Website of Kourosh Ziabari, award-winning journalist and reporter

It's the International Women's Day (#IWD2018). It's an important occasion, recognised by the United Nations and gives all those who enshrine this occasion or celebrate it some reasons to think of certain dynamics. There are many brilliant women across the world who are working hard to overcome certain difficulties to make their societies better and have their voice heard: fighting myopia being emitted by those who think confining a dynamic, entrepreneurial and creative population in their ability to make positive, useful contribution to their society makes them unable to make more positive contributions to the kitchen, in household; fighting intolerance by the inflexible, uneducated and undemocratic leaders who need women when it...

1- Admittedly, I'm not holding a press conference to announce the discovery of pulsating radio source. Jocelyn Bell did the task on such a day in 1967. I didn't have the chance to chat with her so far. However, in my old young days, I interviewed her supervisor, Prof. Antony Hewish, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974. Don't judge me based on that interview. The entire experience of approaching him, getting the interview, eliciting some of his unpublished photos and having it released by the Daneshmand Magazine , started on 30 September 2011 and came to a closure on 24 October 2012! Well, I'm confident serious journalism is not really such a struggle. The thing is that when you don't have the right editor...

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...

Girls walking in front of walls of the former US embassy on Taleghani street, Tehran. Picture by Kamyar Adl / Flickr.com. Kourosh Ziabari - openDemocracy NAWA: Iranians are discussing many important and crucial things these days: things that the government might not be able to find an answer to in the foreseeable future. The Iranian government is not determined enough to implement change, nor does it have the authority and resources to embrace the reforms people are demanding. Meanwhile, in restaurants, coffee shops, streets, schools, newspapers and sometimes even on state TV, people are discussing and talking about reform. People ask valid questions that rarely find viable answers by those who are supposed to find answers: will...

U.S., EU and Iranian diplomats celebrate the signing of the Iran Deal Kourosh Ziabari - openDemocracy: The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran Deal, is a UN-endorsed agreement that caps Iran's nuclear activities, subjects them to the full safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and introduces a framework for the easing and removal of economic sanctions against the country. Iran deal is an agreement that can be safely considered the outcome of almost two years of relentless diplomacy between the government of President Hassan Rouhani and the major world powers: five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (U.S., Russia, France, China and Britain), Germany, the European Union...

Kourosh Ziabari - International Policy Digest: U.S. President Donald Trump’s warnings that his administration might de-certify the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, popularly known as the Iran Deal, portend a difficult future for the Iranian people and the Iran-U.S. relations. As Iranians still strive to live happier lives while grappling with the repercussions of economic sanctions that the country’s sixth president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, brought about through a mixture of mismanagement, inexperience and intransigence, the current U.S. president is sending signals which sums up the Iranian hardliner’s modus operandi. JCPOA is an international agreement, reached in Vienna on 14 July 2015 between Iran and the five permanent...

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...

Photo by: Laura Garcia @lauragrb Kourosh Ziabari - The Huffington Post: Christmas heralds the beginning of the New Year for those who celebrate it. There are millions of people who observe Christmas, not necessarily because they follow Christianity. They sometimes mark this occasion because of their cultural and hereditary ties to the festival. But it’s an unfathomable fallacy to say that Christmas is only dear to Christians or people living and celebrating it in places, which are geographically considered to be part of the ‘West’. Even in Muslim-majority countries such as Iran, there are Christians who happily observe Christmas, and there are non-Christian Iranians who joyously join them in celebration. Shops put on...

Kourosh Ziabari - The Huffington Post: Casting blame on those responsible for the rise of the Islamic State in various parts of the Middle East and its disconcerting extension into other parts of the world is a futile exercise. The fact that the Islamic State has developed a global sphere of influence and is able to spread instability unimpeded necessitates detailed investigation, but it is important to note that the current state of affairs is the result of the faults, shortcomings, and negligent decision-making of many actors. What matters now is that the Islamic State is making advances on multiple fronts and the international community is barely committed and insufficiently united to be able to tackle its unchecked...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: In June, a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando claimed 49 lives and left 53 wounded. America was left in shock as the deadliest shooting spree in the modern history of the country took place. The perpetrator, Omar Mateen, was himself killed in a shootout with police almost three hours after instigating the rampage at the Pulse nightclub. As soon as details about his identity went public, US media outlets were flooded with accusations that he was an “Islamic terrorist” who carried out the attack on behalf of the self-called Islamic State (Daesh). Mateen, a US citizen, was born and raised in New York. However, the media doggedly highlighted his paternal origins and insisted that he was...

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...