Category: Conflict

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Prison doors

Treating Humans Inhumanely in America’s Justice System

“While waiting for an officer to handcuff and escort me back to the cell that awaited me after showering, I sat on the floor holding a razor used for shaving,” W writes to me. “Today was the day I decided to end my life.” I

A view of Cape Town. Image by J. Lester Feder/Buzzfeed

South Africa’s Same-Sex Marriages Don’t Always Have A Happy Ending

When the reigning Mr. Gay Namibia married his Botswanan partner in South Africa in April 2013, Zimbabwe’s ZimEye.org declared, “History [made] as Africa witnesses second gay wedding.” The first, said the website, happened a week earlier when two men married in a Zulu ceremony in

Muhsin Hendricks. Image by Courtesy the office of Muhsin Hendricks

South Africa’s Gay Imam and His Disciples

On a rainy afternoon not long ago, South Africa’s only openly gay imam was wrapping up a sermon in a candlelit room in Cape Town. A devoted congregation of a nearly a dozen lesbian, gay, and transgendered Muslims, adorned in hijabs, embroidered fezzes, and dark

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Shoving the Poor Through the Courthouse: How the Legal Sausage is Stuffed

Fifty years ago, an eloquent drifter from Florida changed the American justice system. Clarence Earl Gideon, accused of breaking into a pool hall, was tried without a lawyer in Bay County, Florida, in 1961. Convicted after representing himself, he petitioned the Supreme Court for a

A traditional Ugandan healer holds a referral card, developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, to give to villagers suspected of having plague. The card directs them to a local clinic that uses antibiotics, rather than prayer and herbs, to treat the symptoms of plague.

Centuries after the Black Death, Plague Still Kills

ARUA, Uganda — Isaac Baniyo stumbled through his final exam in English last November as a pounding headache and chest pain made it difficult to focus. The teenager’s parents sent him on foot to a drug shop not far from their grass-roofed hut in the