Biblio

At a time when international law and the law of war are particularly important and warlike rhetoric is creating new fears and heightening current tensions Falk’s message is particularly relevant. In this collection of essays, Falk examines the global threats to all humanity posed by nuclear weapons. He rejects the adequacy of arms control measures as a managerial stopgap to these threats and seeks no less than to move the world back from the nuclear precipice and towards denuclearization.

The ICJ’s report explores the various obstacles that women seeking justice in Morocco face, and addresses recommendations to the Moroccan government and judiciary with a view to improving access to justice and effective remedies for women and girls who are victims of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). See also https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2019/03/267531/womens-day-change-morocco/ and https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2019/03/267573/protests-rabat-international-women-day/

Article representing the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe position by its chairman.  Notes that the Obama administration refused in late 2016 to grant DAPL a permit to cross the Missouri River upstream of Standing Rock, but that under Trump the pipeline had been built. Faith also reports that his tribe is still engaging in legal challenges to pipeline permits, and that owners of DAPL are trying to double the pipeline capacity, increasing the risk of oil spills.

This book is an account of the prolonged and multi-faceted Sioux resistance to the 1,172 mile Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) which in 2014 was rerouted through their territory, threatening their ancestral burying grounds and archaeological sites. In addition to violation of their rights over the land, the Sioux Nation feared that oil spills would pollute their land, and especially the water supply. The protest began in April 2016 with the setting up of a camp as a centre for direct action and the expression of spiritual resistance, and was supplemented by a social media campaign. Surrounding Native American communities joined in the protest, as did many environmentalists, so that thousands were involved by the summer. The local police were criticised for using unnecessary force against protesters and there were many arrests. The story of Standing Rock is set within the context of the much longer history of indigenous resistance to colonization and struggle to maintain their culture. See also: Treuer, The Heartbreak of Wounded Knee (under Vol. 2. B.1.d.) which includes an account of Standing Rock at the end of the book.  See also: 'What is Standing Rock and Why are 1.4m 'checking in' there? - BBC News, 2 Nov. 2016. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-37834334 Protesters were worried that they were being individually traced by the police through social media (denied by the local police) and asked for supporters to check-in to the SR Facebook site to overwhelm police efforts to identify protesters that way.

As part of the indigenous movement across the Amazon, thousands of indigenous women demonstrated in Brazil’s capital city in August 2019, joining the first Indigenous Women’s March. Carrying banners with the slogan “Territory: our body, our spirit”, women took to the streets to make their voices heard and to denounce the policies of Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, which have set the stage for escalating violations of indigenous rights, racism, violence and the most alarming Amazon deforestation rates in recent memory.

The article provides a detailed analysis of the immediate and longer term results of a protest over loss of village land in Wukan, Guangdon, to reveal government responses designed to pacify protesters, and the impact on individuals, the local protest group and broader society. The aim is to shed light on the widespread phenomenon of protests over land.

The starting point for this book is the editors’ belief in the need to revive and redefine pacifist thought for the 21st century, on the grounds that just war theory (dominant in recent decades) has proved insufficient, and that rejection of any limits on warfare is obviously undesirable. Pacifism has proved inspirational in the past, so its potential should be explored.

Reports on how Yazidi women in refugee camps in Iraqi Kurdistan are finding ‘a way to fight back’ through learning how to box, after the trauma they endured under ISIS. Illustrated by striking photographs of the ‘Boxing Sisters.’

Palestinian women’s bodies constitute a central site of the struggle between the Zionist state and Palestinian ‘citizens’ in Israel. At the intersection of critical feminist and settler colonial studies scholarship and drawing on empirical data collected in 2013–2014, this paper argues that Israel’s continuous drive to control Palestinian women’s bodies plays a pivotal role in the completion of the Zionist project.

Covers women’s political rights across all major regions of the world, focusing both on women’s right to vote and women’s right to run for political office. The countries explored are Afghanistan, Armenia, Australia, Bolivia, Canada, Cameroon, Chile, China, Colombia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, New Zealand, Myanmar, Niger, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Rwanda, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, Sweden, South Korea, Slovenia, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tunisia, Turkey, the United States, Uganda, Uruguay, and Zimbabwe.

The authors argue that the movements in Algeria and Sudan are part of a wider trend across Africa, where since 2000 most popular uprisings have been unarmed.

This account of the 19 months Revolution of the Carnations, which arose out of the  military coup that overthrew the Portuguese dictatorship in April 1974, stresses that it was a mass popular revolution, not just a change of regime, that involved workers' strikes and widespread  debate and communal organizing. It was also a socialist revolution, which was replaced by liberal democracy. The author is a professor at the new University of Lisbon.

In 2017, two students at St. Francis Xavier University were arrested on charges of sexual violence. In support of student survivors, Theatre Antigonish staged the feminist collective piece ‘This is For You, Anna’ in 2018. This article focuses on how the on-campus production and audience responded to acts of gender-based violence. In examining the St. Francis Xavier University production and creation process, this article asks, what can theatre do for student survivors? How can theatre enact change on campus?

While Palestinian women have always faced political marginalization, developments since the Oslo Accords have caused them to endure perhaps even more formidable challenges when it comes to political participation. Al-Shabaka Palestine Policy Fellow, Yara Hawari outlines these challenges and recommends ways for Palestinian women and society to disrupt this process and revitalize the Palestinian liberation struggle through feminism.  See also: https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/israel-absolved-palestinian-women-rights-abuse-190308090710113.html

This article explains how abortion is understood within Sudan’s Islamist state, where it is politicized through its association with illegal pregnancy. It also the silent disobedience of Sudanese doctors for the purpose of protecting women’s reproductive rights. While abortion is not discussed in the domestic political debate on women’s reproductive and maternal health, and is not on the agenda of the national women’s movement, it has become politicized in the implementation of the law. A number of bureaucratic barriers, in addition to a strong police presence outside maternity wards in public hospitals, make it difficult for unmarried women to access emergency care after complications of an illegal abortion. However, many doctors, honouring the Hippocratic oath, disobey state policy, and refrain from reporting such ‘crimes’ to the police, to protect unmarried and vulnerable women from prosecution.

Following the decision by Sweden to declare an official feminist foreign policy, this report investigates China’s prospects of including feminism – or adopting it fully – in its own foreign policy.

Geha notes that the 'century-old sectarian framework' of  governing through clientelist networks and individual patronage, together with socio-economic crisis and political deadlock, make official opposition very difficult. But social networks can mobilize protests, and after these have died down sustain 'a loosely organized informal political opposition both on the streets and in the ballot box'. This thesis is illustrated by a study of the 2015 movement responding to an escalating garbage crisis in the summer of 2015, the cessation of activism after the crisis was resolved in September 2015 and  the resurgence of opposition during the 2016 municipal elections.    

This is an article querying the emphasis on gender in the UN Development Programme. Examining how gender was incorporated into Colombia’s Low-Carbon Development Strategy, they suggest that there are various risks in promoting feminist ideas within ‘mainstream institutional frameworks’.

Wilmot, director of 'Solidarity Uganda', which helps organize civil resistance in East Africa, provides an overview of movements for democracy in all Africa's regions. His survey also notes examples of growing authoritarianism, and stresses the diversity of the continent.

Brownell took up the case of indigenous people living in the rainforest against abusive violence and imprisonment for resisting the destruction of their environment and cultural monuments by the Southeast Asian agro-industrial company Golden Veroleum (GVL) planning to grow palm oil. Brownell's seven-year campaign invoked help from global NGOs to support a complaint to the Roundtable on sustainable Palm Oil, which froze GVL's expansion. He succeeded in saving over half a million acres of rainforest, but he had to flee to the US. He has also established a rural network - the Alliance for Rural Democracy - throughout Liberia to work form environmental justice.

Conversation with Alfred Brownell, Liberian environmental lawyers recorded by Veronique Mistiaen. Brownell has been involved in a seven year campaign which succeeded in protecting half a million acres of Liberia's tropical rainforest from the Southeast Asia-based Golden Veroleum company, which had been granted the right by the government to clear and use the land to grow palm oil. He took up the cause of the indigenous community in Sinoe County whose forests and cultural sites were being destroyed by the company. The article outlines how the campaign succeeded and Brownell's wider role in creating the Alliance for Rural Democracy throughout Liberia to work for environmental justice. He had been forced by death threats to move with his family to the USA.

Brownell has been involved in a seven year campaign which succeeded in protecting half a million acres of Liberia's tropical rainforest from the Southeast Asia-based Golden Veroleum company, which had been granted t the right by the government to clear and use the land to grow palm oil. He took up the cause of the indigenous community in Sinoe County whose forests and cultural sites were being destroyed by the company. The article outlines how the campaign succeeded and Brownell's wider role in creating the Alliance for Rural Democracy throughout Liberia to work for environmental justice. He had been forced by death threats to move with his family to the USA.

Human rights activists have opposed President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s plan to cut funding for women’s shelters in Mexico. The scheme is still not properly defined, but the money will instead be given directly to the victims of domestic violence. While the government’s decision does not intend to withdraw support for victims, human rights activists point out the risk of nullifying years of activism and initiatives led by civil society. In fact, they stress that giving money directly to victims can further expose them to violence.

This paper connects aspects of public sexual violence against women generally, and politicized sexual violence in 21st-century Egypt in particular, arguing that successive political regimes in Egypt have produced and maintained a spatial culture of humiliation and subordination as a political tool to silence and oppress women and prevent opposition. This paper assesses the successes and failures of public feminism in Egypt in addressing this culture of female humiliation and isolation in public spaces, with a particular focus on fighting politicized forms of sexual violence directed against women since 2011. It also argues that sexual violence against women, and the repression of public feminism in Egypt, are parts of the failure of the processes of democratic transition.

The authors, academic experts on Russian politics, draw on surveys, social media, interviews and leaked documents to examine why there has been such long term popular support for Putin. They examine his changing tactics, his handling of the 2012 protests against electoral manipulation, and the role of the annexation of Crimea in 2014 that made pride in Russia the main pillar of his support. The authors argue that attempts to secure change are undermined by belief that it is impossible, but suggest there are limits to public acquiescence and Putin's power. The potential fragility of his rule is revealed for example by demonstrations by thousands of pensioners against pension reforms that raised the retirement age.