By Marlies Linke* ALMATY, Kazakhstan | 17 February 2025 (IDN) — The sixteenth BRICS summit, held in Kazan, Russia from 22 to 24 October 2024, bore the slogan “Strengthening Multilateralism for Fair Global Development and Security”. According to its concluding statement, the summit was intended to demonstrate that the participating Global South countries are expanding […]
Was the AI Summit in Paris a Missed Opportunity?
By Simone Galimberti* KATHMANDU, Nepal | 16 February 2025 (IDN) — Since the start of the Paris AI Action Summit, held on the 10th and 11th of February, the expectations were minimal. Yet there was a trickle of hope that the gathering would succeed at maintaining a modicum focus on safety and security of artificial […]
The Need for U.S. Action in the Democratic Republic of Congo
By Kate Hixon* WASHINGTON DC | 16 February 2025 (IDN) — On 18 January, the M23, a Congolese Tutsi-led, Rwandan-backed rebel military group, launched a military operation to expand the territory it had gained over the past three years. The operation violated an August 2024 ceasefire agreement between Rwanda and the DRC established through the […]
Navigating a Low-Carbon Future: Maritime Decarbonisation on the 2025 Global Agenda
By Pascal Lamy and Geneviève Pons* BRUSSELS | 15 February 2025 (IDN) — Ten years ago, at COP21 the Paris Agreement was adopted as a global response to the threat of climate change, aiming at limiting the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. In the same year, world leaders also committed to thriving the […]
Realization Of Trump’s Gaza Plan Will be Crime of the Century
By James E. Jennings* ATLANTA, USA | 14 February 2025 (IDN) — The stark alternatives facing people in Gaza are both equally bad: stay in their little strip of Palestine and die or try to leave and die. It’s like choosing between the devil or the deep blue sea. They face death either way. Even […]
Opinion: Ukraine War, Impact of Rearmament, Economic Woes Loom Over German National Elections
By Michael von der Schulenburg* BRUSSELS | 13 February 2025 (IDN) — The war in Ukraine and its consequences will have a long-lasting negative impact on the political, security, economic and social future of Germany. It is the biggest war on European soil since the Second World War; a war which has brought us dangerously […]
Message To the US and Russia: Don’t Think About Nuclear War
By Jonathan Power* LUND, Sweden | 11 February 2025 (IDN) — War over Ukraine? It mustn’t be. Some of us believed that at the end of the Cold War in 1991 American and Soviet nuclear rockets would be left to rust and rot in their silos. Indeed, we actually saw Ukraine, where the Soviets made […]
Breakthrough in UN Tax Convention Despite Talks Despite US Walking Out
By J Nastranis NEW YORK | 8 February 2025 (IDN) — The European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad), a network of 60 European non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in 28 countries, has welcomed “a major breakthrough towards more just and effective international tax rules” in UN Tax Convention negotiations in New York—despite the United States’ withdrawal. […]
“Riviera Of the Middle East”: A Paradise Inside a Hornet’s Nest
By Somar Wijayadasa* NEW YORK | 6 February 2025 (IDN) — President Donald Trump’s bombshell proposal that the United States would take over the war-ruined Gaza—that he described as a “demolition zone” – relocate Palestinians to neighboring countries—possibly in Egypt and Jordan – and redevelop the war-torn enclave into what he described as the “Riviera […]
Moving from a Doomsday Clock to a Peace Clock
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies* NEW YORK | 6 February 2025 (IDN) — This year’s Doomsday Clock Statement landed like a damp squib in a Trump-swamped corporate news cycle on January 28th. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists only moved the hands of the Clock forward by one second, from 90 seconds […]