On Sunday some 600 people took to the streets of St Petersburg to demonstrate against racism in Russia. Staged for the fifth consecutive year, the “March Against Hatred” was held partly to honour the memory of Nikolai Girenko.

Girenko was one of Russia’s leading experts on ethnology and a committed anti-racist. He often testified as an expert witness on racism and discrimination in trials concerning racially motivated attacks. Four [...]

The murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya on 7 October 2006 has been remembered all over the world during the last week. Amnesty International believes that Politkovskaya was killed because of her work as a journalist. The trial of three men accused of her murder is set to start on 15 October in a Moscow military court.

Politkovskaya was relentless in her efforts to draw the world’s attention to [...]

After imprisonment and torture in Cameroon, Guy Nijike claimed asylum on the day he arrived in the UK nine years ago. He set out to re-build his life. He learned English, worked full-time at Selfridges, devoted his spare time to volunteer work and was even called up for Jury Service.

On Monday in his lunch break he went to report to the borders and immigration authority as part of [...]

In June this site has featured the voices of many students at University College London (UCL) – including my own - who were overjoyed with their university’s decision to look into developing an ethical investment policy.

Almost six month down the line not much has happened. Students and alumni have had an informal meeting with Lord Joel Joffe and UCL alumnus Edwin Glasgow, QC, during which campaigners presented [...]

In December 2006 students at University College London started a campaign to get their university to ditch its shares in arms companies and adopt an ethical investment policy. Seven months later – after our campaign had featured prominently on the New Statesman website - UCL’s leadership agreed to start developing an ethical investment policy. How did we do it ?

Some tips from Disarm UCL on [...]

After some dynamic campus campaigning helped by a lively discussion on this blog, University College London (UCL)students have done it. UCL Provost Malcolm Grant and the UCL Council agreed that it's now time for their university to invest its money ethically. Our case for divesting from the arms trader Cobham and for adopting an ethical investment policy has always been very [...]

Why is London’s global university, University College London (UCL), so desperately clinging on to its investment in arms companies?

UCL currently has shares worth over £900,000 in the arms trader Cobham PLC. Cobham produces parts of weapons systems which have been used in Israeli bombing raids in Lebanon last year, and in many other conflict zones around the world.

To me, and to at least 1,253 other students and staff [...]