People's movements

Human rights advocates should be as concerned with the economic injustices giving rise to recent worldwide demonstrations, as with the repressive responses to them writes Ignacio Saiz for the Centre for Economic and Social Rights.

The waves of protests breaking out in country after country around the world beg the question: Why aren’t Americans rising up in peaceful protest like our neighbors? By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies.

A global civic participation campaign calls for the creation of a World Citizens’ Initiative on the occasion of the UN’s 75th anniversary. This new instrument could enable individual citizens to influence the world organization’s work, writes Andreas Bummel and Bruno Kaufmann.

We are witnessing the biggest surge in global protest activity since the early 2010s, when a "movement of the squares" saw mass rallies in capital cities across the Arab world, followed by Occupy demonstrations in the global north, writes Jack Shenker.

Our planet needs action on a truly planetary scale. That cannot be achieved overnight, and it cannot happen without the full engagement of those contributing most to the crisis, writes the UN secretary general.