Unwritten Lives

"Far above all other hunted whales, his is an unwritten life." Moby Dick

Posts tagged with: Europe Show All

Ebola Bundibugyo virus emergency response: "Medicines are not shoes or cars."

May 29, 2026 by Eric Stobbaerts

Ebola Bundibugyo virus emergency response: "Medicines are not shoes or cars."
Bunia Airport, DRC, 2026. Emergency supplies from cargo flight, including 3,000 items of protective equipment for healthcare workers, being loaded onto MFS truck. Photo: © Ana Schönhofer/MSF, courtesy of MSF

The recent outbreak of Ebola in the DRC and Uganda reflects a global hierarchy of whose lives are protected, whose diseases matter, and which crises are considered economically worth solving. It should not be normal that communities facing deadly outbreaks still depend primarily on improvisation, emergency goodwill, and delayed international attention. Neglected diseases is a euphemism for neglected populations.

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Arsenal is an African club

May 24, 2026 by Sean Henry Jacobs

Arsenal is an African club
Two boys — both ardent Arsenal fans — in the Ethiopian town of Sendafa, September 2007. Photo: Antony Robbins via Flickr

Today, Arsenal is viewed as a open, welcoming, diverse, and above all as representing democracy, antiracism, and forward-looking values. Yet the club spent years (from 2018 until 2025) advertising one of Africa’s most efficient dictatorships through its “Visit Rwanda” sponsorship. Although Arsenal’s sleeve sponsorship agreement with Rwanda has now come to an end, the controversy surrounding the partnership has left unresolved questions

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Delete Genocide Tech – Public Meeting Tour

May 23, 2026 by Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Liverpool, Cardiff and London: 15/06/2026 - 17/06/2026 12:00

Delete Genocide Tech – Public Meeting Tour
Image: Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Israel uses AI and surveillance technology in its genocide and apartheid against Palestinians, and the companies developing the tech have contracts here in Britain. Our new Delete Genocide Tech campaign, launching in June, will force complicit tech companies out of the government, local councils, universities and workplaces. Join the public meetings in Liverpool, Cardiff and London to learn more, including how you can get involved! BOOK YOUR TICKETS

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Nakba 78: Land You Have To Kill For Isn't Yours

May 15, 2026 by Ishtiyaq Shukri

There is no ceasefire, no justice, no peace, just continued Israeli military occupation of Palestine and escalating genocide in Gaza, Jerusalem, and the occupied West Bank

Nakba 78: Land You Have To Kill For Isn't Yours
Palestine solidarity demonstration, London, 11 November 2023. Photo: Ishtiyaq Shukri.

It has been 78 years since one of the most catastrophic events in modern times: the violent expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The Nakba, or the great catastrophe, is commemorated annually on 15 May. At Nakba 78, there is no ceasefire, no peace, no justice. There is only genocide, continued Israeli military occupation, and increasing conflagration across the region. In addition to the original Palestinian dispossession of 1948, Nakba commemorations also highlight the continued displacement, loss, and statelessness experienced by millions of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), in Palestinian refugee camps across the Middle East, and in the global Palestinian diaspora around the world today.

Ishtiyaq Shukri first travelled to the occupied West Bank in 2005. For twenty years, Palestine has remained a recurring theme in his writing. His work forms part of the vast catalogue of Israeli atrocities, appalling and unchallenged violations of international law, which over decades, have culminated in the genocide currently unfolding in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and the systematic erasure by Israel of Palestinians from the across the OPT.

For Nakba 78, we are republishing his 2005 travel journal, Palestine Journey, along with "...And 1 Can of Sardines", an extract from his novel, I See You, accompanied for the first time by photos from Shukri's personal archive from the time.

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Poem | To the people of the UK: You have voted. Here is what will happen next

May 11, 2026 by Ishtiyaq Shukri

Poem | To the people of the UK: You have voted. Here is what will happen next
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

With heavy losses for the governing Labour party, and huge gains for the rightwing populist party, Reform UK, the results of last week's local elections on 7 May have reverberated through the UK like an earthquake. Here is what will happen next

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Is Catherine West MP a war criminal?

May 11, 2026 by Ishtiyaq Shukri

Is Catherine West MP a war criminal?
Catherine West, Labour MP for Hornsey & Friern Barnet, Haringey, north London. Photo: Catherine West

The Labour MP, Catherine West, has challenged the leadership of Keir Starmer. West, my local MP in the north London constituency of Hornsey and Friern Barnet, has much to answer for the genocide in Gaza.

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Struggle and archive. Albie: A Strange Alchemy

May 10, 2026 by Sean Henry Jacobs

Struggle and archive. Albie: A Strange Alchemy
Anti-apartheid activist, author, and former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, Albie Sachs. Photo: The Albie Collection

The South African project remains unfinished. Stories like Sachs’s not only testify to the hard-won gains of the past but also confront us with the urgent, unfinished work still ahead to achieve justice, dignity, and equality for all.

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No genocide pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale

May 9, 2026 by ANGA: Art Not Genocide Alliance

No genocide pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale
Image:Art Not Genocide Alliance

In October 2025, after confirmation of Israel’s inclusion in the 61st International Art Exhibition, the Art Not Genocide Alliance began circulating the below letter among participants and workers of the Venice Biennale.

ANGA’s call responds to the appeal issued by Palestinian civil society to challenge the normalisation of Israeli apartheid and occupation within international cultural platforms. In this context, the Venice Biennale cannot be exempt from scrutiny.

The following letter calls on the leadership of the Venice Biennale to exclude Israel from the 2026 exhibition. It has been signed by 236 artists, curators and art workers involved in this year’s Biennale and formally delivered to the President and Board of the Venice Biennale.

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Transcript and Recording | Palestine and the World: Struggle and Solidarity. Public lecture by Professor Steven Salaita (AUC), delivered at the Centre for the Study of Race, Class and Empire, Queen Mary University of London, Wednesday, 8 April 2026.

April 13, 2026 by Steven Salaita

Transcript and Recording | Palestine and the World: Struggle and Solidarity. Public lecture by Professor Steven Salaita (AUC), delivered at the Centre for the Study of Race, Class and Empire, Queen Mary University of London, Wednesday, 8 April 2026.
Image: “Papa Giving a Speech,” Five-Year-Old artist, Steven Salaita

"Whenever I hear a Western pundit or politician go on about 'democracy,' I say to myself, 'Oh hell, give it a rest. Nobody’s buying that crap anymore.' I think that people serious about Palestine and decolonization more broadly react skeptically to the term because we understand it to be the vocabulary of our own dispossession."

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Don’t look at who voted to call the slave trade ‘the gravest crime’, look at who didn’t

April 13, 2026 by Kenneth Mohammed

Don’t look at who voted to call the slave trade ‘the gravest crime’, look at who didn’t
Ghana’s president, John Dramani Mahama, addresses the UN general assembly in New York ahead of the vote on 25 March. Photograph: Bianca Otero/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

The UK and EU countries who abstained when Ghana’s UN resolution was adopted may soon find it harder to sustain the same old script on reparations

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Eric Stobbaerts

Eric Stobbaerts

Eric Stobbaerts was Head of Mission for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in the former Yugoslavia from …

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