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Human rights

Arts in Society

When the State Fears a Poet

Celebrated Indian poet, human rights activist, and political prisoner Varavara Rao, now eighty and in frail health, is in mortal danger of succumbing to COVID-19 if he is not released from prison, where he has been on and off since 2018 on trumped-up conspiracy charges.

Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla

Global Justice

No Democracy Without Archives

Fifteen years old this week, Guatemala’s National Police archive has helped prosecute numerous officials for their roles in the country’s civil war. Now shuttered by a Trump-backed government, its dramatic history illustrates the crucial role of state archives in protecting democracy.

Kirsten Weld

Class & Inequality

The War Against the Poor Knows No Borders

The Trump administration’s sanctions against Iran and cuts to SNAP benefits are two sides of the same war that the rich are waging against the global poor.

Liz Theoharis

Class & Inequality, Race

American Bottom

Designed as a bucolic working-class suburb of St. Louis, the nearly all-black town of Centreville now floods with raw sewage every time it rains. “Bring us back some help,” residents say, living through an environmental horror that evokes centuries of official disinterest in black suffering, as well as a future in which the poor are left to suffer in areas made uninhabitable by climate change.

Walter Johnson

Law & Justice

U.S. Judges Admit Enhanced Interrogation Is Torture

They also acknowledged, for the first time, that the grounds for torturing Abu Zubaydah—who was detained in the wake of September 11 and is still languishing in Guantánamo—were mistaken.

Joseph Margulies

War & Security

Holding Ourselves Responsible

In 2001, three frameworks for handling international crises emerged: the War on Terror, an ill-defined "responsibility to protect" struggling countries, and the Caribbean movement for reparations. The first two have failed, but the third may still have something to tell us.

Adom Getachew

Global Justice

Mass Starvation Is a Crime—It's Time We Treated It That Way

The famine in Yemen is not simply “man-made.” Particular men are responsible, and they should be brought to justice.

Alex de Waal

War & Security

The Path Back From Hell

U.S. foreign policy disasters fueled our current political crisis. But those who want a new approach must do more than point out past blunders.

Rajan Menon

Forum

A Turning Point in Israel

The government’s new Nation State Law codifies prejudice, but therein lies a silver lining.

Odeh Bisharat

Global Justice

What Are Human Rights Good For?

Global justice requires that we look away from Geneva and New York to the outer fringes of global power.

Mark Goodale

Politics, War & Security

Bloody Gina

Gina Haspel’s confirmation hearing is later this week. Here’s why we should all be concerned.

Scott Casleton

Forum

To Remake the World: Slavery, Racial Capitalism, and Justice

What if we use the history of slavery as a standpoint from which to rethink our notion of justice today?

Walter Johnson

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THINKING IN A PANDEMIC

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