by Romane Lenoir The forests of Borneo are a treasure of biodiversity, home to more than a million Dayak Indigenous people whose livelihoods directly depend on these forests. However, in the past decades, multiple government-enacted projects have threatened this peaceful equilibrium. Launched in 2005, the Palm Oil Mega project continues to devastate this environment. More…
Category: Health
Innovation fuels the change to Green Energy
by Kofo Babalola Imagine living in a society where all the electricity is generated from solar, wind, water and geothermal energy. This is a complete shift to green energy which is dependable on the weather that is continuously fluctuating. There is no way of determining the reliability of this source of energy. What if there…
Understanding Sexual Violence in Contemporary Warfare
Natalie Chu A war is being raged on the bodies of men, women and children. In regions of intense armed conflict, massive civilian populations uprooted from their homes are experiencing sexual violence on an unimaginable scale. In August 2014, the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) captured thousands of Yazidis when their forces…
Criminalising Illness: The War on Drugs
Sophie-Jo Gavin The term ‘war on drugs’ denotes a governmental agenda targeting the eradication of drug use; generally labelled by officials as being for the greater good, the efficacy and morality of anti-drug campaigns in practice is debatable as they often carry a dark undercurrent, ranging from institutional racism, as in the United States, to…
Climate Change’s Losing Battle
Dessi Eneva 2030 is the often-sighted deadline for climate change action. After that, the IPCC recently warned, we are doomed if temperatures aren’t kept to a maximum of 1.5°C increase from pre-industrial levels. Even half a degree above that, in contrast to the previously assumed limit, has the power to worsen extreme weather – drought,…
Nord Stream II: Russia’s latest ‘Energy Weapon’?
Charlotte Gardner Proposed Nord Stream II route. Source: Gazprom. Nord Stream II, the new export gas pipeline that will travel across the Baltic Sea from Russia to Europe, has become the latest example of Russia’s foreign policy strategies abroad. The pipeline is supposedly a commercial project, aiming to increase the amount of gas exported directly…
Eugenics and Human Rights in the Modern World
Zoe Bodinetz United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights 16. Marriage and Family. Every grown-up has the right to marry and have a family if they want to. Men and women have the same rights when they are married, and when they are separated. Eugenics is defined as the science of improving a human population by…
Chernobyl 2.0 – A Real Danger or An Irrational Fear?
Dani Podgoretskaya As the Belarussian government finishes construction of the controversial Ostrovets Nuclear Power Plant, multiple international experts express their concerns over the project. The Lithuanian energy minister, Zygimantas Vaiciunas, even went as far as calling the project “a threat to our national security, public health, and the environment.” Photo: Ostrovets is to Vinyus as Heathrow…
The Political Dimensions of the Female Body: Poland on Reproductive Health Rights
Saffy Mirghani Europe is largely permissive of women’s right to abortion: most of its countries present no obstacles to women within their first trimester seeking to carry out the procedure, and access to abortion is typically based on the country’s prevailing societal outlook, as opposed to the stringent imperative of law. While several European countries…
Female Genital Mutilation: Tradition or Torture?
Iona Jenkins ‘FGM violates a person’s rights to health, security and physical integrity, the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment’ –WHO Female genital mutilation comprises any procedure made without medical need to remove part or all of the external female genitalia. There are no health benefits to FGM; it…
Women’s healthcare under Trump
Iona Jenkins Whilst the previous system determined financial aid for medical needs on family income, local cost of health insurance, age and smoking status, the new Republican plan tax credits on age, without taking other crucial considerations into account. One of the key changes to the American healthcare system set out by the Patient Protection…
Arguments for a Compensated Organ Donation Scheme
Alexandra Booysen UCL Laws Student Scientific advances have made the transplant of, and therefore trade in, human organs a reality. This raises questions of ethics, law and human rights. The death of about 500 people annually in the UK because of insufficient donor organs has made these questions more pressing.[1] In practice, this debate mostly…
The Amnesty 