Afghan Women’s Voices Stifled as Taliban Tightens Media Controls

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The author is an Afghanistan-based female journalist, trained with Finnish support before the Taliban take-over. Her identity is withheld for security reasons

Taliban's decree imposes radio ban on Afghan women, further restricting media freedoms. Credit: Learning Together.

Taliban’s decree imposes radio ban on Afghan women, further restricting media freedoms. Credit: Learning Together.

Apr 22 2024 (IPS) – Since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in 2021, the space for women in the public sphere has significantly narrowed, with successive orders further restricting their presence in various sectors, including the media.

The Taliban have recently decreed that women’s voices should no longer be broadcast on radio in four provinces – Khost, Logar, Helmand, and Paktia.

Women and men must stay separate from each other in media houses, and women are even banned from calling radio stations during social discussion programmes to seek solutions to their problems.

The radio stations are constantly monitored by the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue, even where there are no male workers, says Halima, a presenter in one of the radio stations. “Every time they come, they warn us not to laugh and not to joke in the programmes because it is a great sin”, she says.

“We used to have four and a half thousand female journalists and media workers in Afghanistan”, says Ahmad (name withheld), a media activist, “but unfortunately, due to the recent political developments, the imposition of restrictions, and the lack of economic opportunities, many female journalists lost their jobs”. Last year a substantial 87 per cent of female journalists left the industry.

In the eastern provinces, Ahmad says, the Taliban do not allow women’s voices to be broadcast on the radio, while in the Southern provinces, journalists are not allowed to take photos because, to the Taliban it is a great sin.

At the end of February the Afghan Centre for Journalists sent out information to media outlets, according to which, Mohammad Khaled Hanafi, Acting Minister for the Promotion of Virtue warned that women would be banned entirely from working in the media if they show their faces on television or in interviews. A representative for the Ministry was reported brandishing sample pictures of appropriately dressed women with only two eyes peering from behind a hijab.

Female workers now manage only seven media houses. Two of these are in Badakshan one in Balkh, one in Farah one in Herat and two in Kabul – all of these face a huge number of challenges. Although most of these media houses are symbolically run in the name of women, but the important work and decision-making of media are in the hands of men.

In Helmand Province, women are banned entirely from appearing on television, neither should their voices be heard on radio. According to the local newspaper Hasht Sobh, Abdul Rashid Omari, the Taliban security commander in Khost province, has warned local media officials in an official letter that they would be prosecuted if they allow girls or women make phone call to radio stations.

“Some private radio stations in Khost promote moral corruption, a good example of which is broadcasting school lessons or social programs in which many girls participate” the letter states. Adding further, “By abusing these educational and social programs, girls make illegitimate phone calls with the organizers of the programs during the official and unofficial time, which, on the one hand, leads the society to moral corruption and, on the other hand, against Islamic standards”

There is not much space left for the media in Afghanistan, complains Frishta (name withheld). It is even hard for them to breath, but despite all of those restrictions, she continues to work.

“It is true that I am in charge of the radio station, but I can never make important decisions on its operations. The owner of the radio, who is a man, always makes the decisions. I produce the programs according to his guidelines and orders,” says Frishta.

But, the reason why Frishta perseveres is that a few international organizations provide financial support for women’s work in radio and television, and the money is much needed. Among them are United Nations agencies, UNICEF and UNESCO, which support 28 regional or local radio stations across the country in the publication of humanitarian information and training programmes. Also, an EU-funded project,”Support to Afghan Media Resilience to Foster Peace and Security”, has assisted several women’s radio stations produce education, cultural and news programmes.

Besides the increasingly diminishing space for women in the media, the Taliban are clamping down the media in every other way. For instance, Youssef Bawar (name changed), one of the reporters in the Eastern Zone, says journalists of Persian language external broadcasts, such as Afghanistan International TV and AMU TV, cannot work openly inside Afghanistan. If found, they will be arrested and tortured. The Taliban Department of Information and Culture in Nangarhar Province last year, warned journalists that those who criticize the Taliban have no right to complain if they are arrested and treated in whatever way.

According to Yousef Bawar, foreign journalists coming to report on Afghanistan must obtain permission from the Taliban Department of Information and Culture. Once they are inside the country, a member of the Taliban will accompany them around in order to prevent them saying anything negative about the Taliban rule. The Taliban do not disclose charges brought against foreign reporters.

Yalda (not real name) is a journalist who worked as a journalist for seven years but could no longer stand the conditions anymore and left the profession. According to Yalda, the Taliban would come to their office several times a month, inspect their work and ask managers why they are working with women.

“Many times, they warned our manager that if male and female colleagues were seen together, then we wouldn’t have the right to complain about whatever happened to them”, she says.

“The media are not allowed to produce critical reports about the lack of facilities or services in the educational or health sectors in general. They are not allowed to criticize the government, and most of the media’s programs focus on the achievements publicised by the Taliban,” Yalda says.

The fall of the Republic created an adverse impact on the media in Afghanistan and many media outlets closed down and many journalists became unemployed. Previously there were 438 radio stations, but that has now been reduced to only 211; the number of newspapers has fallen from 91 to 13. Afghanistan’s 248 television channels have now been whittled down to just 68 since the Taliban took power three years ago.

Yet the few media outlets that are left still face great difficulties along with the disappearance of female journalists. They are bedevilled with lack of timely access to information, lack of programming support and above all, direct media censorship.

The return of the Taliban has brought about immense challenges across all sectors, but perhaps none as profound as the stifling of media freedom and the suppression of journalists’ voices.

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Democracy’s Contested Territory

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Credit: Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Mar 19 2024 (IPS) – This year more than half the world’s population has the chance to go to the polls. That might make it look like the most democratic year ever, but the reality is more troubling. Too many of those elections won’t give people a real say and won’t offer any opportunity for change.

2024’s bumper election year comes as a record number of countries are sliding towards authoritarianism, and global advances in democratisation achieved over more than three decades have been all but wiped out. In 2023, no authoritarian state became a democracy, and while some countries made marginal improvements in the quality of their democracies – by improving civic space, making inroads on corruption or strengthening institutions – many more experienced often serious declines.

Nearly three quarters of humanity now live under authoritarian regimes. Defending democracy and holding political leaders to account is becoming harder as civic space is shutting down. The proportion of people living in countries with closed civic space, 30.6 per cent, is the highest in years.

The latest State of Civil Society Report, from global civil society alliance CIVICUS, shows how conflict is exacerbating this regressive trend. In war-torn Sudan, hopes for democracy, repeatedly denied since the 2019 overthrow of dictator Omar al-Bashir, receded further as elections were made impossible by the civil war between the military and militia that erupted last April. Russia’s sustained assault on Ukraine brought intensified repression of domestic dissent, and there were no surprises in the recent non-competitive vote that maintained Vladimir Putin’s grip on power.

The ineffectiveness of civilian governments in dealing with jihadist insurgencies has also been the justification used by military leaders to take or retain power in Central and West Africa. As a result, rule by junta is in danger of becoming normalised after decades in which it appeared on the verge of extinction. A ‘coup belt’ now stretches coast to coast across Africa. None of the states that fell victim to military rule in recent years have returned to civilian government, and two more – Gabon and Niger –joined their ranks last year.

Authoritarian regimes that experienced mass protest movements in recent years, including Iran, Nicaragua and Venezuela, have regained their footing and hardened their grip. In states long characterised by autocratic rule, many civil society activists, journalists and political dissidents have sought safety in exile to continue their work. But they often didn’t find it, with repressive states – China, Turkey, Tajikistan, Egypt and Russia are the worst five abusers –increasingly using transnational repression against them.

Many elections are held with no competition. Last year several non-democratic states of various kinds – including Cambodia, the Central African Republic, Cuba, Eswatini, Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe – held votes in which autocratic power was never in question. Voting was ceremonial, its purpose to add a veneer of legitimacy to domination.

Many more regimes that combine democratic and authoritarian traits have been home to recent elections with less predetermined results, where there was at least some chance of the ruling party being defeated. But incumbent advantage was reflected in the fact that change rarely materialised, as seen in Nigeria, Paraguay, Sierra Leone and Turkey. The outlier was Maldives, where voters have a history of rejecting sitting presidents.

Some hybrid regimes, notably El Salvador, experienced further democratic backsliding through the erosion of freedoms and institutional checks and balances – a road typically travelled by populist authoritarians who claim to speak in the name of the people and insist they need to concentrate power to deal with crises.

When voters do have a genuine say, in free and fair elections, they’re increasingly rejecting mainstream parties and politicians. In a time of economic uncertainty and insecurity, many express disappointment with what democracy is offering them. Anti-rights political entrepreneurs are successfully exploiting their anxieties by scapegoating migrants and attacking women’s and LGBTQI+ people’s rights. Right-wing populists using such tactics recently took control of Argentina, came first in elections in the Netherlands and Switzerland and entered government in Finland. Even where they don’t take office, far-right forces often succeed in shifting the political centre by forcing others to compete on their terms. They’re expected to make big gains in the European Parliament elections in June 2024.

Polarisation is on the rise, fuelled by disinformation, conspiracy theories and hate speech. These are made so much easier by AI-powered technologies that are spreading and evolving faster than they can be regulated. The first elections of 2024, including those in Bangladesh and Indonesia, offered cautionary tales of the unprecedented levels of manipulation that AI can enable. We’re likely to see a lot more of this in 2024.

But our research findings support our hope, because they show movement isn’t all in one direction. In Guatemala, a new party born from mass anti-corruption protests was the unlikely 2023 election winner, and people mobilised in numbers to defend the result in the face of powerful political and economic elites. Despite China’s concerted attempts to derail Taiwan’s election, including through cyberattacks, people vindicated their right to have a say in their own future. In Poland, a unity government pledging to restore civic freedoms came to power after eight years of right-wing nationalist rule, offering new potential for civil society to partner in retrieving democratic values and respecting human rights. In Mexico, which is among the many countries going to the polls in 2024, people mobilised in numbers against the threat posed by a democratically elected leader seeking to override checks and balances. Given the dangers it may entail, civil society is pushing for transnational regulation of AI.

Things would be much worse were it not for civil society, which continues to mobilise against restrictions on freedoms, counter divisive rhetoric and strive for the integrity of electoral processes. Throughout 2024, civil society will keep pushing for elections to take place in free and fair conditions, for people to have the information they need, for votes to be properly counted, for losers to accept defeat and for winners to govern in the common good.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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Freedom of Speech Is Silenced in Nicaragua

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Press Freedom

Abigail Hernández (left) appears at a press conference with journalist Wendy Quintero, a member of Independent Journalists and Communicators of Nicaragua at the headquarters of the Nicaragua Nunca Más Rights Collective. CREDIT: José Mendieta / IPS

Abigail Hernández (left) appears at a press conference with journalist Wendy Quintero, a member of Independent Journalists and Communicators of Nicaragua at the headquarters of the Nicaragua Nunca Más Rights Collective. CREDIT: José Mendieta / IPS

MANAGUA, Mar 5 2024 (IPS) – Almost six years after the outbreak of the April 2018 protests, there are no signs left in Nicaragua of the violence that reigned in those days. There is no graffiti on walls or banners with demands or opinions against the leftist regime that has ruled the country since 2007.

Nor are there newspapers or opinion programs or debates on radio and television, let alone press conferences or public rallies.

“The Ortega and Murillo regime’s repressive mechanisms have escalated to dramatic and unimaginable levels. A simple opinion issued on social networks or a criticism of the regime could land you in jail or exile.” — Martha Irene Sánchez

The city of Managua, the capital, is always bustling and active, with markets and shopping malls open at all hours; traffic is usually disorderly and police patrols roam the streets and avenues at all times.

At noon every day, on all radio and television stations, the tired, quiet voice of Vice President Rosario Murillo is heard giving the government’s news, social achievements and propaganda messages such as phrases of love and praise to God.

The program, which has no specific name, is broadcast from Channel 4, the historical property of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), the ruling party, to which the other state media are linked. The private media outlets controlled by the presidential family are also connected, together with dozens of radio stations and portals on social networks.

It first emerged in 2007 as “a message from comrade Rosario, from the Communication and Citizenship Council of the People’s President.”

“Here we are, on Valentine’s Day, with love, friendship, and for us, love and peace, because it is with love and in peace that we can walk ahead, move forward, building the future of all, a fraternal future,” she said on Feb. 13.

Murillo has been Nicaragua’s vice president since she was appointed in 2016 by her husband, President Daniel Ortega, the veteran former guerrilla who has been in office since November 2006.

Murillo is also the regime’s spokesperson and the only authorized voice, among the population of 6.7 million inhabitants of this Central American country, who can speak publicly and freely about anything. No one else can do so.

Freedom of expression in Nicaragua is one of the most repressed and abused rights, said journalist Abigail Hernández, director of the Galería News platform.

Journalist and former political prisoner Lucía Pineda Úbau, together with Martha Sánchez, take part in a protest by Nicaraguan journalists exiled in Costa Rica. CREDIT: José Mendieta / IPS

Journalist and former political prisoner Lucía Pineda Úbau, together with Martha Sánchez, take part in a protest by Nicaraguan journalists exiled in Costa Rica. CREDIT: José Mendieta / IPS

Her opinion, tellingly sent via an encrypted messaging application, is based on experience: three years’ exile.

“The media and journalists are a good thermometer for measuring the quality of freedom of expression,” Hernández told IPS.

“When we have less and less access to sources of information, when they limit us from reporting from the streets, when we can’t take photos or videos freely, when we can’t do our work inside the country, it reveals that there is no freedom of expression,” she said.

She is part of a generation of 242 journalists who have had to go into exile since the 2018 protests, which began against Social Security reforms and ended in a bloodbath provoked by military and police forces, with more than 355 civilian deaths, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

Journalist Martha Irene Sánchez, director of the República 18 platform, holds similar views, also expressed from exile.

“The scenarios for exercising freedom of the press and freedom of expression in Nicaragua have not improved since 2018; on the contrary, we are encountering more and more hostility,” she told IPS.

She is also a member of Independent Journalists and Communicators of Nicaragua (PCIN), a union organization that emerged after the protests and all of whose members went into exile.

“The Ortega and Murillo regime’s repressive mechanisms have escalated to dramatic and unimaginable levels. A simple opinion issued on social networks or a criticism of the regime could land you in jail or exile,” Sánchez said.

A forum for the presentation of the report on freedom of expression and press freedom in Nicaragua, released in September 2023 in San José, Costa Rica. The panel included journalists from Nicaragua from the Connectas platform, including FLED director Guillermo Medrano, (second-right). CREDIT: José Mendieta / IPS

A forum for the presentation of the report on freedom of expression and press freedom in Nicaragua, released in September 2023 in San José, Costa Rica. The panel included journalists from Nicaragua from the Connectas platform, including FLED director Guillermo Medrano, (second-right). CREDIT: José Mendieta / IPS

She cited the example of Victor Ticay, a local journalist in Nandaime, a municipality in the northwestern department of Granada, who went out one day to cover a procession during the Catholic Holy Week of 2023.

The event had not been authorized by the police, whose agents interrupted the religious ceremony and Ticay filmed the parishioners running away from the patrol cars through the streets of the town.

He was arrested, charged with treason and spreading false news and sentenced to eight years in prison.

Guillermo Medrano, director of the Foundation for Freedom of Expression and Democracy (FLED), explained to IPS that between 2020 and 2021, the Nicaraguan regime passed a series of laws criminalizing the practice of journalism and freedom of expression.

A study that FLED released in September 2023 in San José, Costa Rica, a country bordering Nicaragua and the center of the country’s exile community, documented 1329 press freedom violations, mostly perpetrated by state agents in the 2018-2023 five-year period.

The actions were taken against 338 Nicaraguan journalists and 78 media outlets, between April 2018 and April 2023.

They included the police intervention of several media outlets such as 100% Noticias, Confidencial, Trinchera de la Noticia, Radio Darío and La Prensa, the last newspaper circulating in Nicaragua until August 2022.

According to Medrano, the Special Law on Cybercrime, passed in October 2020, provides for prison sentences for the use of information “which in normal democracies should be freely accessible to citizens and the public.”

In theory, the main objective of this legislation is the prevention, investigation, prosecution and punishment of crimes committed by means of information and communication technologies to the detriment of natural or legal persons.

The press freedom advocate also pointed out that the Ortega-Murillo administration, which controls all state institutions and branches of power, as well as the security forces, established the Law for the Defense of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty and Self-Determination for Peace, effective since Dec. 22, 2020.

This law gives discretion to judges and prosecutors in terms of the crime of “treason”, which orders the banishment and denationalization of the accused, as well as life imprisonment through a reform of the penal system.

More than 180 people have already been prosecuted under these laws and at least 22 journalists were stripped of their citizenship and banished in 2023.

“Under these laws, freedom of speech and the press has become a high-risk constitutional right for those who exercise it within Nicaragua,” Medrano denounced.

A report by the regional organization Voces del Sur says that Nicaragua ended 2023 with new forms of repression and threats to press freedom applied through banishment, confiscations, illegal detentions and harassment and surveillance of the families of journalists working in exile.

The outlook, the report warns, is of greater silence about social issues.

Nicaraguan journalists conduct interviews under risk of persecution or criminalization, denounced several reporters in San José, Costa Rica, in August 2023. CREDIT: José Mendieta / IPS

Nicaraguan journalists conduct interviews under risk of persecution or criminalization, denounced several reporters in San José, Costa Rica, in August 2023. CREDIT: José Mendieta / IPS

According to the report, between 2018 and the end of 2022, 54 media outlets disappeared, including 31 radio stations, 15 television channels and eight print media outlets. Of that total, 16 media outlets were confiscated, including La Prensa, the country’s main daily newspaper.

“Sources, even under conditions of anonymity, are harder and harder to find, and the saddest thing is that the State, through its officials, continues to be the main victimizer of citizens’ rights of expression and journalists’ press rights,” Medrano complained.

The non-governmental Human Rights Collective Nicaragua Nunca Más, made up of human rights defenders and activists in exile, states that the Ortega-Murillo administration “has carried out an unprecedented attack on freedom of expression in this country.”

The organization reports that of 28 resolutions of precautionary measures for journalists in Latin America, which have been issued since 2018 by the IACHR on freedom of expression, 15 have been issued for Nicaragua.

However, it says that “none of the precautionary measures” have been complied with by the State and, on the contrary, harassment against the targets has increased.

“And that reveals to us the seriousness of the problem of a small country with disproportionate and unacceptable restrictions on fundamental freedoms,” said one of the agency’s advocates, on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

These complaints find no responses within Nicaragua, because with the exception of Murillo, no one is authorized to answer, but can simply repeat the official discourse: “Nicaragua lives in peace and security.”

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Russia: Moments of Dissent after Two Years of War

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Credit: Horacio Villalobos/Corbis via Getty Images

LONDON, Feb 26 2024 (IPS) – Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine marked its second anniversary on 24 February. And while civil society is offering an immense voluntary effort in Ukraine, in Russia activists have faced intense constraints. The suspicious death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny is part of a great wave of repression. He’s the latest in a long list of people who’ve come to a sudden end after falling out with Vladmir Putin.

Putin is paying a backhanded compliment to the importance of civil society by suppressing it through every possible means. State-directed murder is the most extreme form of repression, but Putin has many more tricks up his sleeve. One is criminalisation of protests, seen when people showed up at improvised vigils to commemorate Navalny, laying flowers at informal memorials, knowing what would happen. Police arrested hundreds and the flowers quickly vanished.

An unrelenting assault

Human rights organisation OVD-Info reports that since the start of the full-scale invasion, the authorities have detained 19,855 people at anti-war protests, brought 894 criminal cases against anti-war activists and introduced 51 new repressive laws.

Among many other Russians jailed for symbolic acts of protest, Crimean artist Bohdan Zizu was handed a 15-year sentence last June for spray-painting a building in the colours of the Ukrainian flag. In November, artist Alexandra Skochilenko was sentenced to seven years for placing information about the war on supermarket price tags. Now people helping Ukrainian refugees living in Russia are being criminalised.

The government is also making it impossible for civil society and independent media organisations to keep working. Last August, the authorities declared independent TV channel Dozhd an ‘undesirable organisation’, in effect banning it from operating in Russia and criminalising anyone who shares its content. In August, courts ordered the closure of the Sakharov Center, a human rights organisation. Through similar means the authorities have forced several other organisations out of existence or into exile.

The state has also designated numerous people and organisations as ‘foreign agents’, a classification intended to stigmatise them as associated with espionage. In November, it added the Moscow Times to the list. The government has also doubled down on its attacks on LGBTQI+ people as part of its strategy to inflame narrow nationalist sentiments. And it keeps passing laws to further tighten civic space. Putin recently approved a law that allows the government to confiscate money and other assets from people who criticise the war.

The state is criminalising journalists as well. In March, it detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on spying charges, sending a signal that international journalists aren’t safe. The authorities are also holding Russian-US journalist Alsu Kurmasheva of Radio Free Europe, detained while paying a family visit to Russia. Putin is likely planning to use them as leverage for a prisoner swap. State authorities have put other journalists based outside Russia on wanted lists or charged them in absentia.

Meanwhile, Putin has pardoned real criminals for joining the fight. They include one of the people jailed for organising the 2006 assassination of pioneering investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

It’s hard to hope for any let-up in the crackdown, at least as long as the war lasts. A non-competitive election will approve another term for Putin in March. No credible candidates are allowed to oppose him, and recently an anti-war politician who’d unexpectedly emerged to provide a focus for dissent was banned from standing. Last year the government amended laws to further restrict media coverage of the election, making it very hard to report on electoral fraud.

Weak or strong?

For a time last year Putin seemed weakened when his former ally Yevgeny Prigozhin rebelled, marching his Wagner Group mercenaries on Moscow. The two sides agreed a deal to end the dispute, and sure enough, two months later, Prigozhin died in a suspicious plane crash.

Putin has reasserted his authority. He may be gaining the upper hand in the war. Russia has greater firepower and is largely surviving attempts to isolate it financially, with repressive regimes such as China, India and Turkey picking up the slack in demand for its fossil fuels. It’s turned itself into a Soviet-style war economy, with state spending strongly focused on the military effort, although that can’t be long-term sustainable. Some of the world’s most authoritarian governments – Iran and North Korea – are also supplying weapons.

In comparison, Ukrainian forces are running out of ammunition. Support for Ukraine’s effort has come under greater strain due to political shifts in Europe and the breaking of political consensus in the USA, with Trump-affiliated Republicans working to block further military aid.

Putin may be riding high, but such is the level of state control it’s hard to get an accurate picture of how popular he is, and the election will offer no evidence. Given repression, protest levels may not tell the full story either – but some have still broken out, including those in response to Navalny’s death.

A vital current of dissent has formed around unhappiness with war losses. Last September, an independent poll suggested that support for the war was at a record low. Morale among Russian troops is reportedly poor and deserters have called on others to quit. Families of men serving in the military have held protests demanding the fighting ends.

Protesters have offered other recent moments of opposition. In November, people held a demonstration in Siberia against a local initiative to further restrict protests. In January, in Baymak in southern Russia, hundreds protested at the jailing of an activist. There’s also domestic unhappiness at high inflation.

Moments don’t make a movement, but they can offer inspiration that turns into one, and that often happens unexpectedly. Putin’s story is far from over. As with tyrants before, he’ll likely look invincible until just before he falls.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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The World Social Forum: The counterweight to the World Economic Forum

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Opening of the World Social Forum 2024 in Kathmandu

KATHMANDU, Nepal, Feb 23 2024 (IPS) – This week the 2024 annual meeting of the World Social Forum (WSF) was held in Nepal. There were fifty thousand participants from over 90 countries, exchanging strategies to address the multiple global crises, from climate catastrophes to unfettered capitalism, inequality, social injustice, wars and conflict.

The WSF was created in 2001 as a counterbalance to the elitism of the World Economic Forum (WEF). The WEF, founded and chaired by a private financial sector foundation, fosters the influence of the corporate world among governments in the luxury ski resort of Davos (Switzerland).

Isabel Ortiz

By contrast, the WSF was created as an arena for alternative thinking, where the grassroots and social avant-garde could gain a voice, challenging the neoliberal idea that “there is no alternative” (TINA); instead affirming that “another world is possible” built upon peace, human rights, real democracy, equity, and justice.

While Davos is the meeting for the 1%, the wealthiest people in the planet, Kathmandu is the meeting for the rest of us. The UN Secretary-General extended his best wishes for WSF 2024 for “restoring hope and finding innovative solutions for people and the planet.”

Indeed, the WSF 2024 was hotbed of ideas, alternative experiences and strategies. There is no concluding summary or annual declaration because the WSF organizers seek to maintain a plurality and diversity of messages. The following points reflect my personal overview of the key topics discussed:

    • Denouncing the genocide in Gaza, a demand for an immediate ceasefire and the establishment of a free state of Palestine.

    • Refuse militarization and wars: Cut military spending and power, promote peace and democracy. Defense spending is increasing while austerity policies cut social spending, this trend must be reversed.

    • Organize against the rise of the far right: Radical right governments around the world have eroded democracy, human rights and civil society. Reports were made of censorship, repression, abuses of justice, unjustified raids and unfair imprisonment of progressive citizens, by the governments of Modi in India, Duterte in Philippines, Orban in Hungary, Duda in Poland, Al-Sisi in Egypt, Trump in the US, Bolsonaro in Brazil, among others There were also many reports of abusive litigation by corporations and politicians against journalists, activist researchers and CSOs, that are silencing critical voices.

    • Fight inequality to counter the excessive concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a small elite. Inequality is the result of deliberate political and economic choices, and it can be reversed to build a just, equal and sustainable world.

    • End Austerity, illegitimate debt and neoliberal economic policies that have failed citizens resoundingly. These outdated policies, imposed by international financial institutions (IFIs) like the IMF and the World Bank through the Ministries of Finance and G20, mostly benefit corporations and investors in the US and in a few Northen countries, result in real and lasting harm to the lives of ordinary people. There are alternative economic policies, such as the adequate taxation of wealthy millionaires and corporations, that can finance prosperity for people and planet.

    • Redress violations of human rights for women, Dalits (the ‘untouchables’) and lower castes, LGBT, persons with disabilities and different ethnicities; demanding enactment and implementation of inclusive policies and strategies to eliminate class, caste, gender and race-based disparities.

    • The 2024 Feminist Forum focused on addressing systemic barriers that impede women’s rights, from patriarchy to macroeconomic policies, through transformative feminist action that leads to change.

    • Ensure public services, universal social security or social protection, and labor rights for all, including informal workers and migrants, instead of the current austerity driven trend to privatize or corporatize public services, to reduce welfare benefits and to deregulate the labor market.

    • Peasant protests and movements: La Via Campesina is the largest movement today with two hundred million peasant members fighting for food security, against agribusiness and GMOs. It is very active, has alliances with unions, indigenous peoples’ movements and it is a good model for other movements.

    • Climate Justice: A number of sessions discussed climate catastrophes, the IFIs support for fossil fuels, just transitions, habitat, and sustainable development.

The lack of will of the world’s political and economic elites to resolve today’s multiple crisis fuels discontent among citizens and disillusionment with conventional parties. People everywhere are losing faith in governments, institutions, and economic and political systems. Governments and world leaders would do well to listen and to act upon the ideas coming from the World Social Forum.

Isabel Ortiz, Director of the think-tank Global Social Justice, was Director of the International Labor Organization and UNICEF, and a senior official at the United Nations and the Asian Development Bank.

IPS UN Bureau

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Pakistan’s Election Outcomes Leave Many Unhappy

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Credit: Rebecca Conway/Getty Images

LONDON, Feb 22 2024 (IPS) – Pakistan’s 8 February election has resulted in an uneasy compromise that few wanted or expected. There’s little indication the outcome is going to reverse recent regression in civic freedoms.

Army calls the shots

Around 128 million people can vote in Pakistan, but it’s the army, the sixth-biggest in the world, that’s always had the upper hand. In recent decades, it’s preferred to exert its power by strongly influencing the civilian government rather than outright military rule. Prime ministers have allied with the military to win power and been forced out when disagreements set in. No prime minister has ever served a full term.

In April 2022, Prime Minister Imran Khan was ousted through a parliamentary vote of no-confidence. But it was common knowledge this was the military’s will. Khan, having cosied up to the generals to come to power in 2018, had publicly and vocally fallen out with them over economic and foreign policy. He had to go.

Khan’s fall from grace was swift. He survived an assassination attempt in November 2022. In December 2023, he was barred from running in the election. Just ahead of voting he was found guilty in three separate trials, with the longest sentence being 14 years. Bushara Bibi, Khan’s wife, was jailed too.

The army turned to a former foe, Nawaz Sharif, three times previously prime minister. After he last fell out of favour in 2017, he was forced out and found guilty of corruption. Yet for this election he’d evidently patched things up enough to become the army’s favoured anti-Khan candidate.

A catalogue of restrictions

But voters didn’t go along with the army’s choice. Candidates running as independents but affiliated with Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party won the most seats, albeit short of an outright majority. Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) came second, with the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), its partner in the 2022 coalition of convenience that replaced Khan, third.

This was a shock result, given the obstacles placed in the PTI’s way. The government postponed the election from November to February so, it said, it could hold a census. The suspicion was that the move was to allow more time to prosecute Khan and lean on his party’s politicians to swap allegiances.

Sure enough, some PTI representatives were banned from standing and others faced harassment and violence seeking to persuade them to distance themselves from Khan. In the biggest blow, PTI candidates were banned from using Khan’s cricket bat symbol on ballot papers. Symbols are crucial for mobilising party support, since over 40 per cent of people are unable to read. PTI candidates were forced to run as independents.

There was never any prospect of equal space for campaigning. Last year, the media regulator applied a de facto ban on mentioning Khan’s name on TV. In August 2023, it directed TV channels not to give airtime to 11 people, among them Khan and journalists considered sympathetic towards him. As the election neared, the military interfered in the media on a daily basis, telling them which stories to run.

Given these constraints, and the near impossibility of holding physical rallies, PTI used online opportunities. Khan kept up a virtual presence through AI-generated videos. WhatsApp was used to inform PTI supporters which independent candidates to vote for.

But constraints came here too. When the PTI organised an online rally in December, authorities blocked access to major social media platforms and slowed the internet down. On election day, they imposed a full internet and mobile data shutdown for the first time in Pakistan’s electoral history. The authorities claimed they’d done so on security grounds – the Islamic State terrorist group carried out two deadly bombings the day before – but it made independent oversight of voting and counting much harder. Further restrictions on Twitter followed after the results were out.

This pressure on the PTI and its supporters came on top of the ongoing repression of civic freedoms by successive governments. Pakistani authorities have continued to criminalise, threaten and harass human rights activists, restrict online freedoms, intimidate journalists, censor media and violently repress peaceful protests, particularly by women’s rights activists and people from the Baloch and Pashtun ethnic groups.

Uncertainty ahead

Despite the highly unlevel playing field, results show that many took the opportunity the election offered to communicate discontent with military influence, a political establishment dominated by two families and the dire economic conditions. A youthful population has found something appealing in Khan’s fiery populist rhetoric.

But what’s resulted is something few voters likely wanted. The PML-N and PPP quickly announced a resumption of their coalition. The PML-N’s Shehbaz Sharif, Nawaz Sharif’s brother, is set to return as prime minister. It would appear to be a coalition united by little more than a determination to keep the PTI out of power, suggesting a weak and fractious government will result.

Strong opposition can be expected. PTI supporters aren’t accepting this quietly. The party claims rigged votes denied it more seats. Thousands have protested and numerous legal cases have been filed. Their claims were given credence when an official in Rawalpindi stepped forward to say he’d been involved in election rigging. One politician from a minor party also announced he was renouncing his seat because the vote had been rigged to exclude the PTI-backed candidate.

Khan is no democratic hero. When he was in power and enjoyed the military’s favour, he used the same tools of repression now being applied to him and his party. Civic space conditions worsened under Khan and there’s been no let-up since.

The bigger problem is a system where the military calls the shots, sets the parameters that elected governments must stay within and actively works to suppress dissent. With many young voters angry and wanting change, problems can only be building up for the future. It’s vital that civic space be opened up so people have peaceful means to express dissent, seek change and hold power to account.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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