Building Solidarity Among Teachers and Students in the Time of COVID-19
No nation will enjoy security, democracy, and human rights if it fails in educating its next generation to assume informed and just leadership. While the COVID-19 pandemic has imposed unprecedented demands on educational systems throughout the world, it is also producing remarkable discussions among teachers and students, at all educational levels, about how to continue […]
Economic and Political Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Beyond the unprecedented challenges to their healthcare systems, nations also face extraordinary economic and political impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic. People are losing their jobs and struggling to provide for their families. Some governments are using the crisis to justify suppression of political protests and to curtail human rights. At the same time, the pandemic […]
Girls and Women Caught Between Domestic Violence and Quarantine
Our fears have become reality: domestic violence is steadily increasing after the implementation of social distancing rules and the quarantine. Violence can be used as a tool to repress and constrain behavior that is deemed unacceptable in society, and Iraqi women today are finding themselves particularly vulnerable to violence as they continue to be bound […]
Balancing Washington and Tehran will be the Biggest Test for the Upcoming Kazemi Government
The New Arab Baghdad – Bara Al-Shammari 11 April 2020 The newly designated Iraqi Prime Minister, Mustafa Al-Kazemi, did not directly discuss the escalating Iranian-American conflict in Iraq in his first public address, instead he limited his comments to his government’s aim to maintain a balance with its friends and neighbors. But whether or not […]
Social and Civil Movement in Iraq to Face COVID-19 pandemic
The ISFs Vision for the Current Situation For the last four decades, Iraq has been suffering the destruction of infrastructure, and all of the service and productive sectors, due to the absurd wars that the country was drawn into by the previous regime, and the blockade, the American occupation that resulted into corruption and failure […]
Iraqi Society and its Civil Society Movements Confront the COVID-19 Pandemic
The ISF’s Vision for Addressing the Current Situation Over the last four decades, Iraq has suffered the destruction of vital infrastructure and the failure of its service and production sectors, as a result of the senseless and immoral wars that the country was drawn into by the previous regime, the economic sanctions imposed in 1990, […]
Containment and Prevention of COVID-19: Building Global Solidarity
In response to the extraordinary circumstances humanity is confronting, the Iraqi Civil Society Solidarity Initiative (ICSSI), in collaboration with the Iraqi Social Forum, hosted a series of webinars on “Building Solidarity in the Time of the Coronavirus”. In our first webinar, three medical experts shared valuable and timely information to help participants stay safe and […]
The Bright Side of the Coronavirus Pandemic
The health, economic and societal problems that are gripping the world due to the global coronavirus pandemic are undeniable, yet the crisis hides a positive aspect represented by the significant environmental recovery now taking place. Much of this comes from the decline in greenhouse gas emissions and organic toxins from industrial processes and human activity […]
Iraqis React to the Possibility of Al-Kazimi as an Alternative to Al-Zarfi as the New Prime Minister
The New Arab Baghdad – Aktham Saif Alden 6 April 2020 There is a new, yet unstable consensus among a number of leaders of the Iraqi Shiite blocs who refuse to accept Adnan al-Zurfi as the person who should form a new government in Iraq. Due in part to this opposition, the leaders of the […]
Corona virus curfew fails to clear Iraqi protest squares
ALMONITOR Shelly Kittleson Anti-government protests that began in October and raged through Iraq for months were officially suspended in late March as part of efforts against the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, pandemic. Major squares, however, remain occupied. Some protesters say they have to stay amid continued assassinations of activists. Umm Abbass, a well-known female activist in Nasiriyah, […]
Iraq: Arbitrary detention of human rights defender Hemin Mamand
Front line defenders On 24 March 2020, human rights defender Hemin Mamand was arrested by the police of the Kurdistan Regional Government at his house in Erbil. He remains in detention without charges. Hemin Mamand is a Kurdish journalist and human rights defender. He has previously worked with Azhan newspaper and Mewda press, focusing on […]
IDPs are under coronavirus lockdown and lack medical supplies
Kirkuk Now Ammar Aziz Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) ask for cleaning and protective materials for preventing the spread of coronavirus, which has forced the government to put the nation on lockdown and announce medical advices that people have to fully comply with. The medical instructions have had a greater impact on the IDPs as they […]