Malawi's Re-Run Election is Lesson for African Opposition

Author(s): Fergus Kell

In: Chatham House, 2021

Kell stresses the role of the constitutional court and notes the role also played by the high court in thwarting an attempt by President Mutharika just before the re-run June 2020 election to force the chief justice to retire.  But he also notes the importance of public pressure and the judiciary have worked together before to uphold the constitution and prevent a president from abolish term limits on his tenure.

See also: Moffat, Craig, 'Malawi Elections Provide a Global Lesson in Democracy', Mail and Guardian (South Africa), 23 November 2020,  pp.3.

Moffat celebrates the securing of democracy in Malawi, notes key factors which led to the successful election of the opposition in the June 2020 re-run election, and comments also on the difficult context of Covid-19 and the absence of external observers to monitor the conduct of the poll.

See also: 'Lessons from Malawi's Fresh Presidential Elections of 23 June 2020', International IDEA, 25 November 2020, pp. 23.

Conference Report and Webinar in August 2020, when Malawi's Electoral Commission share their experiences with other electoral commissions in the Southern African Development Community (SADF).

Available online at:

https://www.chathamhouse.org/2020/07/malawis-re-run-election-lesson-african-opposition

Feminism Inshallah: A History of Arab Feminism, Film

Author(s): Feriel Ben-Mahmoud

2014

Muslim women’s struggle for emancipation is often portrayed as a showdown between Western and Islamic values, but Arab feminism has existed for more than a century. This documentary recounts Arab feminism’s largely unknown story, from its taboo-shattering birth in Egypt by feminist pioneers to viral Internet campaigns by today’s tech-savvy young activists during the Arab Spring. From Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, filmmaker and author Ben Mahmoud charts the progress of Arab women in their long march to assert their full rights and achieve empowerment. Features previously unreleased archival footage and multigenerational interviews.

Available online at:

https://www.wmm.com/catalog/film/feminism-inshallah-a-history-of-arab-feminism/

The Argentine Government is set to push ahead with Controversial Fracking despite Warnings

Author(s): Fernando Cabrera

In: The Ecologist

Reports on the Argentine government plans and the oil companies involved in exploitation of the Vaca Muerta formation, close to one of the country's most important water basins. The UN Committee on ESCR had warned in October that the project would have a serious impact on the climate and the local territory. Cabrera also notes that over 60 municipalities had banned fracking, but several of m these bans have been ruled unconstitutional for exceeding communal powers.

Available online at:

https://theecologist.org/2018/dec/07/fracking-argentina

Lessons from the Thirst Economy

Author(s): Fiona Broom

In: New Internationalist, 2017, pp. 30-32

Discusses major crisis of water scarcity in India, due not only to climate change (failures of monsoons since 2012) but commercial exploitation of water sources, which leaves small farmers and citizens without water supplies and often reliant on tankers run by 'water mafia'. The government still tends to favour dams rather than localised measures to preserve water, and political pressures promote crops such as sugar cane in unsuitably environments. The author also notes an example of local good practice. The women's organization, the Mann Deshi Foundation, has in last few years promoted rehabilitation of streams and the local river in a semi-desert area of Maharashtra, before creating a reservoir which was handed over to the local village council.

Repealing the 8th: Reforming Irish abortion law

Author(s): Fiona de'Londras

Policy Press, Bristol, 2018, pp. 152

This book was compiled before the 2018 constitutional referendum that liberalised abortion in the Republic of Ireland. It offers practical proposals for policymakers and advocates, including model legislation, making it an important campaigning tool for feminists in other countries.

Young People Resume Global Climate Strikes Calling for Urgent Action

Author(s): Fiona Harvey

In: Guardian, 2020

Compares the September 2020 Friday strikes (in about 3,500 places worldwide) which were constrained by Covid related social distancing measures, with the 2019 week of action involving at least six million. The article also provides a link to a 24-hour global zoom call covering regional issues and links to forms of activism, especially digital activism.

Beyond #MeToo and #IWill: Changing Workplace Culture

Video, The University of British Columbia

Author(s): Sara-Jane Finley, Ryan Avola, Fiona MacFarlane, Fiona MacFarlane, and Jennifer Berdahl

2017

Webcast sponsored by the Iving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by alumni UBC with Equity and Inclusion. #MeToo. #IWill. Awareness is important, but how do we move beyond hashtags and words to making real change for women in the workplace? New accusations of harassment keep coming to the fore – from Hollywood to Wall Street to Commercial Drive. In response, thousands of women have posted “#MeToo” on social media. Men have since responded with #IWill, signaling their individual commitment to take action in order to prevent harassment in their midst. But what next? How do we go beyond awareness to actual – and more permanent – change? This video includes a panel discussion that examines this issue and explore options for moving forward.

Community politics in Northern Ireland

Author(s): Fionnuala O Connor

In: Michael Randle, Challenge to Nonviolence (A. 1.b. Strategic Theory, Dynamics, Methods and Movements), pp. 207-222

Text of a talk given in June 1997 to the Nonviolent Research Project at Bradford University.. Discusses the development of community level political engagement and the vision of Ciaron McKeown of the Peace People that it could someday provide an alternative to the existing political system. She argues that Community politics up to that time (1997) was more developed in the Catholic/Nationalist community than in that of the Protestant/Unionist one but there too it had emerged in the previous five years or so. Former members of paramilitary groups were frequently involved because they had come to see the futility of the violence or because they wanted their own children to have a different life to the one they had experienced.

Available online at:

https://civilresistance.info/challenge/11-NI

In Search of a State: Catholics in Northern Ireland

Author(s): Fionnuala O Connor

The Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 1993, pp. 393

Investigation of the convictions and sense of identity of people in the Catholic Community in Northern Ireland based on recorded interviews with fifty-five individuals – not all of them necessarily practising Catholics – about their political allegiances, their relationship with Protestants, and their attitude to the IRA, Britain, Southern Ireland and the Church.

African Awakening: The Emerging Revolutions

Editor(s): Firoze Manji, and Sokari Ekine

Pambazuka Press (imprint of Fahamu), Cape Town, Dakar, Nairobi and Oxford, 2011, pp. 234

These are largely contemporaneous accounts, lightly revised from Pambazuka News, Pan-African Voices for Freedom and Justice, http://www.pambazuka.org. As well as interesting contributions on Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Algeria (noted again under E.V), this book covers unrest in a number of Sub-Saharan countries:

‘People’s revolts in Burkina Faso’, February-April 2011, involving students, the broad population and army mutinies (unfortunately the mutineers did not make common cause with the civilian protesters), pp. 131-46.

A ‘Protest Diary’ from Cameroon in February 2011, by presidential candidate Kah Walla, blogs about strictly nonviolent protests brutally suppressed (pp.107-10).

In Swaziland (pp. 155-169) the 12-15 April 2011 popular demonstrations went ahead in the face of roadblocks and despite the arrests of virtually the entire leadership of the democratic association, perhaps signalling ‘the beginning of the end’ for the absolute monarchy.

Debunking Spontaneity: Spain’s 15-M/Indignados as Autonomous Movement

Author(s): Flesher Fominaya, Cristina

In: Social Movement Studies: Journal of Social and Cultural Political Protest, Vol 14, No 2, 2015, pp. 142-163

Argues emergence of movement not ‘new’ and ‘spontaneous’ but product of evolution of a collective identity and culture stressing deliberative democracy since the 1980s.
See also her blog on the OpenDemocracy website: ‘Spain is Different: Podemos and 15-M’ on the rise of the leftist but non-ideological Podemos party in the European Parliamentary elections of June 2014, and influence of 15-M movement on the nature of the new party.

Available online at:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14742837.2014.945075?needAccess=true

A Protest Master Class: A look inside the US struggle to defund the police

Edited version of article on Waging Nonviolence Website: wagingnonviolence.org

Author(s): Nadine Bloch, and Folabi Olagbaju

In: Peace News, No 2642-2643, 2020, pp. 9ff

The authors comment on the impressive revival of Black LivesMatter in May/June 2020, reforms to policing already agreed in some cities and the new prominence of the demand to ‘defund the police’. They also discuss the importance of  combining a range of approaches and tactics to complement direct action: doing research; making the ‘invisible visible’; using symbolic ritual (for example turning the fence around the White House into a shrine); and encouraging artistic creativity to promote joy and healing.

Beyond Pro-life and Pro-choice: The Changing Politics of Abortion in Britain

Author(s): Fram Amery

Bristol University Press , Bristol, 2020, pp. 224

The author analyses the evolution of the political discourse on abortion from the 1960s to today, and argues that, in order to understand the changing elements in the contemporary abortion debate in Britain, it is necessary to move beyond viewing abortion politics as pro-choice or pro-life.

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