People worldwide are calling for action to bring back the kidnapped schoolgirls in Nigeria. But concern for the girls demands that we think carefully about the harmful consequences of proposed solutions – especially those calling for US military intervention.
As the world's attention focuses on northern Nigeria with the abduction of schoolgirls from Chibok, Fatimah Kelleher explores the importance of understanding the voices and agency of northern Nigerian women's own activism for change.
Meriam Ibrahim Yahya is incarcerated and shackled in Sudan's Omdurman Women’s Prison. Her twenty month old child and her new born baby are with her. Charged with apostasy earlier this month, she faces flogging and then death by hanging.
In countries where there are no apostasy laws, blasphemy laws are frequently used to persecute and punish apostates. Rahila Gupta reports on how the dangers of apostasy in Muslim majority countries is making British courts more open to granting asylum.
Defenders of Pakistan's blasphemy laws say the rule of law prevents rule by mob. The May 7 murder of human rights lawyer Rashid Rehman - to prevent him from defending a young professor accused of blasphemy - shows the hypocrisy of such a defence, says Meredith Tax.
Wole Soyinka believed that one of the best ways to comprehend the kind of horror that is happening in Nigeria is to remember the experience of other nations in the region confronted with jihadist groups much like Boko Haram. Mahfoud Bennoune confronted the same questions in Algeria in the 1990s.
The attempt by British police to get Muslim women to inform on their friends and relatives as part of a counter-terrorism programme, repeats the police errors of the past and endangers any woman involved, says Yasmin Rehman
In a courageous and unique act of collective action, students at the University of Khartoum in Sudan have gone on strike to protest the killing of a fellow student; demanding justice and a campus free of violence. Will their demands be met?
Steadfast in the face of a witch-hunt and physical attacks against their members, the Barakat citizen's movement will not give up the call for peaceful democratic transition, Karima Bennoune reports on the post-election challenges that lie ahead.
Military responses to Boko Haram have proved ineffective, as the latest atrocities in Nigeria highlight. An alternative focused on good governance, policing and socio-economic development, supported by the international community, would be much more likely to succeed.
The UN's IPCC report on climate change calls for immediate action to deal with a crisis which supersedes and includes all other questions. Meredith Tax says that international pressure on the US government to deal with the crisis is essential, for soon it will be too late.
No one should expect progress in Afghanistan anytime soon, enmeshed as it is in a complex web of interaction among state and non-state actors.
