A community based approach in fighting challenges posed by COVID-19
When the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global pandemic in March 2020, nations around the globe started closing their borders. In many parts of world, including New York City where I live, life for many became suddenly unrecognizable with partial to full lockdowns and restrictions of movement. The rapid spread of the virus across communities, cities, nations, made clear how...Read More
Compatibility Problem: Missing “Peace-Lens” Behind Problem of Federalization in Nepal
After ten years of violent communist insurgency, Nepal entered into a peace process in 2006 under international auspices and with domestic pressure. The Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-Maoist) agreed to join peaceful competitive politics if a new set of rules, mutually agreed by key actors and endorsed by the people, were set. An alliance of seven political parties, which were in...Read More
Non-Violent Actions & Peace: Need of the Hour Inclusion in School Curriculum is Essential
As a media academic and researcher, I have travelled to few countries on various continents of the world, including Thailand, Turkey, Portugal, USA, Greece, Finland, Canada, Italy, Ethiopia, Scotland (UK), and France. During my visits, other academic’s, researchers, students and others asked me one unique question: “Are you from Gandhi’s country? Are you from India? It’s...Read More
Reimagining education in the aftermath of the pandemic
2.3 million learners are impacted by school closures and a national lockdown in Jordan due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The number includes 230,000 Syrian refugees living in Jordan. Even before the pandemic, Jordan’s education system was under great pressure to provide quality education; with poor infrastructure, low basic literacy and numeracy levels, combined with older methods of instruction,...Read More
Closed Schools Increases Vulnerability to Gang Recruitment and other Forms of Violence
It was a steaming-hot afternoon in southern Mexico. We left the final small market town and traveled nearly an hour on rutted dirt roads to reach this indigenous riverbank community of Carmen Grande, in Las Montañas del Norte. This was before the pandemic, and we had come to plan a church-based cattle co-op project. Several young boys were eager to show us around. “This is our...Read More
Post from the Country Without a Post Office
Kashmiri-American poet Agha Shahid Ali’s collection of poems ‘The Country Without a Post Office’ is related to exile, yearning, and the loss of home and country. Ali has highlighted the tragedy in Kashmir by comparing it with Joseph Stalin’s Russia. In his collection of poems, Ali writes about “the land of doomed addresses” where “everyone carries his address in his pocket so that at least...Read More
Realizing women’s land rights in the context of inheritance in Uganda
Closing the gender gap worldwide could reduce hunger for 100 million people and yet Ugandan women have unequal rights to land, a fundamental building block of food security and poverty reduction. Women face multiple challenges that limit their ability to realize secure land rights, including social, cultural, economic, and political factors. Inequality and uncertainty in accessing,...Read More
Ecology, peace, and stories
I spent most of the last six months before starting my Peace Fellowship living in a tent in the northern NSW rainforests. It seemed safer for my physical and mental health to escape the rising COVID cases – and the corresponding lockdowns – in my home city of Melbourne by travelling up north and heading for the forests. This was quite a change from working the 12hr days in front...Read More