Christian schools in Jerusalem remained closed on 1 September because more than 70 teachers from the West Bank had been denied entry. But what surprised Benoit Lannoo, an Antwerp based expert on Eastern Christians, most of all was that there was no reaction whatsoever from European, Western institutions or from any EU Member State, neither […]
25 Years of War Was the Wrong Response to 9/11
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S.Davies* NEW YORK | 9 September 2026 (IDN) — The lesson of 9/11 should be that war is not the answer to any of the problems facing the United States. After inflicting violence and chaos on country after country for twenty-five years in a “global war on terror” that […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]