We are less than four months away from a very contentious election in Myanmar. The pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party is desperate to make a comeback, the case accusing Myanmar of genocide continues at the International Court of Justice, the repatriation of Rohingya refugees remains an open question, and COVID-19 has delayed the ongoing […]

While three-fourths of the world’s population has access to a basic sanitation service, only about half of the world’s population uses a safely managed sanitation service. Over the last decade, the Government of India has strived to increase access to sanitation, building 100 million additional toilets in rural India over the last five years under […]

The coronavirus pandemic has dramatically changed the way governments everywhere, and at all levels, deliver services to citizens. There has been a widespread embrace of technology, new and old, even among the most reluctant. Medical services, education and work – for many of us – have moved online, and despite initial hiccups, seem to be […]

The Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) in Manhattan is known for its vast collections of contemporary art, not the workers who keep it running. However, as its galleries shut down, MoMA’s labor organizing has gone on display. Thanks to the advocacy of its five unions, when MoMA shut its doors during Covid-19, […]

On May 13th, nearly 10,000 Wisconsin residents received a text message prompting them to register to vote. It was perhaps an unsurprising text for an election year, but it came from the most surprising of sources: their healthcare provider. The initiative is part of a growing movement among healthcare providers to use digital outreach and […]

Capitalism as we know it needs to be reformed. The growing discontent at the ideology that has created so much wealth and progress on the one hand, and yet so much inequality and instability on the other hand, is causing increasingly frequent social disruptions across the world. The COVID-19 crisis has laid bare most of […]

Socio-political and public health crises The outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) has exploded into a global pandemic, infecting over 3.5 million individuals worldwide and taking away more than 251,000 lives. In the city of Hong Kong, 1,569 confirmed cases have been reported. Due to the stringent quarantine measures and closed border policies, the spread of […]

On July 10, 2020, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed an order which would allow the disintegration of Hagia Sophia’s museum status and turn it back into a mosque. Pro-government Turkish news outlet Yeni Şafak  headlined the same day: “The West Goes Mad.” (Batı çıldırıyor) [1]  With the signature of the Council of State’s memorandum […]

In the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement, Merck CEO Ken Frazier publicly stated that “it is the responsibility of corporate America to bridge [opportunity] gaps.”[1] Ken is one of only four Black Fortune 500 CEOs. Together, Black CEOs represent less than 1% of Fortune 500 CEOs despite Black workers making up 13% of […]

2020 MARKS THE twenty-fifth anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a seminal moment when world leaders committed to key principles that still guide global action to advance women’s rights.[i] The platform called for greater representation of women in all spheres of society and, more specifically, for countries to establish goals for gender […]