Author Archives: DemDigest

Tourists ‘literally eating Cuba’s lunch’: reform a distant prospect

     

The changes in Cuba in recent years have often hinted at a new era of possibilities: a slowly opening economy, warming relations with the United States after decades of isolation,… Read more »

Russia’s threat to liberal democracy: Putin making world safe for autocracy

     

With the end of the Cold War and the expansion of NATO and the EU to virtually all of Central and Eastern Europe, liberal democracy seemed ascendant and secure as… Read more »

DRC: urgent action needed to deter large-scale violence, repression

     

The European Union and United States should expand targeted sanctions against those most responsible for recent violent repression and other serious human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo,… Read more »

Kerry warns of the ‘danger of authoritarian populism’

     

US Secretary of State John Kerry today warned of “the danger of authoritarian populism” sweeping many Western democracies and cautioned against backsliding on basic freedoms. “Every chip away at the… Read more »

Youth set to drive another Arab awakening

     

The Arab world’s new generation – 60 percent of the population is under 30 years old – is “the largest, the most well educated and the most highly urbanized in… Read more »

How Morocco’s ‘democratic experiment’ went wrong

     

Morocco, held up as a model for reform in the wake of the Arab Spring, is slipping back into autocracy, according to the Christian Science Monitor: Though a new constitution… Read more »

Women’s rights activist’s arrest is ‘chilling’ escalation of Egypt’s crackdown

     

The arrest of a leading Egyptian women’s rights defender at her home in Cairo on December 7, 2016, represents a serious escalation in the authorities’ ongoing crackdown on independent rights… Read more »

Burma at the Brink?

     

Burma’s future holds both promise and challenges. Along with projected positive growth rates, burgeoning foreign investment, and increased stature on the global stage, Burma’s many religious and ethnic minorities face… Read more »

Turkey’s democratic regression: ‘pushback will have to come from within’

     

The night of July 15 marked a distinct moment in Turkish democratic history as hundreds of thousands of Turks took to the streets to defy a coup attempt, notes A…. Read more »