by News Decoder | 21 Mar 2016 | Human Rights, Middle East
By Alistair Lyon A year ago, Saudi Arabia and its allies unleashed a Western-backed military intervention in Yemen’s civil war. It has gone horribly, and predictably, wrong. Twelve months of bombing, backed by a naval blockade and some ground troops, have failed...
by News Decoder | 18 Mar 2016 | Human Rights, Middle East, Syria
By Urvashi Bundel This weeks marks the fifth anniversary of the outbreak of Syria’s civil war. Since March 2011, so much has been swept away including respect for basic human rights. Now the world needs to work on restoring respect for those rights around the...
by News Decoder | 19 Jan 2016 | Asia, Human Rights
By Caroline Crang and Hannah Bedford Saying good-bye to Kathmandu, we left behind lines of cars, trucks, motorbikes and school buses outside the few open gas stations, empty kerosene containers outside shops and uneasy faces of people facing a winter without...
by News Decoder | 12 Jan 2016 | Asia, Human Rights, North Korea
North Korea has defied the world again. What does its latest nuclear blast mean for regional and global security? North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Pyongyang, 10 October 2015. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E, File) North Korea highlighted its ability to surprise and defy...
by Kate O'Rourke | 24 Nov 2015 | Americas, Europe, Human Rights, Indiana University, Middle East, Syria, United States
It seems that the U.S. media just recently stumbled upon the Syrian refugee crisis, more than four years after it began in March of 2011. I consider myself a well-informed college student. But it is worrying that young adults in the United States, myself included, are...
by News Decoder | 6 Nov 2015 | Africa, Europe, Human Rights, Middle East
(Video by Léa Surugue) By Léa Surugue Last April, a fishing boat carrying 800 people capsized off the shores of Italy. Only 27 survived. It was one of the worst human tragedies in the Mediterranean, ever. I had always wanted to cover the stories of people who left...
by News Decoder | 7 Oct 2015 | Human Rights, Middle East, Syria
Russia has launched air strikes in Syria, raising the stakes in its Arab ally’s fight against rebels. Four News-Decoder correspondents explain why. Syrians hold posters of President Bashar al-Assad, far left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Damascus, 4...
by Pauline Bock | 29 Sep 2015 | Africa, Human Rights, Women
Young girls in an ethnic group in Uganda have undergone genital cutting for generations. An NGO is working to end the practice and empower girls. A six-year-old girl screams while being cut in Somalia, 17 June 1996. (AP Photo/Jean-Marc Bouju) Esther Chebet recalls...
by Colin McIntyre | 18 Sep 2015 | Africa, Asia, Europe, Human Rights, Middle East, Syria
By Colin McIntyre At a time when the European Union’s borders are under siege from thousands of refugees and immigrants fleeing war, persecution and poverty, the prospect of enlarging the 28-nation bloc would seem a distant dream. Yet negotiations continue with a view...
by Pauline Bock | 17 Sep 2015 | Americas, Decoders, Human Rights
Cocaine seized by police in Panama City, 21 September 2011. (AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco) This article is part of a News-Decoder series of “decoders” that explain crucial background to big issues. For more decoders, click here. It’s the stuff of...