A Medical Outreach on Children’s Day
Millions of children live in poverty in Nigeria;lacking access to clean water, food, health care services, and education. Two and a half million children suffer from severe acute malnutrition, “defined by a very low weight for height (below -3z scores of the median WHO growth standards), by visible severe wasting, or by the presence of
Panama Canal Part I: Water-Locked: Can the Panama Canal Handle Climate Change?
“Handline Vessel Oleada, your transit has been cancelled.” It’s 5:00 am, and our sailboat bobs around in the choppy entrance to the busiest shipping channel in the world. We are on the Pacific side of the Panama Canal, and we have spent the last two weeks securing everything we need to pass through the canal
Why They Stay: Humans and Sea Level Rise
On a windswept knuckle of land that juts proudly from Mexico’s Pacific coast, a tiny town perches between cliff and sea. With a smattering of artisanal fishers and restauranteurs, Tehuamixtle has tucked into a precarious edge, protected only slightly by the jagged black headlands of Punta Ipala. To get to the town by land requires
ICWA Fellow Guyer interviews Egyptian Author Sonallah Ibrahim
The oeuvre of Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim chronicles his country’s political dramas from the time of Gamal Abdel Nasser. At 79, he is lifelong agitator, “a symbol of the independent intellectual,” as a major Egyptian paper put it. In the Spring 2017 issue of the Cairo Review of Global Affairs, Ibrahim speaks to Fellow Jonathan Guyer about the “beautiful
Onyinye Edeh’s Seattle Adventures
Current ICWA Fellow Onyinye Edeh has a busy week in Seattle. Edeh appeared on a panel with Teen Vogue editor in chief Elaine Welteroth, actor Yara Shahidi, angel investor Jonathan Spostato, and other fantastic advocates for “[building] a healthier, more equitable future for people everywhere.” PATH’s celebrations had over 1500 people in attendance. Edeh also
Forced into Marriage at 17, Now Fighting for Divorce: A Tale of a Child Bride in Nigeria
In developing countries, one in every three girls is married before reaching age 18. One in nine is married under age 15. – [1] In Africa, Nigeria is expected to have the largest absolute number of child brides. The country has seen a decline in child marriage of about 1 percent per year over the
The Sacred Bridge
In a recent Newsletter (JVC-3), I shared the perspectives of Acehnese Muslims in an attempt to complicate singular notions of Islam. The Story of the Stick tuned in to the (dis)harmonies of Islamic belief and practice, and set the stage for a consideration of the role that religiosity and gender play in Banda Aceh’s political
Speech Bubbles: Comics and Political Cartoons in Sisi’s Egypt
The Century Foundation invited me to contribute a chapter on Egyptian cartoons and comics for Arab Politics beyond the Uprisings: Experiments in an Era of Resurgent Authoritarianism. This chapter builds on extensive fieldwork conducted during my two-year ICWA fellowship, offering the most comprehensive study to date of the challenges facing cartoonists in Egypt. I
Nationalism for Kids: How Egyptian Comics Teach Conflict
I presented a version of this paper in February at “Framing War and Conflict in Comics,” the second annual Symposium on Arab Comics at the American University of Beirut. When General Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi ran for the Egyptian presidency in the spring of 2014, the children’s magazine Samir published a stoic caricature of him its
Vulnerable, Together: the Ocean and the Sailor
On the ocean, the horizon can feel crushingly wide. From the cockpit, we can only react to what the expanse reveals—and what it doesn’t, with frustratingly vague clues. As we sail through the tropics in rainy season—filled with towering thunderclouds and sudden, violent storms at any hour—we find ourselves often peering nervously into the horizon.