Hopes that African Union leaders would pressure Robert Mugabe to negotiate a power-sharing agreement with the opposition took a blow today when they received him as “a hero” at the AU summit in Egypt.

Mugabe attended the AU …

Never mind checking the sports scores. Wireless technology can help promote free expression and democracy, according to a report in the journal Science.

Providing wireless access isn’t easy where repressive regimes distrust open communication. But states have international obligations …

North Korea today destroyed a cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear plant where it processed weapons-grade plutonium, in response to the US removing the communist regime from its terrorism blacklist. Kim Jong Il‘s secretive Stalinist regime yesterday submitted a …

Few regions of the world are as inhospitable for human rights and democracy activists as the East and Horn of Africa, a region comprising more than its share of failed states. Hassan Shire Sheikh concedes as much, but he …

Dozens of journalists, dissidents and free-expression activists have been harassed, arrested and imprisoned in the run-up to the Olympics, monitors report. Meanwhile, Shanghai authorities have informed dissidents, petitioners and other “controlled” citizens that they are barred from leaving the city …

Egyptian dissident Saad Eddin Ibrahim has been awarded the Pundik Freedom Award by the Danish daily newspaper ‘Politiken’. The award of 100, 000 Danish Kroner (US$20,000), given to leading international human rights and democracy advocates, was made in recognition of …

International labor unions have expressed concern at the arrest of Gholamreza Gholamhosseini, an activist with the Vahed Syndicate, Iran’s independent bus drivers’ union. Gholamhosseini, a member of the Vahed Syndicate executive, was arrested by police in Tehran at …

Georgia’s 2003 Rose Revolution, once hailed as a democratic opening, has in fact led to a closing of democratic space, according to Giorgi Areshidze, director of the Partnership for Social Initiatives (PSI), a Tbilisi-based NGO. President Mikheil Saakashvili has taken …

Dr. Susan Alberts asks: Why do some countries succeed in consolidating democracy while others do not?

The ability to establish constitutionalism-defined as wide­spread adherence to a country’s basic democratic rules and procedures-may offer one possible answer.  Analyzing political actors’ incen­tives…

The UK-based bipartisan Henry Jackson Society: Project for Democratic Geopolitics is circulating an Open Letter on Zimbabwe.

To sign the letter, simply respond by email to timothy.stafford@henryjacksonsociety.org if you agree to add your name. The deadline for signatures is 3pm …