By Jonathan Power* LUND, Sweden | 19 November 2025 (WorldView) — In 1772, sailing to the far south, Captain James Cook deflated the prevailing myth of Antarctica, that it was a temperate land, fertile and populated. Although he never landed on the continent, he saw the vast icebergs, the frozen sea and the “worst weather […]
Naval Nuclear Propulsion: A Two-Track Solution for IAEA Safeguards Integrity
By Tariq Rauf* VIENNA | 19 November 2025 (IDN) — More than four years have elapsed since the matter of the proliferation of nuclear-powered submarines reemerged after a gap of nearly four decades to place the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) squarely in the cross-hairs of a serious policy and legal conundrum. It also highlighted […]
Crime and Punishment
By Neville de Silva* LONDON | 16 November 2025 (IDN) — “I’m afraid there is no money”, an outgoing British Labour MP once famously said. Today, in Sri Lanka, there is also a shortage of state funds, which politicians and bureaucrats have pilfered. Some of the loot is lying in banks here and abroad, state […]
Trump, Deterrence, and the Erosion of Nuclear Restraint
By Ramesh Jaura* This article was first published on https://rjaura.substack.com BERLIN | 16 November 2025 (IDN) — Ahead of his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on 30 October at Gimhae International Airport in Busan, South Korea, U.S. President Donald Trump declared he had ordered the resumption of U.S. nuclear testing. His statement shattered more […]
The Taliban Are Erasing Women from Public Life
By Alon Ben-Meir* NEW YORK | 15 November 2025 (IDN) — Human rights violations are a global scourge that have engulfed scores of countries on every continent. It appears as though violating human rights is a game in which governments of all national stripes take pleasure and even try to outdo each other in their […]
Every Woman Deserves a Safe and Respectful Birth
By Prof. Concepta Kwaleyela, Twaambo Mutinta, and Levy Mkandawire* LUSAKA. Zambia | 14 November 2025 (IDN) — There is a core issue in the Zambian health system that numbers alone cannot show. It is not simply a shortage of drugs or ambulances, but the need to give dignity to the many women who still give […]
Walls And Fences Should Come Down
By Jonathan Power* LUND, Sweden | 13 November 2025 (IDN) — At first, I was a bit surprised when a friend told me that the English admonition, “Good fences make for good neighbours”, exists in many other languages. I shouldn’t have been taken aback. A moment’s reflection should have told me that dividing people with fences […]
Has Malaysia Surrendered To America’s “Gangster” Diplomacy?
By Kalinga Seneviratne BANGKOK | 11 November 2025 (IDN) — After the United States President Donald Trump barged into the ASEAN Summit with the Malaysian leader Anwar Ibrahim providing him with Malay dancing music at Kuala Lumpur airport, a trade deal signed between the two countries on the sidelines of the Summit on October 29th […]
Is a Critical Pillar of the Global Nuclear Arms Control Architecture About to Crumble?
By Tariq Rauf* VIENNA | 10 November 2025 (IDN) — On 26 September 1996, on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly, at the signing ceremony for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), then-US President William J. Clinton declared the treaty as “the longest-sought, hardest fought prize in arms control history.” He exaggerated; in […]
UN80 Initiative – Between Renewal and Regression
By Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury The following are extensive excerpts from the address by the former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the United Nations, Ambassador Chowdhury — who founded the Global Movement for the Culture of Peace (GMCoP) — at the United Nations Asia Network for Diversity and Inclusion (UN-ANDI) on the occasion of the […]