Foreign Policy March/April 2017

Nadya Tolokonnikova is a Russian artist and political activist and a member of the punk rock band Pussy Riot. In 2012, she was convicted of hooliganism in a Moscow court and sentenced to prison for protesting Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church. Cathy Young was born in the Soviet Union in 1963 and came to the United States in 1980. She has written for numerous publications, including the Washington Post and Slate. She is a contributing editor at Reason and the author of Growing Up in Moscow and Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality. Daisy Goodwin is the author of the best-selling novels The American Heiress and The Fortune Hunter. She attended Columbia University’s film school after earning a degree in history at…

Khachig Manuel, 56, only has a single item to remind him of his former life in Syria—a gold-framed photograph of himself in happier times. Taken during a party to celebrate his engagement in 1993, the image now hangs in his living room in Yerevan, Armenia. Many of the Syrian refugees living in Armenia arrived with little more than the clothes on their backs. A century ago, Armenians fled to Syria to escape the genocide in the collapsing Ottoman Empire; now, they have been forced to abandon yet another country being torn asunder. More than 20,000 Syrians, many of whom are ethnically Armenian, have found refuge in Armenia since the Syrian war began in 2011. And though they may be linked to this place by ethnicity and language, Armenia offers scarce economic…

1 Vest I’m a volunteer— I’ve worked for two years for free—but I wear this vest to be professional while I’m going around the camp. The pockets are also useful to carry my phone, money, and everything else. 2 Sign language dictionary We decided to use sign language as another form of communication for the children. We put on a silent play to raise awareness about children who can’t hear or speak. We still review sign language so we won’t forget. 3 Props We volunteers make props for every play. This one was a play about Sponge- Bob’s birthday, where all the kids attended his party and brought these gifts for SpongeBob. It’s a play about friendship. I was SpongeBob. 4 Speaker The speakers are really important for music, which we choose specifically for each play. Usually…

“WHEN YOU SEE your wife commit an off ense,” Friar Cherubino of Siena, Italy, wrote in his 15th-century treatise, Rules of Marriage, “take up a stick and beat her soundly, for it is better to punish the body and correct the soul than to damage the soul and spare the body.” Religious edicts such as this have reinforced men’s rights to inflict violence against women, especially their wives, for much of recorded history. Today, some legal systems still enshrine violence against women by keeping rape within the context of marriage impossible to prosecute. This map shows the countries that permit marital rape, or off er rapists an avenue to avoid punishment and prosecution by marrying their victims. Also on display is how few countries have expressly criminalized marital rape. Even the United…

After journalist MASIH ALINEJAD exposed corruption inside the Iranian parliament in 2009, she was forced to flee her native country. Labeled a “whore” by Iran’s government, she has been fighting the regime’s oppressive laws against women from the outside. In 2014, she started “My Stealthy Freedom,” an online campaign that invites Iranian women to photograph themselves unveiled to protest the compulsory headscarf law enacted after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In Poland, women protesting against a repressive government took a less stealthy approach. In October 2016, the “Black Monday” strike against the Polish government’s proposed law banning abortion shut down the city and forced the government to backtrack and drop the restrictive measure. It was a victory for KRYSTYNA KACPURA, the executive director of the Federation for Women and Family Planning,…

On an evening in late January, amid fallout from President Donald Trump’s executive order temporarily barring entry into the United States to nationals of seven predominantly Muslim countries, a foreign-born Muslim-American journalist, Asra Nomani, sits at a cafe table in Washington, D.C.’s Union Station while opponents of the ban trickle by on their way back from a protest. They tote handwritten signs that say, “Refugees welcome” and, in English, Spanish, and Arabic, “No matter where you’re from, we’re glad you’re our neighbor.” Nomani’s reaction is not one of solidarity. “So ridiculous,” she mutters when someone walks by with a “Ban on Bannon” sign, a gibe at Trump advisor and reputed “Muslim ban” architect Stephen Bannon. In fact, Nomani, 51, is fresh from defending the executive order, which she views as imperfect but…