29 June 1995. This peace agreement came after 40 years of armed struggle for political and ethnic rights by the Mon people against successive central governments in the country. Founded in 1958, the NMSP is an ethnic nationality-based armed organization that is active in southern regions of the Union of Myanmar.
