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 […]
Accessibility to the Disabled isn’t a Luxury – it’s a Necessity
By Tanja B. Sejersen & & Manal Hassan* BANGKOK | 14 November 2025 (IDN) — Imagine being invisible—not because you’re unseen, but because your existence isn’t officially recorded. For millions of children with disabilities across Asia and the Pacific, this is a daily reality. A recent UNICEF report reveals stark disparities in access to rights […]
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 […]
East Timor Joins ASEAN — and Now Comes the Hard Part
Challenges and hopes for prosperity and stability. By Ramesh Jaura This article first appeared on https://rjaura.substack.com BERLIN | 3 November 2025 (IDN) — It took half a century, two foreign occupations, a UN peacekeeping mission, and one of the most extraordinary independence struggles of the modern era. But on 26 October 2025, East Timor — […]
Sri Lanka Is the Crucial Hub of the Ancient Maritime Silk Road
By Ambassador Dr Palitha Kohona The writer is Sri Lanka’s Former Ambassador to China, a former Permanent Representative to the UN, a former Foreign Secretary, and a former Head of the UN Treaty Section. The following is extracted from a presentation De Kohona made to the Colombo Port City Rotary Club. COLOMBO | 1 November […]
The Changing Monsoon in The Himalayas: Lessons from Bhutan’s Floods
By Madhurima Sarkar-Swaisgood, Prangya Paramita Gupta, Shashwat Avi, and Sanjay Srivastava, ESCAP* BANGKOK | 29 October 2025 (IDN) — The Himalayan arc from Bhutan through Nepal and India into Pakistan has always followed the rhythm of the monsoon. In 2025, that rhythm became deadly. Rain that sustains agriculture and rivers turned destructive, testing the capacity […]
The End of the Shinawatra Clan in Thailand?
By Jan Servaes* BRUSSELS | 7 October 2025 (IDN) — Thailand’s Constitutional Court removed Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, 39, the daughter of divisive but influential billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra, from office. The Court ruled that she committed a “grave breach of ethics” in a leaked phone call with Cambodian Senate President Hun Sen, in which she made disparaging […]
A Serious Proposal: Russia and China Call for Global Strategic Stability
By Alice Slater* NEW YORK | 1 October 2025 (IDN) — It’s ironic that the arms control community is protesting the idea of resuming nuclear test detonations. The nuclear test detonations have never stopped. Although Bill Clinton signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996, he swiftly funded the “Stockpile Stewardship” program at the […]