Blog

In 2018, across a range of issues, many human rights activists believe that the United States has been moving backwards. The current administration’s anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant policies grab global attention. However, deep and divisive issues burn at home among blacks and whites in a struggle to co-exist that began 400 years ago, as European traders first brought slaves from Africa to the west. One such issue in the headlines lately … Read more →

After several weeks of volunteering for Zhian Health Organisation, a local NGO in Iraqi Kurdistan, I was presented with the opportunity in August of 2018 to visit a women’s correctional facility, which I was told had become a dumping ground for ISIS brides after the recapture of Mosul. So far, I had accompanied a small team to several refugee camps around the Kurdish region, and I was pleasantly surprised to … Read more →

The arbitrary practice of seizing and revoking passports, or denying the issue of new ones for critics, opponents and dissidents, as well as for their spouses, children and relatives in Turkey by the government of president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has turned at least half a million people into captives condemned to live in an open prison, where the right to travel freely has been unlawfully restricted, along with expanded limitations … Read more →

A panel from the comic “Abike”, artwork by Gabi Froden. Can journalism work in cooperation with the principles of art to produce stories of survival? That is the question a team of researchers and illustrators grapples with everyday at PositiveNegatives. Based in London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, PositiveNegatives is a small organisation that blends humanitarian advocacy, academia, journalism, and art. The name comes from these “negative” stories of … Read more →

When telling stories of violence for mass audiences, we cannot always rely on text or audio to make an impression. If our goal is to build empathy and understanding between the viewer and the victims, visuals can help us achieve that. But when the subject we want to draw attention to is so potentially disturbing, how can we engage with eyes without causing further harm? Increasingly for human rights organisations … Read more →

Since 2014 Yemen has been the tragic theatre of a proxy war that has expanded across the backdrop of decades of modern history. The Houthis The Houthis are a tribal movement from Yemen based on the Zaydi sect of Shi’a Islam. This sect branched off during the Umayyad period in 740AD, at a time when Zayd bin Ali led an uprising from which his followers, such as the Yemeni Houthis, … Read more →