New report launched during UNCCD COP16 outlines critical steps towards keeping land in the safe zone By UN Department of Global Communications RIYADH, Saudi Arabia | 1 December 2024 (IDN) —A major new scientific report was launched today, a day ahead of the opening of the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to […]
Sri Lanka: The IMF’s Remarkable Timing and a President’s Mandate for Debt Justice
By Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake* COLOMBO | 30 November 2024 (IDN) — At Annual Meetings in Washington in October, International Monetary Fund head Kristalina Georgieva claimed Sri Lanka as a debt restructuring ‘success’ story.[i] Left unsaid was that Sri Lanka’s external debt had ballooned from $26 billion to a purported whopping $100 billion during two years of […]
Global Inter-Faith Leaders Appeal for a Safe, Secure & Sustainable World for Children
By Dr. Mustafa Y. Ali* NAIROBI, Kenya | 27 November 2024 (IDN) — Leaders from the world’s largest religions and faiths, representatives from international organizations, the United Nations, and governments have adopted a ground-breaking Declaration and Plan of Action to address the unprecedented challenges that the children face in the world today. The landmark Abu […]
Call for Accelerating Progress Eradicating Violence Against Women and Girls.
By Caroline Mwanga NEW YORK | VIENNA | 27 November 2024 (IDN) — The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on 25 November was commemorated the brutal assassination of the Mirabal sisters in the Dominican Republic on 25 November 1960, whose activism and sacrifice galvanized global attention towards efforts to end violence […]
The Evil That America Does Lives After It
By Jonathan Power* LUND, Sweden | 27 November 2024 (IDN) — American foreign policy makers often wonder aloud why it is that much of the world has such an anti-American reflex. Why the “Ugly American”? Graham Greene would never have written a novel entitled the “Ugly Russian” or even the “Ugly German”. It is not […]
Report Reveals Harrowing Truth Behind Africa’s Hidden Rape Crisis
By Kizito Makoye DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania | 27 November 2024 (IDN) — A 17-year-old Adebi* recalls how her life changed forever after the war that tore through the walls of her house in Northwest Cameroon in 2019, leaving indelible scars in the way she never imagined. “Some men broke in and raped me and […]
Sustainable Transport Key to Achieving Asia-Pacific Region’s Development Ambitions
By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana* BANGKOK, Thailand | 26 November 2024 (IDN) — Across the Asia-Pacific region, especially in urban centres, electric cars and buses are increasingly replacing gasoline-powered ones as a means of transportation. Aided by the ubiquity of smart devices, smart mobility and other transport innovations are significantly reshaping everyday life through ride-sharing apps, […]
A Wonderland of Words: The Anaphora to Zeugma
By Satish Padmanabhan* NEW DELHI | 26 November 2024 (IDN) — If you have a bittersweet longing for something absent in your life, or you have experienced something once, loved and lost, and may never experience it again and are left with feelings of love, happiness, sadness, hope, emptiness and desire—and if you speak Portuguese—you […]
After COP29, What’s Next for Food and Agriculture and the Climate Crisis?
By Food Tank* BAKU, Azerbaijan | 25 November 2024 (IDN)–The United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan, (which concluded November 23) focused on securing financial investment to move global climate progress forward. Rich industrialized nations were asked to recognize and repair the harm they’ve caused, and everyone knew beforehand that negotiations might […]
COP29: A Staggering Betrayal of the World’s Most Vulnerable
By the Group of Least Developed Countries BAKU, Azerbaijan | 24 November 2024 (IDN) — The Group of world’s Least Developed Countries (LDCs) on Climate Change is outraged and deeply hurt by the outcome of COP29. “Once again, the countries most responsible for the climate crisis have failed us. We leave Baku without an ambitious […]