Ahead of the UN General Assembly’s high-level debate, a 20-country survey finds strong support for international cooperation despite widespread anxiety about wars and the future. By Ramesh Jaura BERLIN | 20 September 2026 (IDN) — The United Nations may be struggling with wars it cannot stop, divisions among the major powers and growing doubts about the […]
Realizing Genuine “Country Ownership”: Beyond Extractive Economics and Elite Collusion
By Soheila Comninos* WASHINGTON DC | 25 August 2026 (IDN) — Since joining the Funders Roundtable on the Future of Development, I have had the opportunity to attend several high-level forums on international development and observe a powerful critique threading through these spaces: old, extractive development models have created a cycle of dependency, holding back […]
The Digital Quarantine: Youth Social Media Bans Undermine Fundamental Rights
By Gina Romero The writer is a UN Special Rapporteur for the rights to freedom of assembly and of association. BOGOTA, Colombia | 17 August 2026 (IDN) — The global trend of imposing blanket social media bans on youth under 16 creates a civic-political vacuum where they can neither assemble nor digitally associate, effectively stripping […]
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 […]
Can the World Still Work Together?
Hamburg and the Future of International Cooperation “The United Nations was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell.” – — Dag Hammarskjöld By Ramesh Jaura This article was first published on https://rjaura.substack.com BERLIN | 7 July 2026 (IDN) — Eighty years after the founding of the United Nations, the […]
Emperor’s Epic Fury: The Cycle of Debt, War, and Imperial Decline
By Jayasri Priyalal The author is currently a Director Asia-Pacific at UNI Global Union. SINGAPORE | 13 April 2026. (IDN) — The trajectory of human civilization is often defined by the rise and fall of great empires, each following a strikingly similar pattern of expansion, overreach, and eventual collapse. Historical evidence suggests that the demise […]
Asian Expertise Is Now Driving The SDGs In The Region
By Kalinga Seneviratne BANGKOK, Thailand | 16 March 2026 (IDN) — The US President Donald Trump may like to believe that it is the US with its powerful military that is driving the global order, but, the recently concluded 13th Asia Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development (APFSD) reflected the newly evolving global order is driven […]
The End of America; So Is The Future For Asia?
By Jan Servaes* BRUSSELS, Belgium | 18 December 2025 (IDN) — “We Americans have never been very good at managing empire. It is not one of our skill sets. But what is coming next may be a great deal worse than the naïve and incompetently managed American empire of the past eighty years. We may […]
Why the U.S.–South Africa Rift Could Reshape Global Power
A Shock That Had Been Building for Months This article was first published on https://rjaura.substack.com By Ramesh Jaura BERLIN | 2 December 2025 (IDN) — Six months ago, a meeting in Washington set the stage for the geopolitical rupture now unfolding. In one of the year’s most contentious diplomatic encounters, U.S. President Donald Trump confronted […]
Leveraging Trump’s Tariff Shock: Diversify Products and Markets — Industrialise
By Darini Rajasingham Senanayake* COLOMBO, Sri Lanka | 12 August 2025 (IDN) — Real and staged crises present opportunities to reorient, innovate and think outside the box. Trump’s tariff ‘shock’ presents Sri Lanka’s business sector and national policy makers an opportunity for short, intermediate and long-term economic and industrial policy shift out of the current […]