Dinyar Godrej, Author at Toward Freedom

“The Great Tide of Junk”: Garbage Politics in a Throwaway World

Dinyar Godrej November 14, 2018 Dinyar Godrej

Two million plastic bags are distributed per minute worldwide. The amount of plastic produced in a year is roughly the entire weight of the human beings living upon it. The oceanic Great Pacific Garbage Patch of floating plastic is three times the size of France. Coca-Cola alone sends out 120 billion plastic bottles each year – enough to circle our planet 700 times. We must recognize excessive waste for what it is: a shocking loss of resources at the cost of our environment, engineered by the very system we are living under.

NGOs: Do They Help?

Dinyar Godrej December 7, 2014 Dinyar Godrej

Source: The New Internationalist

Witness the growth spurt in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and you would be forgiven for thinking the world becomes a more caring place every day.

These legions of not-for-profit groupings that fan out across the world, intent on ‘capacity building’, ‘reducing poverty’ and ensuring that the ‘voices of the most marginalized’ are heard, surely reflect an acceptance that too many have suffered for too long, and the tide can turn with the right kind of wind behind it. read more

Human Rights Violations in the Name of Fighting Terror

Dinyar Godrej November 4, 2009 Dinyar Godrej

With President Obama in the White House, there is the announced future closure of Guantánamo Bay and a move away from legitimizing torture. But there is no promise yet on ending rendition or 'prolonged detention', and no moves to gain justice for those who were detained in barbaric conditions for years or to prosecute their torturers. Can the damage done ever be reversed now that the Western democracies, who've ridden the high horse of human rights, have lost all moral authority on this front?