Ali Riaz

Although the US presidential election is less than 90 days away, it is—unlike any other election year before—not at the centre of public discourse or media coverage.

It’s mind-boggling to think of a situation where there is an urgency, poor people are in dire need, and money is in the hands of the government allocated to help those in need, but the money is not being distributed properly.

Mysterious events surrounding the ‘disappearance’ and ‘recovery’ of photojournalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol are by now well known.

President Donald Trump’s decision to halt funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) in the midst of a global pandemic is not only reckless

Little did we know on the night of December 31, 2019 that we were about to begin not only a new year but a new epoch which can only be compared to a century-old calamity.

Continued backsliding of democracy for more than a decade, globally and domestically, has raised the question—where are we heading?

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on Myanmar about taking emergency measures for the protection of the Rohingyas, delivered at The Hague on Thursday, is historic on many counts and provides a glimmer of hope for the persecuted community of Myanmar. The question is: where do we go from here?

The most appropriate description of the year 2019, particularly of Bangladeshi politics, is perhaps a dialogue in Act 3, Scene 4, of the Twelfth Night of William Shakespeare: “If this were play’d upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.”

The influx of people from India crossing the borders to Bangladesh in the past weeks warrants the attention of Bangladeshi policymakers. Unfortunately, the foreign minister’s recent statement that

As democratic backsliding has become a global phenomenon and hybrid regimes—a political system which has both democratic and authoritarian traits—have proliferated, freedom of the press has come under threat all around the world.

Violence in Bhola preceded with a familiar pattern of events, blaming a member of a religious minority for demeaning Islam, creating a frenzy and then mobilising the angry people to the street.

“Ban student politics” has become the rallying cry for the past few days, in both the social and mass media.

We are living in a time which can no longer be described as a democratic era. Almost 61 percent of the global population now live

The bizarre phenomenon called updating the National Registry of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, completed under the auspices of the Indian central government with direct supervision of the Indian Supreme Court, which made 1.9 million people stateless citizens,

More than a week has passed since Articles 370 and 35A of the Indian constitution have been scrapped by the Narendra Modi-led BJP government.

Although there is no universally accepted definition of the term governance, it has become a buzzword since the 1980s.

The public announce-ment of the resignation of Rahul Gandhi as president of the Indian National Congress on Wednesday was surprising and expected, at once.

The opening phrase of a soliloquy uttered by Prince Hamlet in Act 3, Scene 1 of the play Hamlet—“To be or not to be?”—was about life and death, not about politics; yet perhaps this aptly captures the current US political scene. Facing a decision of great significance, the Democratic Party leaders of the House of Representatives seem to be in the same quandary.

The wave of terrorist attacks in Sri Lankan churches and hotels frequented by foreigners, which killed at least 290 people and injured around 500, is astounding both in scale and sophistication in planning.

The idiomatic expression, “Don't throw the baby out with the bath water”, is not something we expect to use every day. The origin of it