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September-October 2011

A special This panel: The legacy of Canada’s 10-year Afghan mission

This Magazine Staff

On October 7, 2001, U.S. and U.K. forces began an invasion of Afghanistan aimed at capturing or killing the perpetrators of 9/11, believed to be sheltered there by the Taliban. Canadian forces soon joined the fray as part of the International Security Assistance Force, beginning The Forces’ longest and most controversial military engagement in history. […] More »
July-August 2011

Unearthing Vancouver’s forgotten utopian UN conference, Habitat ’76

Peter Tupper

Walk around Vancouver’s Jericho Beach in 2011 and you’ll see some odd architecture: an empty concrete wharf, a welded steel railing that overlooks English Bay, a strange rail embedded beneath the sailing club. These are all that is left of a complex of five gigantic aircraft hangars that was home to an international conference 35 […] More »
May-June 2011

This45: Linda McQuaig on the United Nations Emergency Peace Service

Linda McQuaig with Katie Addleman

In the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, the Canadian government commissioned the departments of Foreign Affairs and National Defence to investigate the feasibility of a United Nations rapid-response service. The research was co-directed by Peter Langille, an academic and defence analyst known as a critic of NATO’s military doctrine, a key figure in the development […] More »

Wednesday WTF: 79 UN countries voted that it's OK to execute queers

simon wallace

On November 16 the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly (Social, Humanitarian & Cultural) debated a resolution demanding an end to summary and arbitrary executions. Included in the text was a non-exhaustive list that highlighted many of the groups that are currently subject to inordinate levels of state persecution: ethnic groups, linguistic minorities, street […] More »

Why Omar Khadr's case is a constitutional crisis for us all

jesse mintz

It’s time for a little refresher course in Canadian civil society: Canada’s formal political dependence on Britain came to an end in 1982 with Pierre Trudeau’s Canada Act.  The Act led to the patriation of the Canadian Constitution–you know, that old document that outlines the vibrant democratic system of government we so proudly employ in […] More »
July-August 2010

Another reason for voting reform: Parliament needs women

Katie Addleman

Canada has shockingly few female legislators. Our electoral system is broken. Voting reform could fix both problems at once. One Thursday last spring, an Angolan MP named Faustina Fernandes Inglês de Almeida Alves addressed an assembly at United Nations Headquarters in New York City. Those present—members of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the UN Division for […] More »

For thousands of migrant labourers, Canadian prosperity is a mirage

natalie samson

The Toronto Community Mobilization Network kicked off its themed days of resistance to the G20 on Monday with activists converging around a mixed bag of issues including income equity, community control over resources, migrant justice, and an end to war and occupation. It’s an ambitious start­ for the week-long campaigns. On their own, each issue […] More »
March-April 2010

Innovative Ethiopian food-aid scheme starving for funds

Joshua HergesheimerWebsite

When Ethiopia asked the world for food aid last October, former subsistence farmer Terefi Tekale was not among the 6.2 million people desperate for help. Though his family’s long-held plot in Ethiopia’s Konso region has done poorly in recent years—the soil is sterile, his corn stunted and his hillside eroded—an ambitious new development plan means […] More »

Coming up in the March-April 2010 issue of This Magazine

Graham F. Scott

The March-April 2010 issue of This Magazine will be landing in subscribers’ mailboxes this week and is now on most newsstands coast to coast. (If you haven’t subscribed yet, this is a great time to do it, locking in a great price before the HST comes along. Just sayin’!) As always, the stories will all […] More »

Interview with Peace Dividend Trust's Scott Gilmore

Graham F. Scott

[Editor’s note: today we launch “Verbatim,” which will be a regular feature where we provide a transcript of our new podcast series, Listen to This. We’ll put these up on the blog shortly after each podcast goes online.] In the first installation of our new, relaunched podcast series (Oh! And we’re now on iTunes!) Nick […] More »

Review: Robert Muggah's No Refuge: The Crisis of Refugee Militarization in Africa

daniel tseghay

Among Africa’s considerable problems is the pressing issue of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs). Armed conflicts and violence on the continent has effectively made it the foremost home of forced migrants, with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimating that 3.5 million of the world’s 9.2 million refugees, and 13 of the […] More »