Commonwealth
Opinion
Taking Stock of the Commonwealth
By Professor Philip Murphy, Director of ICwS The 2020 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) was due to open in Rwanda on 22 June. In April, with only a couple of months to go, the inevitable announcement was made that the summit was being postponed to some...
The Commonwealth’s twin problems with media freedom and a blueprint for action
By William Horsley “It’s never been so bad”. With those words Kayode Soyinka, the London-based publisher of Africa Today, summed up the wide consensus that emerged from the Media Freedom Panel discussion during the Taking Stock of the Commonwealth day-long global...
Silencing the media in pandemic times
By Syed Badrul Ahsan- Associate Fellow, & leading journalist & editor in Charge, The Asian Age, and author of ‘Sheikh Mujibur Rahman: From Rebel to Founding Father’ (2014) Populism in these times is always a danger signal for democracy and the rule of law. And...
A tumultuous season: the emergence of independent Bangladesh and the British media
By William Crawley, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. William Crawley was invited by the Bangladesh High Commissioner in London to speak at the commemoration of the anniversary of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s birth one hundred...
The Commonwealth Secretariat: A little local difficulty – or terminal decline?
by Professor Philip Murphy, Director of Institute of Commonwealth Studies In what now appears to have been a concerted manoeuvre, first New Zealand and then Australia and the UK revealed they were withholding or in the case of Australia actually cancelling financial...
The Commonwealth media’s role in elections: some lessons from Britain and Canada
by William Crawley, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies The principles of freedom of information and freedom of expression are regarded as the core of shared values to which Commonwealth governments aspire. In practice many Commonwealth countries...
“A New Internationalism” v. “We Will Strengthen Britain In The World” in British General Election manifestos, 2019 – with reference to 1945
by Antoine Capet (University of Rouen) When reading the party manifestos for the forthcoming General Election, I was struck by the evolution in party thinking – at least as expressed to the voters – since the war. In my lecturing, I used to dwell on the difference...
Modi’s Kashmir adventurism may bring more harm than good to India
by Kiran Hassan, Associate Fellow By revoking article 370 on August 5th 2019, prime minister Narendra Modi kept his pre- election promise which held great appeal for his ideological support group the RSS, his Hindutva led political party the BJP and millions of...
Is Chinese technology transforming the Commonwealth?
By Dr Kiran Hassan, Associate Fellow – Institute of Commonwealth Studies,
Is China’s growing presence in the media in Commonwealth countries compatible with the Commonwealth’s core values of good governance, freedom of expression and transparency?
Archive documents reveal the US and UK’s role in the dying days of apartheid
By Sue Onslow and Martin Plaut This piece was originally published in The Conversation on 18 July 2019 It is a quarter of a century since the end of apartheid in South Africa. But it’s easy to forget how complex, difficult and violent the birth of full...
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