By Jaya Ramachandran GENEVA | 6 January 2024 (IDN) — The UN’s migration agency IOM has launched an urgent appeal for $69 million to support its response to escalating and critical humanitarian needs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and neighbouring countries affected by the ongoing hostilities in Gaza. In a statement on 5 January, […]
Thailand: Farm Academy Training Takes Kids Away from Screens
By Pattama Vilailert KHON KAEN, Thailand | 6 January 2024 (IDN) — Nalinthip has been a nurse for 13 years and is the mother to two children aged three and five. Her husband is a YouTuber who spends most of his time on the screen at the age of 40. His Internet using behavior alarmed […]
Migrants Can Be Climate Action Champions
By Shoko Noda The writer is the UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Crisis Bureau Director. NEW YORK | 4 January 2024 (IDN) — When we think of migration in the context of climate change, it is most often in relation to the thousands, or even millions, of people displaced by extreme weather. The numbers, while […]
COP28 – Massive Disappointments, Slight Glimmers of Hope
By Volker Boege* Toda Peace Institute issued this article, and it is being republished with their permission. BRISBANE, Australia | 4 January 2024 (IDN) — At the closing plenary of COP28, Anne Rasmussen from Samoa, the lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Islands States (AOSIS), expressed her disappointment about the conference’s outcome in no […]
Vietnam: Drought and Salinity in the Mekong Delta Threatens Food Security
By Le Thanh Binh HO CHI MINH CITY | 3 January 2024 (IDN) — The Mekong Delta in South Vietnam has been the country’s rice granary for generations, feeding more than 20 million people today. But climate change resulting in droughts and salinity of the river-fed waters is now threatening food security. The Mekong River […]
Controversies Mar the Reputation of Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus
By Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury DHAKA | 2 January 2024 (IDN) — For many decades, Muhammad Yunus succeeded in remaining in the attention of international media and global celebrities and leaders by continuing self-promotion as the ‘savior of the poor’, ‘father of microcredit’ etc. Interestingly, many leaders in the West, including former US First Lady […]
Peace and Security: Homage to a Buddhist Spiritual Leader and a Great Writer
By Ramesh Jaura BERLIN | 1 January 2024 (IDN) — “Even an old fountain pen, if it happened to have belonged to some great writer, is looked on with awe and reverence by the people of later times, for they feel that somehow it is capable of revealing the secrets of the great man’s masterpieces,” […]
Yet Another Challenge for 2024
By Ramesh Jaura BERLIN | 31 December 2023 (IDN) — The New Year marks our 15th anniversary. Since going online in 2009, we have devoted ourselves to in-depth news and analysis of issues that impact the world, particularly the countries of the Global South. Our focus has been on promoting the bold and transformative 2030 […]
President Biden: Learn the Names of Children You’ve Helped Israel to Murder
Following is the letter Norman Solomon* wrote to President Joe Biden on 26 December 2023. SAN FRANCISCO | 29 December 2023 (IDN) — You’ve often spoken of how much you care about children and how terrible it is when they’re murdered. “Too many schools, too many everyday places have become killing fields,” you said at […]
India: Is the World’s Largest Democracy A “Mockery”?
By Kalinga Seneviratne SINGAPORE | 28 December 2023 (IDN) — India’s national Parliament—known as Lok Sabha (Lower House of the People)—has become a “mockery of democracy,” says the main opposition party Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge following a splurge of expulsions of their members from the chambers before important criminal law reform bills were debated and […]