Trapped by the System – the Plight of Coca Farmers in Colombia

By Raiyan Mohammad Syed|March 16, 2022|Conflict, Health, Labour|0 comments

A reflection from the recent Drugs and Disorder conference (“image of coca farmers Colombia – Bing images,” n.d.) I had a chance to attend the Drugs and Disorder Conference from Feb 14-16, where I had an opportunity to learn about how drugs affect individual lives in Myanmar and Colombia ; I specifically learned how the demand for the cocaine that comes from the manufacturing process of coca leaves has impacted

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Migrants granted bail left trapped in British immigration detention because of nowhere to go

By 643577|March 7, 2019|Immigration dentention, Migration|0 comments

This post is written by Anna Lindley, Senior Lecturer in Migration, Mobility and Development at SOAS, and Clara Della Croce, Senior Teaching Fellow in the School of Law at SOAS. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons License. Read the original article.  Britain’s already Kafkaesque immigration detention system has reached new heights as it’s become clear that migrants who’ve successfully challenged their immigration detention are remaining incarcerated,

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What Does Trump Mean for Sub-Saharan Africa?

By Jo Tomkinson|November 22, 2016|Aid, Civil society, Neoliberalism|0 comments

Michael Jennings is a Head of Department and Senior Lecturer in the SOAS Department of Development Studies. His research interests include the politics and history of development processes in sub-Saharan Africa; governance, civil society, non-governmental organisations and faith-based organisations; and social aspects of health in Africa. On the scale of some of the things that emerged from the mouth of now US president-elect Donald Trump on the campaign scale, allegedly calling

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Peace in Colombia – What is it good for?

By Jo Tomkinson|September 29, 2016|Conflict, Forced displacement, Neoliberalism, Peace|0 comments

Tobias Franz completed his PhD at SOAS on the political economy of local economic development and institutional change in Colombia and has taught in the SOAS Development Studies department.  The joy of the international community and the mainstream press was overwhelming when, on August 24th, after 52 years (or 70, depending on the definition) of armed conflict the Colombian Government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) announced a final

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Women’s Rights and the Arab Uprisings

By Jo Tomkinson|February 19, 2016|Social movements, Women's rights|0 comments

Ahlem Belhadj is a practitioner and teacher of child psychiatry in Tunisia. She co-founded the Coalition for Sexual and Corporal Rights in Muslim Societies and won the 2012 Simone de Beauvoir Prize. She has authored several books on child psychiatry, the abuse of children and women and women’s rights. She has also been described as ‘The Arab Spring’s Tunisian Heroine’.  In December 2015 Ahlem Belhadi gave a lecture in the

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France Returns to the State of Exception

By Jo Tomkinson|December 4, 2015|Conflict, Uncategorized|0 comments

Gilbert Achcar is Professor of Development Studies and International Relations in the SOAS Department of Development Studies. His most recent books are Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism and The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising.

The discourse of war is already upon us. But it must be resisted.

French President François Hollande’s reaction to the terrorist outrage that struck again at the heart of Paris has been to declare war — just as George W. Bush did in the face of “the mother of all terrorist attacks” that struck the heart of New York.

By doing this, the French president has chosen to ignore the many criticisms of the Bush administration’s choice, even though these expressed the prevailing opinion in France itself at that time. And he did so despite the fact that the disastrous balance sheet of the Bush administration’s “war on terror” well justified its critics. Sigmar Gabriel himself, the German vice-chancellor and head of the Social Democratic Party, brother party of the French Socialists, has declared that talk of war only plays into the hands of ISIS.