Introduction: a pattern of dependency
The collapse of the Irish economy has come as a particular shock to many people, at home and abroad, because of its seemingly remarkable success in the preceding years, the period of very rapid economic growth that saw the country, from the early 1990s onwards, described as the ‘Celtic Tiger’.  However, [...]

On Easter Monday, the Irish peace, justice and human rights advocacy group Afri launched a satirical version of the 1916 Proclamation at Arbour Hill cemetery, where the leaders of the Easter Rising are buried.

Invitation - Open to All
Debt and Austerity: From the Global South to Europe
Global Gathering: Athens, Greece 6th-8th May 2011
We would like to invite you to attend a ground-breaking global gathering in Athens, Greece at the beginning of May which will bring debt justice and social justice activists together from Europe and the Global South. As [...]

This article was originally published on CrisisJam.
The Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recently reviewed the Fund’s performance between 2004 and 2007 and concluded that, far from spotting the crisis coming, the IMF helped bring it on, especially through its advocacy of ‘light-touch regulation’. According to the IEO, as [...]

This article was first published in #CrisisJam on politico.ie.
In December 2010, Afri published a report entitled ‘The IMF and Ireland: what we can learn from the Global South’. We looked at the record of the IMF around the world (generally appalling) and argued that the Irish ‘bail out’ deal would have similarly terrible consequences [...]

This is an extract from a just published paper prepared for Action from Ireland (Afri), December 2010. Click the link to access the full paper (PDF): The IMF and Ireland: What We Can Learn From The Global South.
The Politics of Denying Democratic Choice
Ireland has been a member of the IMF since 1957.[1] Despite [...]

An alarming report in the English Independent newspaper of 14th July (but unreported in the Irish media as far as I can tell) indicates that at least one Irish army officer is involved in an EU mission training Somali soldiers in Uganda for action against the al-Shabaab movement inside Somalia. Al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for [...]

The Irish Minister for the Environment, John Gormley T.D., may be about to grant permission for a final stage of a major gas project (the Corrib Gas Project) led by Shell Oil that has ruined the lives of a small community in the West of Ireland and prompted a massive national and international campaign of [...]

I have previously argued here that the military implications of the Lisbon Treaty constitute an argument for a NO vote on 2 October.  I now want to argue that the implications of Lisbon for ‘developing countries’ in Africa, Asia and Latin America would be negative - and that this constitutes another strong argument for a [...]

This article analyses the ‘assurances‘ in the specific area of security and defence that the government is persuading EU leaders to sign up to, ostensibly to allay concerns in Ireland about the Lisbon Treaty.  These ‘assurances’ are, in reality, simply political statements that, in themselves, have no legal status.  They are only legally valid if [...]