Global Voices

Chelsea Manning is serving a 35-year prison sentence for leaking classified US government documents to the website WikiLeaks. Why did you decide to leak documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? These documents were important...

When a man’s severed head turns up in Manila Bay with three gunshots through the cranium, one would reasonably expect the authorities to fast-track the investigation of such a grisly crime. But justice for the victim and the family...

Earlier this week, many people around the world waited with bated breath for a grand jury’s decision in a case where a police officer shot dead an unarmed young black man on the street . While the 9 August shooting of Michael Brown...

Nearly three months have passed since the latest conflict came to an end, but the piles of rubble and empty shells of family homes in Gaza serve as painful reminders of the death and destruction that resulted from Israel’s latest...

Since the first cases of Ebola were reported in March, life in Sierra Leone has changed beyond recognition. So far, the World Health Organization has confirmed more than 5,200 Ebola cases in Sierra Leone alone and more than 13,700...

Unlike nearby villages recently captured by the Peshmerga forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government from the armed group calling itself Islamic State, not a single villager has returned to Barzanke. As I go from house to house, it...

When I was growing up, I was told that abortion was illegal. In school, you were taught about abortion from a religious perspective – that abortion is wrong. At first, I believed this. But I’ve had friends who got pregnant after they...

I wouldn’t say I am an organiser of the demonstrations – there is no one organiser here. But young people and students have definitely been the primary initiators. I fell into this role quite unexpectedly. I first ran for the post of...

Syrian doctor Hasan Wahid survived a shipwreck in the Mediterranean on 11 October 2013 - the second of two shipwrecks near Lampedusa where over 500 people drowned. He told us his family's story of the impossible choices – and terrible...

The streets of Hong Kong are hard to recognize these days. The exhilarating energy filling the city’s main roads, crowded with hopeful protesters, is something I have not seen since I was a young student back in 1989, when we took to...

With momentum building over the US and its international partners carrying out airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Syria as well Iraq, almost nothing has been said about what this might mean in terms of population flows and new...

The next few months will determine whether Chinwe’s life is changed forever. Accused of murder by a corrupt and brutal police force, he faces spending his remaining years behind bars. He is at risk of being convicted by a Nigerian...

As the UN General Assembly begins its meeting today in New York City, Amnesty International is delivering 187,563 signatures to the White House in a global call to cut off weapons fuelling abuses in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian...

My name is Claudia Medina. Two years ago, in the middle of the night, marines entered my home in Veracruz, Mexico. They didn’t show me a court order, but blindfolded me and took me away. For 36 long hours they kept me in solitary at a...

To the mother of James Foley, I want to express my sincerest condolences for the loss of your son, James Foley. It was with shock and sorrow to know what had happened to him by those vicious killers. My thoughts are with you and your...

After a harrowing escape, first from their hometown of Qahtanya and then from Sinjar Mountain – where they were stuck for eight days with very little food or water – Suleiman Shaibo Sido, his wife and their eight children, all members...

On Saturday I listened while survivors of the Gatumba massacre recounted the horrors they witnessed on the night of August 13th 2004, when more than 160 Congolese Banyamulenge Tutsis were hunted down and killed at a refugee camp in...

My brother and I are experiencing the current Israel-Gaza conflict quite differently. He is 20, serving out his military service and has been fighting in Gaza. I, on the other hand, am the Executive Director of Amnesty International...

Last Monday and Tuesday were the scariest days and nights since the current conflict began. The violence finally reached the area where I live. The area where I, my children and neighbours, had thought it was safe. After I finished my...

Across the city of Ramallah in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) hang billboards and banners showing images of bloodshed and destruction alongside the words: “Here now, we are all Gaza”. Many of these posters, which I also saw...