Stories about Ideas
24 April 2020
COVID-19 in the Middle East: Is this pandemic a health crisis or a war?
War-like rhetoric around COVID-19 has allowed governments in the Middle East and North Africa to execute emergency powers and impose draconian measures that would otherwise be unacceptable.
21 April 2020
Liberia's President George Weah sings his fight against COVID-19
Despite a message and movement solidarity in the fight against COVID-19 in Liberia, President George Weah still faces critique over a tanking economy and restricted media.
20 April 2020
How to protect Nigerians’ personal information while combating COVID-19
Combatting COVID-19 through all available legal means is urgent. However, such means need not be at the expense of protecting human rights — including the right to privacy.
14 April 2020
Ghost cities in a COVID-19 world
Videos of empty cities from around the world curated by Global Voices' contributors.
11 April 2020
COVID-19 revives grim history of medical experimentation in Africa
Africa 'is not a testing lab' for a COVID-19 vaccine. The debate over human testing in clinical trials speaks to a grim history of medical experimentation and exploitation in Africa.
8 April 2020
Impact of COVID-19 containment measures on human rights and civil liberties in the Middle East
COVID-19 measures in the MENA region have especially targeted some of the most vulnerable groups such as detained human rights defenders, migrant workers and independent media.
7 April 2020
Caribbean cooking in the time of COVID-19
"Make whatever your comfort food is and know that if we all sacrifice for a few weeks for the greater good, we will help stop the spread of this virus."
2 April 2020
Nigeria’s elite ‘above the law’ as the poor struggle with COVID-19 measures
The majority of Nigeria's poor live by the day in overcrowded and squalid shanties, without running water and modern toilet facilities. They cannot and will not survive a lockdown.
April Fool’s Day, COVID-19 and Trinidad and Tobago’s ‘recalcitrant minority’
Who would ever have predicted that a speech made on April 1, 1958, would reverberate in April 1, 2020 through a speech made by another leader in the same political...
1 April 2020
A king’s belief in herbal remedies to cure COVID-19 butts up against science in Nigeria
This Nigerian king believes that natural herbs can cure COVID-19. But making unverified claims via Twitter to thousands of followers can be misleading — and dangerous — to the public.
25 March 2020
Across Africa, COVID-19 heightens tension between faith and science
While many African governments have taken stringent measures to slow the spread of COVID-19, not all leaders agree with banning faith-based gatherings.
19 March 2020
Tanzania tackles COVID-19 with strict measures to slow the spread
In the wake of six confirmed COVID-19 cases in Tanzania, the government has taken strict measures to slow the spread. But messaging and communication around preventative measures remains a challenge.
Refugees in Ethiopia's camps raise privacy and exclusion concerns over UNHCR’s new digital registration
Biometric registration enables refugees to secure a digital ID that gives them access to aid. Their use has raised serious concerns about privacy and exclusion among refugees in Ethiopia.
17 March 2020
Cooped up? Trinidad & Tobago's Bocas LitFest has released its 2020 longlist
Self-quarantined? Dive into any of these “nine books by writers with roots in seven Caribbean territories,” which just made the 2020 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature longlist.
10 March 2020
This chief hopes Yorùbá speakers adopt his newly invented ‘talking alphabet’
Writing Yorùbá in Latin script may soon become a thing of the past as one Yorùbá man, Chief Tolúlàṣẹ Ògúntósìn, has invented a writing system to encode the Yorùbá language.
7 March 2020
International Women's Day: How far have we come?
"Although Macedonian women gained the vote in 1946, the progress of the women’s movement here reminds me of the national folk dance – three steps forward, two steps back."
3 March 2020
Lost in translation: Why Google Translate often gets Yorùbá — and other languages — wrong
As more tech companies attempt to provide translation and access to multiple languages online, controversies and challenges arise — especially when it comes to accuracy and cultural nuance.
27 February 2020
Mitrovica Rock School unites young Albanians and Serbs in a segregated Kosovo city
In a segregated Kosovo city, where residents rarely talk to people of different ethnicity, a school restoring the rock music tradition of former Yugoslavia builds friendship between Albanians and Serbs.
25 February 2020
Fiji poet and activist Peter Sipeli promotes storytelling for LGBTQ+ rights in the Pacific
"I wanted to create a human conversation about the pain that we endure, that ostracization, and unpack that for people to see into."
24 February 2020
Political beliefs divide generations and strain family ties in Taiwan
While the outcome of the Taiwan 2020 presidential election is settled, generational conflicts continue.
