On August 21, South Africa’s Equality Court ruled that gratuitous displays of the Apartheid-era flag counted as hate speech and discrimination. Confronting history head on, Judge Phineas Mojapelo wrote in his ruling that the flag represents “a vivid symbol of white supremacy and black disenfranchisement and suppression,” and flying it, “besides being racist and discriminatory, demonstrates a clear intention to be hurtful.” 

The United Nations Security Council meets at the UN Headquarters in New York on July 13, 2011. (Mike Segar/courtesy Reuters) The World Next Week podcast is up. Bob McMahon and I talked about the UN …

Reading selections for the weekend of January 30, 2016.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ departure at the end of the year as leader of the Church of England and Anglican churches around the world brings to mind the growing importance of Africans i…

Nigeria’s criminal justice system is in urgent need of reform. Prisons are overcrowded, holding 73,314 people despite having capacity for only 50,153. Of those held, an estimated 70 percent are awaiting trial and have not yet been convicted of a crime; reports find that some people have been awaiting trial for as long as thirteen years. The chronic underfunding of the justice system exacerbates overcrowding and pre-trial detention.