How to keep the human rights high ground
The U.S. is threatening to withdraw from the controversial U.N. Human Rights Council if it does not undertake “considerable reform,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned a group of nine… Read more »
Category: Civil Society
How Egypt’s activists became ‘Generation Jail’
Six years after the Arab Spring, Egypt’s democracy activists live under constant threat of prison — or worse, notes analyst Joshua Hammer. It was just six years ago that Ahmed… Read more »
How to preserve Tunisia’s fragile democracy
Tunisia’s top diplomat wants the U.S. to “reach out more” to the tiny North African nation for collaboration against the evolving threat posed by the Islamic State — and to… Read more »
Growing threats to civil society
A healthy and functioning civil society is vital for human rights and democracy everywhere, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission writes: Civil society organizations (CSOs) play a crucial role in… Read more »
Ukraine’s soft-power struggle faces hard reckoning
When “little green men” invaded Crimea in the spring of 2014, Russian media went into overdrive, smearing Ukraine’s Euro-revolution as a “fascist coup d’état,” POLITICO reports: A group of professors and… Read more »
Boris Nemtsov: The Man Who Was Too Free
In the shadow of the red brick Kremlin walls, an informal shrine marks the spot and the memory of Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister and President Vladimir Putin’s loudest critic,… Read more »
Who Wants to Unmake the West? Call for Transatlantic Renewal
A United States hostile to the EU would be terrifying for Europe at any moment, but never more so than right now, analyst Michael Crowley writes for POLITICO, adding… Read more »
EU-US must win hearts and minds in Western Balkans
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that Turkey’s approach to democracy and the rule of law are “deeply problematic” to the country’s future cooperation with the European Union. “These deep… Read more »
Drugs trial exposes Venezuela’s kleptocratic elite
When a US federal judge sentences two Venezuelan drug smugglers, perhaps later this month, it will mark the final chapter of a story worthy of the Netflix series “Narcos,” say… Read more »
Democratic modernity ‘not enough’ for CEE
The illiberal, populist drift in Central and Eastern Europe is a consequence of disillusion with the European Union as well as historical legacies, says a prominent analyst. “These countries had… Read more »