Leadership, Legitimacy and the Future of Multilateralism By Ramesh Jaura This article was first published on https://rjaura.substack.com/ BERLIN | 27 July 2026 (IDN) — The election of the next United Nations Secretary-General is about far more than choosing the Organisation’s ninth leader. It will test whether the international community still believes dialogue, cooperation and shared […]
Collapse After a Landslide: Starmer’s Fall May Not Be the Last
By Azu Ishiekwene The writer is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and the author of the new book Writing for Media and Monetising It. ABUJA, Nigeria | 25 July 2026 (IDN) — It was painful to watch him outside No.10 on Monday, 20 July. Despite his immaculate suit and well-groomed hair, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer […]
Armenian Church Ready for New Clashes with PM Pashinyan
By Benoit Lannoo* ANTWERP, Belgium | 23 July 2026 (IDN) — It was a remarkable meeting at the Vardavar celebration – the 14th Sunday after Easter – in Etchmiadzin. Armenian Apostolic Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan was blessed by Catholicos Garegin II in the mother-cathedral of this autocephalous (independent) Eastern Church. ‘Blessing with lots of water’ plays a […]
Recognition, Right, and the Stateless: A Fichtean Critique of the Plight of the Rohingya
By Sam Ben-Meir* NEW YORK | 21 July 2026 (IDN) — In a world that proclaims human rights as universal, what does it mean that entire peoples are rendered legally nonexistent—human beings for whom, as Hannah Arendt put it, “no law exists”? This essay turns to Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s philosophy of recognition to argue that the […]
When the Centre Cannot Hold
The Changing Architecture of Global Power in the Twenty-First Century By Ramesh Jaura This article first appeared on https://rjaura.substack.com/ Author’s Note: International affairs are often discussed in terms of individual crises—Ukraine, the Middle East, artificial intelligence, the strategic rivalry between the United States and China, or the future of the United Nations. This essay argues […]
1776 Against 1787: Constituent Power and the Forgotten Meaning of American Democracy
By Sam Ben-Meir* NEW YORK | 6 July 2026 (IDN) — On Saturday, July 4, Americans celebrated the nation’s 250th anniversary with the familiar fanfare: fireworks, flags, patriotic speeches, and ritual invocations of liberty. Yet at this extraordinary milestone, when the country is more deeply divided than at any time in recent memory over the […]
Eritrean Human Rights Mandate Renewed as UN Council Defies Opposition
By Daniel Tesfa and Filmon Gebremikael ANTWERPEN | Belgium | 6 July 2026 (IDN) — The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has voted to renew the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Eritrea for another year, following strong advocacy from the European Union and Eritrean civil society […]
Africa’s Security at a Crossroads: A Continent Confronts a Changing Worl
By Ramesh Jaura This article was first published on https://rjaura.substack.com/ BERLIN | 4 July 2026 (IDN) — There was a time when Africa was often portrayed as standing at the margins of international politics—its conflicts treated as regional crises, its development challenges largely divorced from the wider currents shaping the global order. That perception no […]
Durable Solutions Must Be Defined by Those Who Live Them
By Shabnam Baloch The writer is the Country Director at Oxfam in South Sudan. JUBA, South Sudan | 2 July 2026 (IDN) — As experts gathered in New York earlier this month to discuss the future of the humanitarian landscape and durable solutions for displaced people, the conversations touched on linking humanitarian response to long-term […]
The US Occupation of the Indian Ocean ‘Zone of Peace’, the Next UNSG and the World’s First Woman Head of State
By Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake* COLOMBO, Sri Lanka | 30 June 2026 (IDN) — America’s war of choice on Iran has spread across the Indian Ocean World and maritime Silk Route. Starved of oil and gas, South and Southeast Asia’s emerging economies have seen their local currencies fall against the ‘exorbitantly privileged’ Petrodollar as public and private […]