The new tyranny: The road to a lawful world has collapsed

 Power is no longer bound by rules, and too many of us are cheering.

The news arrived in two parts, hours apart.

First, from Oslo: the Nobel Committee awarded its 2026 Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, a former judge of the International Criminal Court (ICC). It honoured her work for international law at what the citation called “a time when judges and institutions of international law are under political attack.”

Then came the answer from the US. Sweeping sanctions were imposed on the court itself – its resources to be cut off, its operations crippled. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed it as a “rogue court”.

The ICC described the measures as “an assault on the rule of law and the foundations of the international legal order.”

I am no political scientist. I am writing this as someone who reads the news late at night and then cannot sleep. What I felt reading those two headlines was not outrage. It was a kind of cold confirmation.

A court built to hold the powerful to account was being punished for exactly that. The punishment was timed to mock the very idea that the law might bind the strong.

I was born at the end of World War Two. After the trenches and the camps and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world did something unprecedented. It wrote down rules:

The UN Charter.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, which declared that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

The Genocide Convention.

The Nuremberg trials, which established that even heads of state could be tried.

The promise was simple and enormous. It declared that from then on, power would be bound by law and sovereignty would be equal. We would be citizens of a world and not merely subjects of whoever held the biggest guns.

For the first time in history, there was a road to a civilised existence.

The road has collapsed

That road has collapsed. In my own lifetime, I have watched the signposts come down.

A sitting head of state abducted from his own capital by a foreign army.

Gaza reduced to rubble while court orders were simply ignored.

Iran bombed in an unprovoked attack.

Venezuela blockaded, its tankers seized by force.

The Americas (what Washington calls the Western Hemisphere) declared, openly, to be America’s sphere of influence.

Institutions of accountability defunded, delegitimised and blacklisted.

Each act justified as necessity. Each violation met with a shrug dressed up as realism.

Cheering crowds

What frightens me most is not the powerful. It is the crowds.

Every time a line is crossed, there are people cheering – not a few cranks, who could be shrugged off, but millions.

They cheer when a court is humiliated, when a city is flattened, when a leader is dragged away in chains. They cheer not because they have weighed the evidence, but because the violator wears their colours.

Reason has become a football tournament. We are no longer a world of citizens. We have become a world of fans.

Underneath the cheering is something worse: helplessness.

I can vote, but it changes little. Sanctions, wars and surveillance run through executive orders, secret agencies and private contractors that no ballot reaches.

I can protest; I am a nuisance. I can organise; I am monitored. I am told information has never been freer; yet the news arrives pre-framed, pre-angered, pre-divided.

I know something terrible is happening, and I cannot touch it. I am a spectator to my own future. And it is a future I would rather not see.

And I do believe this is a countdown. When law is treated as an obstacle, force is the only arbiter left.

There are too many flashpoints now – Venezuela, Iran, Gaza, Ukraine, Taiwan, the South China Sea, Korea – for all of them to stay contained.

Add climate collapse, cyber-attacks, resource wars and machines that can begin a war faster than a human can stop it.

A nuclear exchange would not simply kill millions. It would poison the soil, break the supply chains, and end the connected civilisation that ordinary people depend on.

Those who would suffer most are those with the least say: workers, families, migrants, refugees, the poor. As always.

What can one person do?

Consider Navi Pillay. Born in apartheid South Africa, she became the first non-white woman to open her own law firm in the Natal province (now KwaZulu-Natal). She defended activists and prisoners when the law itself was designed to deny them equality.

She became a judge, and then president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. There, she helped establish the principle that rape and sexual violence can constitute genocide.

She sat on the International Criminal Court. She served as the UN’s top human rights official. In 2025 she chaired the UN inquiry that concluded Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.

And in October 2026, the Nobel Committee awarded her the Peace Prize for a lifetime spent enlarging the reach of international law.

Her life is proof that one person, working through institutions and refusing to look away, can change what the law is capable of.

She did not stop a war. But she made accountability possible. That is not nothing. It is the difference between a world with rules and a world without them. 

Not nothing.

I can refuse to cheer. I can refuse to wear the colours of any empire, including the one that claims to speak for me.

I can keep alive the memory of what was promised: the Charter, the Declaration, Nuremberg. The powerful depend on us forgetting those rules ever existed.

I can bear witness, write it down, pass it on.

I can act locally, in solidarity with the vulnerable on my own street. I can reach across borders to others doing the same. The only counterweight to a tyranny of the few is a solidarity of the many.

It is thin. It is not enough to stop a war. But it is the difference between being a spectator and being complicit.

The road that collapsed was built once, by ordinary people who had just lived through hell. It can be built again. That is the only hope I have, and I am holding on to it.

The Social Work Profession Act 2026: Protecting the Profession or Policing Compassion?

 The Social Work Profession Act 2026, now going through the final stages of being gazetted, marks a long‑awaited recognition of social work as a profession in Malaysia. The main purpose of the Act is to regulate social workers, elevate standards, protect vulnerable communities, and formalise professional practice, all of which are commendable.

Yet the Act also raises a deeper question: what model of professional regulation best serves the public interest, and how should the balance between State authority and professional autonomy be drawn?

Professional Regulation: A Shift in the Balance

Professions have historically been defined by their capacity for self‑regulation. Those providing specialised services and knowledge are expected to set standards of competence, uphold ethical conduct, discipline misconduct, and safeguard the public. Statutory recognition typically strengthens this framework by giving legal force to professional norms while preserving the profession’s institutional voice. In Malaysia, to be recognized as a profession, there must be a self-regulating body that is established by written law (Fairview International School Subang Sdn Bhd v Tribunal Tuntutan Pengguna Malaysia & Anor [2015] 1 MLRH 209).

The Social Work Profession Act 2026 adopts a markedly different model.

Instead of recognising or empowering an existing professional body, such as the Malaysian Association of Social Workers (MASW), the Act creates a new infrastructure for the licensing and regulation of social workers, namely the Malaysian Social Work Profession Council (Part II of the Act).  The Council is structurally and administratively anchored within the Government. The Council is chaired by the Ministry’s Secretary‑General, with the Director‑General of Social Welfare as Deputy Chairman, and most members are appointed by the Minister, who may revoke appointments “without assigning any reason” (s. 10(1)). The Council is expressly responsible to the Minister, who may issue directions on its functions (s. 12).

This is not merely statutory oversight; it is direct administrative control over the institution responsible for determining professional standards, ethics, competency, and discipline.

A Broad Definition with Narrow Safeguards

The Act’s definition of “social work services” is expansive:

“Services provided for the purpose of ensuring social functioning and wellbeing… through engagement, assessment, intervention planning, implementation… re‑evaluation and termination” (s. 2).

This definition clearly encompasses professional social work. But it also encompasses activities routinely carried out in family, voluntary, charitable, community, educational, and advocacy settings.

A soup‑kitchen volunteer who assesses a homeless person’s needs, or an NGO worker who intervenes to help a domestic violence survivor, may inadvertently fall within the statutory process described.

The Minister has stated that the Act does not apply to volunteers or caregivers. But verbal assurances in Parliament have no legal force. The Act's definition remains unchanged, and the penalties are severe: up to RM20,000 in fines or two years' imprisonment for unregistered practice; up to RM50,000 or three years imprisonment for employment of unregistered practitioners (Ss 31 and 32).

Given that unauthorised practice carries criminal penalties, legislative clarity is essential. If volunteers, family, and community caregivers are not meant to be regulated, the law must make this explicit.

Implications for NGOs and Civil Society

Malaysia’s social care ecosystem is plural and vibrant. The government has stated that there are over 54,500 active welfare NGOs. These NGOs, charities, shelters, and community organisations rely on a mix of professional staff, employees, volunteers, and members. Section 32 of the Act, however, imposes restrictions on the employment of persons who are not practitioners and creates liability for societies and office‑bearers.

The issue is not whether NGOs should meet professional standards when employing professional social workers, but whether the Act adequately distinguishes between employees providing:

• professional practice requiring registration under the Act, and
• voluntary or community‑based assistance that should remain unregulated.

The problem is that section 32 of the Act is overstated and needs amendment.

A Troubling Double Standard for Public Officers

Section 19(8) of the Act exempts public officers performing social work duties in the course of their employment from holding a practising certificate:

“Nothing in this section shall be construed to prevent a public officer to provide social work services in the course of his duties as a public officer without holding a practising certificate.”

It seems contradictory that, when professional registration is necessary to protect vulnerable people, government officers performing the same functions be exempt.

The Minister has suggested a phased approach to include civil servants eventually. But the Act contains no timetable and no statutory obligation to end the exemption. A transitional arrangement may be justified; an indefinite exemption is harder to defend.

Professional standards should attach to the function performed, not who is performing it.

Towards a Framework that Protects Without Policing

The Act should be welcomed for recognising social work as a profession and for seeking to protect the public. But professionalisation must not come at the expense of professional autonomy, civil society, or ordinary human compassion.

Several amendments would strengthen the Act:

• Clarify the definition of social work services to distinguish professional practice from voluntary or charitable activity.
• Expressly protect volunteers, family, and community caregivers from being treated as unauthorised practitioners.
• Provide clear guidance for NGOs, ensuring that professional staff meet standards while volunteers and general staff remain free to serve.
• Rebalance the regulatory structure to give practitioners and civil society a meaningful institutional role in determining standards and ethics.
• Review the exemption for public officers, ensuring it is genuinely transitional and subject to a defined pathway toward full professional compliance.
• Recognise experience alongside academic qualifications, ensuring that those who built Malaysia’s social welfare landscape are not excluded by statutory formalism.

Professional regulation should protect the public, but it should not police compassion, constrain civic action, or place the determination of professional standards predominantly in the hands of government administrators.

Malaysia needs a regulatory framework that elevates social work, respects professional expertise, and honours the indispensable role of civil society. The Act can achieve this, but only if it aligns professionalisation with autonomy, clarity, and the lived realities of social care.

 

MOHE Relaxes Disciplinary Actions, But the Laws of Control Remain Intact

 This article was first published in Aliran on 28 August 2026 here  https://m.aliran.com/thinking-allowed-online/mohe-relaxes-discipline-but-the-laws-of-control-remain-intact

The Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) announced today (28 August 2026) that it has begun implementing immediate measures to strengthen students’ freedom of speech and freedom of association, in line with the statement made by the Prime Minister, during the Forum Ilmuwan Malaysia MADANI (FIM) Series 13 on the abolition of the Universities and University Colleges Act 1971 [Act 30] (AUKU).

The statement is a welcome acknowledgement of the Prime Minister’s direction that Malaysian universities must move towards a position where student rights, academic freedom, and institutional autonomy are treated as constitutional norms rather than administrative privileges.

The announcement of an immediate suspension of disciplinary proceedings related to student speech and peaceful assembly is significant: it recognises that the existing enforcement culture has long been inconsistent with democratic principles.

However, the statement contains a fundamental contradiction that must be addressed if reform or even the interim measures are to be credible.

MOHE declares that it is “committed to ensuring that improvements to student rights are implemented without waiting for the full legislative process to conclude.” It lists the freedoms of association, organising activities, expression, communication, publication as rights that can be acted upon immediately.

Yet the same statement concludes by asserting that these freedoms “must be exercised responsibly and in accordance with the law.”

This is precisely the problem.

The phrase “in accordance with the law” refers to the very legal and regulatory framework — including Act 605, university statutes, and disciplinary rules — that has historically restricted student freedoms. And critically, AUKU is not the only legislation that controls student expression and association. Students and academics remain subject to nearly 20 other laws, including:

• The Sedition Act 1948
• The Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984
• The Communications and Multimedia Act 1948
• Various public order, assembly, and security laws and regulations

Unless there is a blanket immunity for students and academics in the exercise of academic freedom, the repeal of AUKU will only address a small portion of the restrictive legal environment. The machinery of control remains intact. A moratorium on disciplinary proceedings, even if this can legally be implemented, does not dismantle the underlying framework that enables overreach; it merely pauses one part of it. The offender may still be charged in a court of law.

Thus, MOHE simultaneously expands rights and reinscribes the conditions that limit those rights. This internal contradiction weakens the force of the announcement and explains why students, academics, and civil society have consistently argued that abolishing AUKU alone is insufficient. Without structural reform of the broader legal ecosystem, “responsible freedom” risks becoming a euphemism for continued administrative discretion.

The Prime Minister has articulated a rights‑driven vision for higher education. To implement that vision, MOHE must move beyond symbolic gestures and confront the deeper governance and legal structures that have constrained academic freedom for decades. Anything less will reproduce the same culture of control under a different name.