Society
Welcome to our section on society.
From gender and sexuality to science and technology, our coverage speaks to the societal shifts fundamentally changing our daily lives. Here, we unpack health inequalities and the varying accessibility of education internationally.
This is also the home of our coverage of crime, justice and where we discuss the ways in which the law impacts different members of civil society.
Why Brazil struggles to tax the super-rich
Lula is trying to make Brazil’s tax system more progressive but faces a tough struggle, says Leonardo Sakamoto.
What if… We answered Isis with restorative justice?
Matt Broomfield spells out some better ways of dealing with captive extremists.
How Palestine became Israel’s spyware test-bed
Antony Loewenstein examines spyware’s role in Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and why governments are failing to reign in its insidious spread.
Taxcast: Who owns the climate crisis?
Naomi Fowler of the Tax Justice Network investigates how wealthy elites and transnational companies benefit from the climate crisis
Taxcast: How the very wealthy shape the world
From spoiled pets to private jets, Naomi Fowler takes a look at the deformities created by the wealthy—and what we can do about it.
View from India: Women are still being short-changed
Nilanjana Bhowmick reports on the myths that still exist around women and money across the world.
The fight for reparations
Priya Lukka explains what reparations could mean, drawing from the rich and varied global movement for repair.
Africa is beginning to hold social media companies to account
A court case shows the continent’s demand for social media companies to be accountable for their impact offline, columnist Resebell Kagumire writes.
What if…social media were not for profit?
Nick Dowson imagines a different world of online communities that puts our needs first.
Finally, equal abortion rights for India’s unmarried women
The taboo around sex outside of marriage means it can be hard to access safe pregnancy termination. But a recent court ruling could help to change things, writes Nilanjana Bhowmick.
Protecting trans lives goes deeper than laws and representation
Priti Salian on how activists are fighting the colonial mindset to push for trans rights in India.
‘Is it bad to pay my bills working in an ethically compromised industry?’
Ethical and political dilemmas abound these days. Seems like we’re all in need of a New Internationalist perspective. Enter stage: Agony Uncle
Before Iran, the Kurdish feminist revolution
Rahila Gupta examines the precursor to Iran’s ‘first feminist revolution in the world’: a Kurdish feminist revolution in Rojava.
On your watch
Asma Hafiz reports on the intrusive surveillance being forced on often lower caste sanitation workers in many Indian cities.
Is the language of oppression being weaponized against me?
A troubled reader fears they are unfairly being accused of gaslighting, manipulation and abuse by their friends. Agony Uncle advises.
Feel the fear and carry on
In Iraq a growing number of women are now doing the dangerous work of removing landmines – previously a male preserve. Adrian Margaret Brune reports.
10 steps towards prison abolition
A world without incarceration and police may seem a long way off, but there are plenty of things we can change on the way. Amy Hall examines some of them.
Feminists challenge inaction at UN summit
Conservative anti-rights groups, and the failure of rich nations to take responsibility for climate change, threatened to block progress at this year’s women’s rights conference, writes Umyra Ahmad.
So, what’s the alternative?
Community-based initiatives are helping keep people safe where the police fail. Lucilla Harrell and Amy Hall speak to organizers in Puerto Rico, Brazil and the US.
Healed people heal people
Writing from a Californian prison, Jessie Milo sets out his vision for a more caring society.
Trapped in wait
The UK’s asylum process consistently fails LGBTQI+ asylum seekers, and it’s only set to get worse as the government pushes through its draconian Nationality and Borders Bill. Amy Hall speaks to someone stuck in the system
Colonize and punish
Mass imprisonment and merciless policing were the preferred tools of control for European colonizers. Patrick Gathara explores the legacy left in Kenya.
Beyond punishment
Amy Hall explores the movement calling time on prisons and the police while offering an alternative vision of the future.
A child’s right to be forgotten
Roxana Olivera tells a cautionary tale of her dogged attempts to get an abusive, intrusive photograph – taken without its subject’s consent – removed from the internet.
‘It’s a liberation struggle for us’
After centuries of government exclusion a new generation of Romani activists is fighting back. Conrad Landin profiles three campaigners leading the charge.
The ground beneath our feet
Jake Bowers argues for the rights of travelling peoples to live and move through the landscapes they call home.
Taking on the torch-bearers of patriarchy
A growing number of women are going against the stream in India, writes Nilanjana Bhowmick.
The fight for lives and labour
Black women in the US do the socially important work, often unnamed and unrecognized, that is essential to the profit of an economic elite. Rose M Brewer profiles four examples of how they are standing up for change.
Agony Uncle
As his comrades argue about trans women, a reader feels conflicted. Step forward Agony Uncle.
Is criminalization the right response to domestic violence?
Are legal punishments an effective way to tackle domestic violence, or are they failing to go to the heart of the problem? Leigh Goodmark and Stella Nyanzi go head to head.
What can the digital age offer political life?
Indra Adnan argues that ‘cosmolocalism’ could be the key to a stronger, more hopeful democracy.
Is my daughter’s pro-Palestine activism turning antisemitic?
Ethical and political dilemmas abound these days. Seems like we’re all in need of a New Internationalist perspective. Enter stage: Agony Uncle
Scientific internationalism
It is thanks to scientists collaborating across borders that vaccines against Covid-19 have been developed so fast, argues Rajni George.
