By Filmon Gebremikael, Daniel Tesfa and Shim Masha ANTWERPEN | Belgium | 19 August 2026 (IDN) — Semhal Hadush was a civil servant in a municipal office in the Central Zone of Tigray. She was forcibly conscripted by the Tigray Defense Force (TDF) from her workplace and taken to the Werie military training center in […]
A Prisoner, A Peacemaker, and Israel’s Defining Choice
By Alon Ben-Meir* NEW YORK | 21 August 2026 (IDN) — What if the man Israel has imprisoned for murder is also the only Palestinian capable of delivering peace? Marwan Barghouti embodies a paradox at the heart of the conflict: legitimacy born of resistance, yet committed to coexistence. Although his release under the current Israelis’ […]
Wars, Inequality, And Poverty No Longer Confined To Faraway Places
By Alon Ben-Meir* NEW YORK | 16 August 2026 (IDN) — Fragmented power, deepening inequality, climate stress, dying democracies, and weaponized information have fused into one global crisis; we can break the cycle if we only summon the will We are living through a moment in time of cascading disorder. Wars, inequality, and poverty are […]
Paper Tiger: The Failure of America’s Trillion Dollar War Machine
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies* NEW YORK | 13 August 2026 (IDN) — According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the United States spent $21 trillion on its military between 2001 and 2024 (in constant 2024 dollars), equal to the combined military spending of the next eighteen countries. Iran barely […]
Thailand and Myanmar Sign Agreement To Tackle Transboundary River Pollution, But Can They Do It Alone?
By Kalinga Seneviratne* BANGKOK, Thailand | 12 August 2026 (IDN) — Witnessed by the visiting Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing and Thailand’s Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, the two ASEAN members signed a Terms of Reference (TOR) on 7th August for the establishment of a joint working group on water quality management for transboundary rivers, such […]
Governments Must Act Now to Stop the Tobacco Industry Recruiting the Next Generation of Customers
By Gene Gesite Jr., Juan Herrera, Sama Ghozlan, Sarah Rauzana and Winnie Olwal BANGKOK | 8 August 2026 (IDN) — On International Youth Day (12 August), youth advocates around the world are calling on governments to take stronger action to protect young people from nicotine addiction. In Asia, proposals in the Philippines to raise the […]
Forestalling Future Viruses Must Be Done — And It Can Be Done Inexpensively
By Jonathan Power LUND, Sweden | 5 August 2026 (IDN) — Almost forgotten in the story about the Coronavirus is the story of AIDS. The drive to deal with it, the search to find medicine to cure it, and the self-discipline by homosexuals only began in 1981, when the disease was discovered and its causes understood. […]
Rebuilding Before Peace
How Ukraine Is Reshaping Europe and the International Order By Ramesh Jaura This article was first published on https://rjaura.substack.com BERLIN | 4 August 2026 (IDN) — The invasion of Ukraine by Russia has now gone well beyond being just a conflict in a particular region; it has changed Europe’s strategic position, brought deterrence back to […]
War-War and Jaw-Jaw
By Jonathan Power LUND, Sweden | 22 July 2026 (IDN) –Donald Trump will find out the hard way in Iran that, as Winston Churchill famously observed, “Jaw-Jaw is better than War-War.” If war can be avoided through a warm, lengthy, private conversation—without advisers, accompanied by generous gestures and promises of international recognition when his opponent, […]
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 […]