The Dervish Bektashi order is one of the most relevant aspects of Islamic spirituality. Since it's beginnings it has been a mystic order with secret doctrines, based on the veneration of the trinity of Allah, Mohamed and Ali. It's founder, Hajji Bektash...   see feature »

Maiti Nepal is a non-governmental Organisation founded by Anuradha Koirala in 1993 together with a group of professional social workers. The main objectives of the Association are to defend the rights of women who are victims of sexual exploitation and...   see feature »

Madrassas in Pakistan have developed a nasty reputation for being nests of extremism, breeding Taliban support and recruiting jihadists. They provide a much-needed service to the poorest part of society though. Most of madrassas are just religious schools...   see feature »

Law 180 of 1978 saw the definitive closure of the mental hospitals ,as proposed by the psychiatrist Franco Basaglia, but it did not include the closure of the criminal mental hospitals. The only benefit to these institutions following the law was the...   see feature »

Fifteen years after the most ferocious massacre in Europe since the Second World War, Bosnia is still paying the price of it’s past. The I.C.M.P. (International Commission on Missing Persons) is still finding corpses and remains from the mass graves in...   see feature »

Sydney's mythical beach proves worthy of its reputation. After all, Bondi has had its name since 1827, owing it to an aborigine word which means the sound of the wave crashing onto the rocks. However, it owes its essential image to the army of life-savers...   see feature »

While Chad, Sudan and the DRC attract regular media attention the Central African Republic (CAR) seems to be completely forgotten. This country, the size of France, suffers from a decade long civil war. More than a 100 thousand people have fled the violence...   see feature »

Since the reform of the EU Common Fisheries Policy in 2002, effort has been devoted to addressing the governance, scientific, social and economic issues required to introduce an ecosystem approach to European marine fisheriesin order to restore fish resources....   see feature »

Israel has a large Bedouin population, totaling 180,000. The vast majority of these nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes live in the Negev desert, in the South of Israel. Approximately 50,000 Bedouins inhabit the Northern regions, near Syria, and another 10,000...   see feature »

The 2010 Haiti earthquake was a catastrophic magnitude 7.0 Mw earthquake. Its epicentre was near Léogâne, approximately 25 km (16 miles) west of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. The earthquake occurred at 16:53 local time on Tuesday, 12 January...   see feature »