Interviews

Kourosh Ziabari - International Policy Digest: The March 2018 presidential election in Egypt decided that the incumbent Abdel Fattah el-Sisi will be in office for another four years. Many human rights groups, critics and journalists described the poll as “farcical,” saying that Sisi cannot be the true representation of Egyptian democracy. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had no serious rivals but only a mid-ranking politician who was himself a Sisi supporter. Moussa Moustafa Moussa was able to win no more than of 2.92% of the votes. The Civil Democratic Movement boycotted the election and there were allegations of electoral fraud. Nezar AlSayyad, an Egyptian historian and the former head of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: Jane Elliott is a distinguished American former third-grade school-teacher, anti-racism activist, feminist and educationalist. She is known for implementing an exercise called "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" in a classroom of third-graders in Riceville, Iowa, to figure out how racist her students were and gauge the amount of racial prejudice towards otheres among her young pupils. The highly-controversial test created divisions among the townspeople and made her a national icon of fight against racism. She did the exercise one day after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and her initiative became the basis of much of what is now known as "diversity training". She introduced this method to firms in the U.S.,...

Kourosh Ziabari - Centre for Journalism: What is Nowruz and how does it exactly work? It's a question asked in many different ways and many different responses have been given to it. To sum up, Nowruz (translated verbatim as "new day") is the name of the Iranian New Year and feasts and festivals associated with it. It's celebrated by some 300 million people worldwide, including in Iran, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Turkey and by Iranian diaspora in Europe and North America, Australia and elsewhere. Nowruz is the day of the vernal equinox and marks the beginning of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere. It usually falls on 21st March, which is a special day, because in 1970, the first Earth Day proclamation was...

Kourosh Ziabari - Centre For Journalim: Latvia is an independent republic in the Baltic region, bordered by Estonia, Lithuania, Russia and Belarus. It became a member of the European Union in 2004 and signed the Lisbon Treaty in 2007. Its capital Riga was named the European Capital of Culture in 2014 and the recent UN Human Rights Development Index categorises it as one of the countries with a "very high human development" score. Surpassing Argentina, Croatia, Bahrain, Montenegro, Russia, Romania and Kuwait, it's the world's 44th country in the list. The Baltic state was ruled by the Soviets for centuries (1710-1918) and World War I and World War II became motives for Latvia to fight for independence and a better international...

Kourosh Ziabari - Organisation for Defending Victims of Violence: A mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on 14th February this year claimed seventeen lives, making the tragedy one of the world's deadliest school massacres. The suspect, 19-year-old Nikolas Jacob Cruz, who was the school's former student, was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder. An Associated Press report reveals the Broward County Sheriff's Office received a number of tips in 2016 and 2017 about Cruz's threats to carry out a school shooting, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had received information about his threats and concerning behavior in September 2017 and January 2018. Although this tragedy revived a...

Kourosh Ziabari - Organisation for Defending Victims of Violence: The Rohingya are an ethnic group in Myanmar, a Buddhist-majority country in the Southeast Asia, who are referred to as the world's most persecuted minority. Al-Jazeera writes that nearly all of the Rohingya in Myanmar live in the western coastal state of Rakhine and are not allowed to leave without government permission, in what is technically designed to be a ghetto for them. International human rights groups say there are about 1.1 million Rohingya living under very critical and unfortunate conditions and the majority of discriminations they've suffered have religious roots. Thousands of Rohingya Muslims have in the recent months fled Myanmar to seek refuge in...

Kourosh Ziabari - Organisation for Defending Victims of Violence: Humanitarian crisis in Gaza has entered its 11th year as the crippling siege by Israel is making the living conditions of Palestinians more complicated with time. The blockade in what is popularly referred to as the world's "largest open-air prison" means growing unemployment, people havng intermittent access to pure water, the economy is almost dysfunctional and poor infrastructure and lack of funding make the two-million population vulnerable to heavy rains and extreme weather. The former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories believes Israel is not doing enough to make the living conditions of Gaza...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: When Saudi Arabia and a coalition of its regional partners embarked on a military campaign against Yemen in March 2015, it was hardly predictable that the war would drag on for more than a year and morph into a humanitarian crisis. The emergency is characterized by massive civilian casualties, displacement of citizens, nationwide water and fuel shortages and deepening poverty in the already-impoverished country. Saudi military engagement was a response to an uprising by the Shiite Houthis in northern Yemen trying to push the government of Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi from power. In late March, UNICEF warned that some 320,000 Yemeni children faced the risk of life-threatening malnutrition, while 82% of...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: It’s said that ISIS has recently conceded significant parts of the territories it used to dominate since 2014. Rebels and Daesh militants have been driven out of the northern parts of Syria through the combined effect of separate operations by pro-government forces and the U.S. and Russian airstrikes. Foreign Policy reports that at the end of 2014, ISIS ruled over around one-third of Iraq and one-third of Syria, but now, according to IHS Jane’s 360, they’ve lost 22% of that territory. With the major losses in territory it has suffered and the diminution of its fighters, ISIS still poses a valid threat to peace and security not only in the Middle East but across the world, and it’s imperative to...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: The Iran nuclear deal, popularly known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, has been widely lauded as a historic understanding that untangled an apparently intractable dilemma spanning over more than a decade, and opened broad new prospects for Iran and the international community to collaborate with no specter of distrust and confrontation around the corner. The global media and Iran pundits are diligently probing the different dimensions of the landmark deal and how it affects Iran’s connections with the outside world. At the same time, the JCPOA signed last summer constitutes an invariable theme in the U.S. presidential candidates’ debates and speeches these days. The Republican nominee...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: The Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) is referred to as the richest terrorist organization in the world. In 2015, it earned $2.4 billion through oil exports and illegal taxation and extortion from the desperate people living under its harrowing rule. Defeating the ISIS terrorists militarily appears to be a daunting task, and people hesitate to call the annihilation of ISIS an easily-reachable and plausible target, at least for the time being when the international community is divided on whom to support and whom to fight in Syria, and the influential actors pursue apparently conflicting interests. The latest estimates by the U.S. intelligence community put the number of ISIS recruits at 25,000,...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: On April 27, the 7th United Nations Alliance of Civilizations Global Forum wrapped up in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku. More than 3,500 participants from across the globe, including some 150 young leaders from nearly 100 countries attended the 3-day international gathering, exploring the venues for creating inclusive societies and promoting representative democracy to realize global peace and sustainable development. The UNAOC Global Forum was attended by several dignitaries from different nations, including incumbent and former heads of government and state, foreign ministers, parliamentarians, UN officials, academicians, public figures and other luminaries. In panels and plenary sessions, the speakers...