Commonwealth
Opinion
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...
The Empire Strikes Back – On LGBT Rights
Professor Philip Murphy, director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies welcomes a new generation of Commonwealth activists who are using established legal and constitutional tools to tackle its ‘imperial-era homophobic laws’. I went to a rather unusual meeting...
Public Interest Broadcasting: Changing priorities and challenges to Freedom of Expression; a focus on India
By Dr William Crawley - Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies The national elections in India in 2019 were marked by a keen focus on every aspect of government by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Narendra Modi since it came to power five...
How India is Changing Under Modi
By Professor James Manor ‘Extravagant new promises can buy him time, but far from solving the problem, they compound the risk.’ ‘His main alternative is to stress not aspirations, but resentments.’ ‘He has already de-emphasised aspirational appeals: Nothing has...
South Africa’s Election leaves the country stirred, not shaken
Martin Plaut Senior Research Fellow - ICWS It was a remarkable achievement. South Africa’s sixth election since the end of apartheid saw nearly 17.7 million people vote at 22,924 voting stations.They had a choice of 48 parties who were attempting to get into the...
It’s a century since an international civil service came into being. Why it matters
By Henning Melber This year marks a century since a formal international civil service was introduced into the world. The first time this particular breed of professionals came into existence was at the signing of the Versailles Peace Conference during 1919...
We are all Sri Lankans now
By Syed Badrul Ahsan Terrorism is not dead. The purveyors of terror are yet around. That is the lesson coming out of the eight explosions which rocked Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday. With close to 300 people dead and hundreds of others wounded, one is quite certain that...
A Way Forward for Eritrea
By Martin Plaut, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies On 24 and 25 April 2019 a conference at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (ICWS) brought scholars and activists from around the world to discuss the future of Eritrea. Around 70 people...
ICWS@70 – A Real Birthday!
By Dr Sue Onslow - Deputy Director of The Institute of Commonwealth Studies This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and - unlike the more dubious claims and convenient myths of the modern Commonwealth dating from...
The 2019 Indian Elections: is the media complicit or controlled?
Up to 900 million eligible voters in India will go to the polls in April and May. Historically largely well informed, thanks to government and policy discussions in the media before general elections, Indians have been able to vote out incompetent or corrupt governments. But things are looking different this time, explains Dr Kiran Hassan, associate fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies.
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