Features

27.04.2004 Life in the highrise jungle of urban post-communism is not for the fainthearted. New Internationalist's Richard Swift takes the measure of a new capitalism – that’s all shock and no therapy.

21.04.2004 Early Day Motion 333 – which asks the British government to freeze military assistance to Colombia – has just under 200 cross-party signatures, ranking it 12th highest out of 1061 motions. It is above almost every other foreign policy issue including opposition to the Iraq war as well as being higher than the alternatives to tuition top-up fees motion. War on Want asked some of the signatories why they signed.

14.04.2004 There are no journalists in Falluja, Iraq. Jo Wilding got in to take wounded civilians out. OpenDemocracy received her gripping, detailed account on 13 April.

08.04.2004 In April 1994 about a million people were killed in a horrific genocide in Rwanda as the world stood by. Ten years on, CAFOD looks at the ongoing traumatic impact this has on people's lives and the courageous efforts by its people to build a more hopeful future.

08.04.2004 The Brazilian rainforest may not be the most likely hotbed of progressive political activism, but War on Want’s newest partner, the Movement of Babacu nut Breakers (MIQCB), is challenging not only these perceptions but the might of the Brazilian landowners. MIQCB’s head of advocacy visited War on Want recently and explained how people living on the margins are fighting back.

06.04.2004 In February 1968 a remarkable experiment began on a hot, dry, deforested and eroded plateau on the Coromandel coast of Tamil Nadu, South India. Children from 124 countries brought soil from each of their lands as a symbol of international unity and to mark the founding of the future “city” of Auroville where people from all nations and religions would come to live in harmony with each other and with the natural environment. The Indian government and the United Nations gave their blessing. Invited to see how this utopian experiment is progressing, John Rowley recently joined 1,800 Aurovilians and their guests for a starlit celebration of the city's 36th birthday.