On March 9, Yoon Seok-yeol of the conservative People Power Party (PPP) won the South Korean presidential elections by a slim margin. Yoon won 48.6% of the vote while Lee Jae-myung, his rival from the Democratic Party (DP) was not...
How long will it take to understand what “politics as usual” means in Afghanistan? Following the Taliban’s near-complete takeover of the country, there are no answers, much speculation and more questions emerging every day that goes by. A government has now been officially announced, but what it will actually do is unknown. The Taliban have claimed victory in the battle over the Panjshir Valley, but that may only be the...
When Oprah Winfrey tells people, "I am here to ask you to think seriously,” apparently they do. She really did say this, in 2007, and her audience duly thought about who was the best person for the US presidency. It was Barack Obama, America’s first black president. Oprah was, and remains, one of the most influential people in the world, and the source of her influence is the unique status...
Angela Merkel has become a symbol of women's success and self-assertion in a political arena still dominated by men, both in Germany and globally. Until a few months ago, the prospect of a female successor seemed very likely. But the initial euphoria, shortly after the Green Party named Annalena Baerbock as its candidate for the chancellorship, has died down. Germany’s Greens Are Within Earshot of Power READ MORE In May,...
Amid a raging pandemic, India’s transgender community, which numbered 5 million a decade ago, is at its nadir when it comes to vulnerability to disease and distress. The reason why there are no recent statistics is because the 2011 census was the only time that population data for non-binary persons, referred to as “others,” was recorded. In 2014, transgender people were given the status of the third gender in India...
In the years before the civil war broke out in 2011, Syrian families where women were the main income providers and oversaw family affairs remained the exception. At the time, about 15% of women were in the labor force, a large proportion of them in agriculture. Women occupying jobs in technical and administrative sectors as part of the urban elites in cities like Damascus and Aleppo only made up a small proportion of...
The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated lockdowns have spawned a lot of changes in workplace norms. As it turns out, these norms have had both positive effects and unintended consequences concerning things like remote work and how it impacts employees. While there has been some room for growth and increased flexibility, it is possible that the pandemic has undone some of the more progressive developments of the last decades. Nowhere is...
On June 1, the UK defense and home secretaries announced that the local staff who worked for the British government in Afghanistan, including many interpreters for the British military, would be eligible for expedited relocation to the UK under the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (ARAP). The new policy states that “any current or former locally employed staff who are assessed to be under serious threat to life are offered...
