For Parisa Haidari, staying alive after the Taliban came to power meant leaving journalism. But that wasn’t enough. Parisa Haidari made her way more than 3,100 miles from Afghanistan to Italy. This article, by high school student Keya Dutt, was produced out of...
The Indian government has proposed strengthening privacy protection, but at the cost of transparency. Is this about protection or repression? Photo illustration by News Decoder. India’s proposed digital privacy law is creating fault lines between the right to privacy...
For 20 years Afghan journalists could report without fear or favor. With the Taliban in control they are out of favor and under intense fear. Many have fled. Afghan journalists attend a press conference of a former president Hamid Karzai in Kabul, Afghanistan, 13...
Guest writer Rafiullah Nikzad shares his experience as a journalist forced to flee Afghanistan after the Taliban retook control in 2021. This article underscores the importance of a free press, in line with News Decoder’s mission to amplify voices that are under-reported and under-heard.
Exercise: Read the article together as a class, then launch a discussion on the importance of a free press. What does independent journalism bring to a country? Why might some governments seek to censor what is published? What are the social, political, economic and legal frameworks that underpin a free press? Have students investigate the level of press freedom in your country, using the Press Freedom Index from Reporters Without Borders. You may consider having students conduct a comparative analysis of several country case studies.
A reporter recalls riding in the first Soviet tank convoy pulling out of Afghanistan in 1988 and considers the barriers women overcame to report on war. The author (left) together with colleagues from Italy and Germany riding an armoured personnel carrier out of...
Social media influencers from Europe and North America are flocking to South Korea’s capital, Seoul, to tap into the K-pop craze and boost earnings. Banners featuring Jimin, a member of South Korean K-pop band BTS, are displayed in Busan, South Korea, 12 October...
My family can barely make ends meet amid runaway inflation and shortages of foodstuffs. No wonder Sri Lanka has kicked out a corrupt ruling clan. Protesters take over the office of Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, demanding he resign, Colombo, Sri...
News Decoder correspondent Feizal Samath provides an on-the-ground glimpse of life in Sri Lanka following months of inflation, essential shortages and protests that led to the ouster of the president and the ruling clan. Samath gives context to a situation that many outside of the region ignored until images of protestors storming the presidential palace flooded the media. By painting a picture of his own challenges in procuring fuel and everyday foods, Samath puts readers in the shoes of those whose lives have been disrupted by turmoil.
Exercise: Ask students to imagine a part of the world different from their own and write a first-person narrative of what life looks like for a teenager there. How do the political and economic realities impact their family, their schools or their daily routines?
Fed up with corruption and shortages of food and fuel, protesters are calling on Sri Lanka’s rulers to resign as the South Asian nation nears bankruptcy. Protesters in Colombo, Sri Lanka, 20 April 2022 (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena) Dogged by corruption, economic...
The Taliban have barred girls from schools in Afghanistan. So some of them gather secretly in homes in Kabul, drawn together by a former teacher. Hassan Adib leads a discussion of “Memories of a translator” by Mohhamad Qazi in Kabul, April 2022. (Photo by...
The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan means millions of girls cannot attend school. Many young people outside of the country know this, but it is difficult for them to conceive just what this means for a young Afghan girl their age. In his story, Jalal Nazari, an Afghan now living in Canada where he is a Global Journalism Fellow at the University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health, takes us inside Kabul homes, where about 30 teenage girls meet secretly twice a month to improve their reading and writing skills. To hear the girls and their teacher speak adds a highly personal dimension to a conflict that for many young people remains distant and abstract. The courage they show in the face of Taliban strictures is a reminder to young people everywhere that education is a privilege not to be taken lightly.
Exercise: Ask your students to interview their parents, asking them why education is important, and then to write an essay quoting their parents and adding their own thoughts.
Australia has been slow to combat global warming. Now wealthy entrepreneurs are picking up the mantle to drive change. A mannequin depicting a child covered in coal is seen during an Extinction Rebellion Protest in Brisbane, Australia, 22 April 2021. Australia is one...
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the fall of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe. What was the USSR, and what does Putin really want? Russian communist party supporters commemorate the death anniversary of the founder of the former Soviet Union, Vladimir...
It’s next to impossible to fathom why Russia might have invaded Ukraine without understanding the Soviet Union and Vladimir Putin’s attachment to the notion of an empire led by Moscow. Few are better placed than Julian Nundy, whose links to Ukraine go back more than half a century, to explain the complex relationship between Russia and its western neighbor. In his decoder, Nundy takes the reader from the upheaval of the Russian revolution to the collapse of the USSR and, with it, Russia’s loss of buffer states – for Putin, an intolerable affront.
Exercise: Ask your students to choose a revolution – if their country had a revolution, then that should be their focus – and to assess the good that may have come out of it, and the bad.