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Abstract by the authors: In 2018, Saudi Arabia and Netflix were forced to confront the limits of freedom of speech online. The kingdom requested that the streaming giant remove a critical episode of the satirical show Patriot Act with Hassan Minhaj from its local service, and the latter complied at the risk of reputational damage. Focusing on the controversy surrounding this case, this article explores how both state and business adopt and adapt to changes in technology and how each reasserts its sphere of influence in the digital era. We argue that state and business are developing a symbiotic relationship in the context of de-territorialized digital capitalism. Such a relationship allows both entities to engage in mutual interdependence that accommodates the interests of the other while avoiding harmful consequences and deleterious effects. In practice, the state exercises targeted censorship while businesses abide by controlled compliance. The account and analysis presented regarding the logic of symbiotic relationship draws attention to the various ways in which global media players in the digital era have navigated territoriality and the extent of state–business mutual accommodation.
Abstract by the authors: In the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, ongoing armed conflict increases the incidence of gender-based violence (GBV) and presents a distinct and major barrier to care delivery for all survivors of GBV. A specific challenge is providing emergency contraception, HIV prophylaxis and treatment for sexually transmitted infections to all survivors within 72 hours of violence. To address the multiple barriers to providing this time-sensitive medical care, Global Strategies and Panzi Hospital implemented the Prevention Pack Program. The Prevention Pack is a pre-packaged post-rape medical kit containing antiretroviral post-exposure prophylaxis, antibiotics for treatment of sexually transmitted infections and emergency contraception. The Prevention Pack Program combines community sensitisation about post-rape medical care with the provision of Prevention Packs and the implementation of a cloud-based and Global Positioning System (GPS)–enabled inventory management system. The Panzi Hospital gender-based violence team implemented the Prevention Pack Program at Panzi Hospital and 12 rural clinics in the South Kivu Province. The data manager took GPS coordinates of each site, provided an initial stock of Prevention Packs and then called all sites daily to determine demand for post-rape care and Prevention Pack consumption. Inventory data were entered into the GPS-enabled cloud-based inventory management system. Project personnel used the consumption rate, trends and geolocation of sites to guide Prevention Pack restocking strategy. Between 2013 and 2017, a total of 8206 individuals presented for care following rape at the study sites. Of the 1414 individuals who presented in the rural areas, 1211 (85.6%) did so within the first 72 hours of reported rape. Care was delivered continuously and without a single stockout of medication across all sites. The Prevention Pack Program provided timely and consistent access to emergency contraception, HIV prophylaxis and treatment for sexually transmitted infections for rape survivors in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Abstract by the authors: Survivors of sexual violence not only face physiological and psychological after-effects of abuse, they may also face community exclusion. Unlike other studies which have taken the perspective of the survivors, this study examines how the community perceives the reintegration process for female sexual violence survivors in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). We find a stark contrast between the perceived low prospects for reintegration in the relational sphere (i.e. community, family, and husband) and the relatively low barriers to reintegration in the professional sphere (i.e. market and job). Reintegration is also more difficult after rapes by soldiers than by civilians.
Abstract by the authors: What is the impact of foreign troop support on combatant-perpetrated sexual violence against civilians? We hypothesize that biased troop support increases the risk of sexual violence by the subordinate party both as a consequence of strategic considerations and as a product of a situation increasingly conducive to opportunistic behavior. Time-series cross-section analyses of all civil wars during 1989–2012 are largely supportive of our expectation. Rebel groups are more likely to perpetrate sexual violence the more troop support the state receives. Likewise, state forces are more prone to commit sexual violence the more they are challenged by troops supporting the rebel group(s).
Abstract by the author: The article focuses on the Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani activist for female education, won international renown after she was shot by the Taliban in Mingora, Pakistan . Topics include she was a courageous fighter in the struggle to help girls in Pakistan get an education; terrorist group called the Taliban had plotted to kill Malala because they saw her as a threat to their way of life; and the Taliban ordered all girls' schools to close.
Abstract by the author: The article profiles activist Malala Yousafzai, including the attempt on her life by the terrorist organization the Taliban.
Abstract by the authors: In contemporary times, the status of Muslim women has become a lens to approach and engage with Muslim societies. Embedded in these narratives is an image of Muslim women as oppressed victims of their patriarchal families and societies. In this article, we focus on the lived experiences of educated Muslim women from Pakistan and India to examine what empowerment means for them. We are particularly interested in examining how these participants, being some of the first and only educated women in their rural and low-income communities, employ their distinct educated status to construct what it means to be empowered Muslim women in their contexts.
Abstract by the author: The women of Iran are intimately familiar with repression and segregation. Iran’s mandatory dress code—veiling—is but one of many restrictions that regulate and control women’s bodies and shape their sense of agency and freedom.
Abstract by the author: Through an ethnographic study of a women’s empowerment program in Tehran, and in-depth interviews with its workers, I examine the hegemony of liberal feminist conceptions of empowerment among secular and cosmopolitan middle-class activists and NGO directors. This study demonstrates that activists’ liberal conception of agency inadvertently erased the agency of the marginalized clients and their rights-based advocacy did not equip the subaltern women with a framework of gender justice that would find currency in their communities. While NGO staff and administrators contested the practicality of advocacy for sexual autonomy among marginalized women, the subaltern clients rejected the culturally reductionist accounts of their oppression by prioritizing economic justice. Rather than positing liberal and secular feminist discourses as over-determining, this study reveals that local actors continuously debate and contest globally circulating “women’s rights packages” in accordance with local norms, their standpoint, and lived experiences.
Abstract by the author: This essay focuses on the Iranian woman's veil from various perspectives including cultural, social, religious, aesthetic, as well as political to better understand this object of clothing with multiple interpretive meanings. The veil and veiling are uniquely imbued with layers of meanings serving multiple agendas. Sometimes the function of veiling is contradictory in that it can serve equally opposing political agendas.
Abstract by the author: [...] Before 2011, most analysts took the stability of Arab autocracies for granted. This was wrong. As popular pressure drove four long-ruling dictators from power—Tunisia’s Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi, and Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh—some observers rushed to assume that an unstoppable democratic wave had arrived; others warned that democratization would open the door to Islamist domination. Both were wrong. In 2012, most thought that the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad was finished. Wrong. In 2013, supporters of Egypt’s military coup argued it would put the country back on a path toward democracy. Wrong again.
Abstract by the authors: The story of the ‘Arab Spring’ as a revolt of young people against autocracy does not stand up to survey analysis at country level. Data from the Arab Transformations Survey show that young people were over-represented as participants, but it is necessary to stretch the concept of ‘youth’ into middle age in some countries to say this, there were plenty of older participants, and the protests were aimed less at political rights and more at social justice. Fundamental political changes have been expected in MENA which would sweep away autocratic rule in favour of democratisation, as the values of successive younger generations became individualized, liberalized and secularized under the influence of economic and market development and the spread of education, but there is very little evidence that this is what occurred in the Arab Uprisings. Whether young or older, protestors were looking for regime change, an end to corruption and a reduction in IMF-inspired austerity, but political freedoms and democratic governance do not appear to have been at the top of their agenda.
Abstract by the authors: Focal days of protest are increasingly common to episodes of revolutionary mobilization. This paper explores the significance of focal days in patterning sustained protest in Egypt and Tunisia from 2011 to 2012. In Egypt, resource-poor activists exploited the confluence of worshippers on Fridays to mobilize mass transitory protest. This reliance on ritualized action hindered cross-sectoral coordination and meant mass protest often failed to inflict a direct economic cost. In Tunisia, there was no focal day of protest, in large part due to the coordinating hand of trade unions. In consequence, mass protest was more likely to span multiple sites, sectors, and tactics. These results suggest that oppositions can sustain mass mobilization even absent organizational capacity, but a reliance on a focal day limits the potential of protest over a political transition. Supplementary analyses point to the applicability of our findings to a number of other Arab Spring countries.
Abstract by the authors: Coming as a surprise to most observers and following the self‐immolation of a street vendor in a remote town of central Tunisia, the Jasmine Revolution of 2010–2011, the first uprising of the Arab Spring, has often been seen as a success story for digital communication through widespread use of social media. We suggest that this applied to the later phase of the protests in Tunisia but not to the initial phase, which occurred in local areas in impoverished and marginalized regions with highly limited access to the Internet. The initial phase lasted a full 10 days before the protests reached major cities where social media operated. Building on Tilly's concept of trust network, we offer the concept of local solidarities as key to the beginning of the Arab Spring uprisings and as encompassing spatial proximity, shared marginalized status, and kinship, all of which combined to serve as a basis for trust and collective action.
Abstract by the authors: The article offers an analysis of the situation of human rights in Cuba, taking into account the legal framework established by the new Constitution. When Raul Castro took office, he implemented economic changes which were not translated into the political sphere. On the contrary, human rights violations continued, and in some cases have increased. The research presented here is based on interviews conducted between 2016 and 2019 in different cities in Cuba and the follow-up of information in different media sources on illegal arrests on the island. The main goal is to ascertain the intensity of human rights violations in Cuba.
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