by Aloosh Devrim
-Syria-

Farewells are generally emotional but not as great as we experienced this evening. It had not been a social visit with family friends. The family of four, including two handsome boys, had escaped the military witch-hunt of protestors in the Syrian city of Mouddamiyyeh, one of the besieged towns on the outskirts of Damascus.

by Hebah Ahmed
-USA-

This article originally appeared on Silent Heroes, Invisible Bridges, an Istanbul-based not-for-profit media organization that promotes peaceful co-existence amongst nations, cultures, and religions. WIP Contributor Alia Turki Al-Rabeo is a founding member of the website which offers exclusive content in English, Arabic, Turkish and Urdu languages. By republishing Hebah’s opinion piece, we support Silent Heroes’ objective to add healthy debate and discourse about hurdles in cross-cultural, cross-religion integration such as the niqab ban in France. – Ed.

by Victoria Stirling
-Canada-

What legacy are we going to leave our descendants? Will human beings worldwide re-evaluate our actions, our politics, and our economics according to their effects on the whole network of life? Today the ethics of ecology are demanding to be recognized.

by Lesley D. Biswas
-India-

Poverty, illiteracy and gender disparity are engrained in the Indian society. Key indicators of social development such as health and education are below average. The World Bank estimates India is home to 456 million people who live below the poverty line, earning less than $ 1.25 per day. This is equal to 33 percent of the world’s poor population.

by Holly Kearl
-USA-

What does a woman in Bangalore, India, standing on a busy street corner, waiting for a bus have in common with a teenage girl in Queens, New York, dressed in her school uniform, waiting for the subway? Or with a woman in her 20s in Drammen, Norway, wearing a winter coat, walking home alone from a friend’s house after dark?

For three years, women like them, hailing from 30 countries, have shared their street harassment stories on my blog, Stop Street Harassment. They detail the sexually explicit comments, sexist remarks, following, groping, vulgar gestures, whistling, and public masturbation men impose on them on the streets, on public transportations, and in stores - simply because they are female and in public.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
-Germany-

“Offshore drilling and nuclear power plants,” I wrote on my Facebook status. “Too much faith in technology or disregard for future generations?” This was the day after the first hydrogen explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant where the back-up cooling systems were crippled by the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in Japan last month. As more explosions followed, news trickled in, and confirmed that the world was facing another serious nuclear crisis - twenty-five years after Chernobyl.

by Moira Birss
-USA/Colombia-

In the middle of one of the most fertile regions in Colombia, amidst a five-decade armed conflict, a small peasant community manages to serve as a model of civilian resistance against violence and displacement. But as I saw when I returned in February to the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, located in the northwestern province of Antioquia, their sustainable agriculture projects not only defend against violence but also create life.

by Sarah Irving
-Australia-

“It wasn’t our dream to come and eat at the white man’s table, to work for the white man as a slave,” says Reverend Dr Djiniyini Gondarra, a Yolngu elder. Dr Gondarra is one of the indigenous voices heard in Our Generation, an important new film documenting the impact of the ‘Northern Territory Emergency Response.’ Since 2007 this government initiative has decimated the human rights of the Yolngu and other indigenous Australian peoples, collectively known to most of the world as Aboriginal peoples.