Strength & Solidarity

Strength&Solidarity is taking a break and that gives us a chance to re-up some favourite episodes. Here’s Coda #3 in which US civil rights veteran Charles Cobb Jr looks back to 1963 and a chance meeting between some...

It can sometimes seem as though fighting for queer rights in a hostile society is an unwinnable project. All too often, punitive laws, state violence, economic exclusion and social hostility are stacked against a...

If you are one of the people feeling that things are not going to be all right, this one’s for you. Coda #46 comes from Bill McKibben , veteran climate change activist and founder of multiple campaigns and organisations...

What’s your image of an activist? Someone in a bandanna facing down a line of cops? Or chaining themselves to a tree? You may well have imagined someone young because that’s the stereotype: the student ready to take on...

A young boy growing up in South Bend, Indiana, goes to the library every week with his mother and comes back with a brown grocery bag full of books. He doesn’t know it then, but it’s the start of a lifelong journey of...

The levels of stress and – at worst – burn-out in the human rights field are, anecdotally at least, at remarkably high levels. That may not be surprising in an era of rising authoritarianism, shrinking funds and...

These are stressful times for human rights activists where every day, a new development may cause despondency or rage. Feminist activist and campaigner Francoise Girard explains why you really need some seventeenth...

The United States has gone, in less than six months, from being seen by many as a defender of democracy and human rights, to being the latest – and most powerful - administration to embrace authoritarianism. Amid a...

What are the big takeaways from five years of conversation between 200 human rights leaders from nearly 70 countries? How did activism and solidarity get sidelined as vehicle for human rights work, in favour of the...

Fleeing your country to avoid persecution is a deeply disruptive experience, whether it is the loss of contact with loved ones, being marginalized from the work or activism that gave you purpose, reckoning with the...

When Venezuelan human rights lawyer Mario D’Andrea Canas, escaped from Venezuela last year, he could no longer glance up every morning at the mountain that towers over his beloved home city of Caracas. Nature’s grandeur...

Passionate political debate is a cherished pastime in Nigeria. There’s a rich tradition of active participation too, whether it is in support of a favoured electoral candidate, or protesting against oppressive practices...

Farah Abou El Sel recalls the mornings in her Lebanese childhood, when the silken, plangent voice of Fairuz could be heard in every street, welcoming the day. Farah grew up hearing and loving the songs without thinking...

In the quarter century since Iran’s Islamic revolution, thousands of Iranians have left their home to live in exile. Although they all have a country in common, that diaspora is hugely diverse – coming from different...

When Burcu Meltem Arik first read Nazim Hikmet’s poem, The Walnut Tree, she exhaled with relief at its message. She reflects that nature has much to teach us - especially the value of community and connectedness for...