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World Social Justice Day is marked each year on February 20 and, this year, its theme was “Workers on the Move: the Quest for Social Justice”. In keeping with this idea, Alexander Betts unveils the results of the first major study to focus on the relationship between the economic lives of refugees and their host communities. He argues that every major refugee-hosting context - including Kenya, where the research was conducted - should have an economic policy and strategy for both groups based on robust analysis and consultation. And Chris Changwe Nshimbi takes issue with an emergency plan to repatriate scores of African migrants held captive in Libya.
Education can change the world - for better or for worse. There’s ample evidence for this, from Cuba to Japan; Germany to Mauritius and many places in between. Martin Gustafsson discusses a new book that examines the best and worst of education systems and explores their wide-ranging influence on social issues.
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A Turkana woman buys food from a refugee woman in Kakuma camp in north western Kenya.
Refugee Studies Centre
Alexander Betts, University of Oxford
Refugee policy may well be a humanitarian issue. But it is also a development issue.
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Education
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Martin Gustafsson, Stellenbosch University
Authors Lutz and Klingholz explore how mass literacy became a revolution that changed the world.
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Politics + Society
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Chris Changwe Nshimbi, University of Pretoria
The decision to repatriate migrants is a welcome intervention. But, it fails to consider the fundamental causes.
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Lawrence Hamilton, University of the Witwatersrand
A tumultuous era has ended and there's a silver lining to the cloud that has been hanging over South Africa.
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Vishwas Satgar, University of the Witwatersrand
Jacob Zuma was removed by the people's effect, which connected the dots of corruption, a mismanaged state and rapacious capitalism.
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Environment + Energy
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Kevin Winter, University of Cape Town
Day Zero will be the start of active water rationing when taps will be cut off and people will have to go to collection sites.
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From our international editions
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Maarten De Brauwer, Curtin University
Much of the world's ocean is teeming with 'cryptic' fish species, which are small and hard to spot. But a new technique shines a light on these fish, which may in turn help to keep our seas healthy.
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Martin Cohen, University of Hertfordshire
The statistics point remorselessly towards obesity being a symptom with an underlying social cause. That should completely change the approach to dealing with it.
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Chris Turney, UNSW; Jonathan Palmer, UNSW; Mark Maslin, UCL
Nuclear bomb tests potentially mark the start of a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene.
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