Black Colombian Activists Continue Our Struggle For Rights

While Colombia’s peace talks continue in Havana, Cuba, back home in the region of North Cauca, Black Colombians have found their cries for access to their ancestral lands met with tear-gas and rubber bullets.

Can the UN Security Council Stop Hospitals Being Targets in War?

Hospitals, health care workers and patients in war zones are supposed to be protected under international humanitarian law yet recent attacks from Syria to Afghanistan suggest that they have become targets.

Why we need to stand united against governments cracking down on dissent

Last month, after receiving threats for opposing a hydroelectric project, Berta Caceres, a Honduran indigenous and environmental rights campaigner, was murdered. A former winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize for her opposition to one of Central America’s biggest hydropower projects, Berta was shot dead in her own home.

Why the World Needs a UN Leader Who Stands Up for Human Rights

Last August, Balla Hadji, a 61-year-old truck driver in Bangui in the Central African Republic, was having breakfast with his wife when they heard shots outside. He ran out to call his daughter inside, but troops were already there, and shot him in the back as he ran away. His 16-year-old son, Souleimane, was also shot when he ran towards his father. Balla died on the spot, his son Souleimane the next day.

Any Ways to Combat Extremism?

“The objective of extremists is for us to turn on each other [and] our unity is the ultimate rebuke for that bankrupt strategy.”

Deep Discord at United Nations over Global Drug Policy

International drug conventions ultimately aim to ensure the health and welfare of humankind, UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said here Tuesday at the opening of a special three-day session on drugs known as UNGASS.

Can an Animal Heist Fable Help Solve the Middle East Crisis?

Make no mistake-the Middle East is the longest and perhaps the most complex crisis in recent History, this explaining the innumerable, successive –and frustrating- attempts to solve it.

UN Chief Lauds Oman for Discreet Role in Peace Talks

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has singled out Oman as perhaps the only Arab country in the Gulf playing a discreet role – mostly behind-the- scenes – in helping resolve some of the military and political conflicts in the war-ravaged region.

Yemen’s Health Crisis is “Critical,” Says WHO

The health situation in Yemen has severely deteriorated and is critical, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has reported.

Peace in Colombia, Shielded by International Support

“It was not possible” to reach a final agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the Colombian government’s lead negotiator, Humberto de la Calle, announced in Havana on Wednesday Mar. 23 – the deadline set for a peace deal.

Western Powers Unlikely to Impose Arms Embargo on Saudi Arabia

As hundreds of civilians continue to be killed in the ongoing conflict in Yemen, one of the leading human rights organization is calling for an arms embargo – specifically against Saudi Arabia which is leading a coalition of eight countries battling Houthi rebels in the war-ravaged neighbouring country.

Will Children of Colombia Know Peace at Last?

“No child in Colombia today knows what it is like to live in a country at peace,” said UN Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF) Representative in Colombia Roberto De Bernardi during the launch of a new report.

Women`s Revolution

For as long as I can remember, people have been talking about the possibility of revolution in Pakistan. They were originally inspired, or perhaps frightened, by the Iranian Revolution in 1979, when ordinary Iranians rose up under the leadership of the clergy and overthrew Western-backed Reza Shah Pahlavi.

Myanmar’s Rohingya Humanitarian Crisis

The persisting humanitarian crisis of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar has been a global concern after two bouts of organised mass violence against them in 2012. While the Rohingya persecution has been going on for nearly four decades, Myanmar’s reforms launched in 2011 facilitated the international media’s coverage of the mass violence.

Civil Wars Threaten to Break up a Volatile Middle East

As civil wars and cross-border military conflicts continue to escalate in the Middle East, Syria, Iraq and Libya are in danger of breaking up —even as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) continues to make territorial gains in the volatile region.

Palestinian Refugees from Syria

In the safety of his sister's bare flat in Beit Hanoun, Gaza, 42 year-old Iyad Yusef still shakes his head in disbelief when he recounts the journey that from war-torn Syria, brought him and his family to the relative safety of the blockaded strip.

CTBTO to Install Two Nuclear Monitoring Stations in Ecuador

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO), based in Vienna, will soon install two new monitoring stations in Ecuador. CTBTOs Executive Secretary Dr Lassina Zerbo told IPS the two stations in Ecuador, RN 24 and IS 20, “will brings us an important step closer to the completion of the International Monitoring System – the network that monitors the globe 24/7 for signs of nuclear explosive testing.”

Exorcising Stalin

In one of his books, Mohamed Heikal, the Egyptian journalist who died last month at the age of 92, records an extraordinary encounter in 1964 between Gamal Abdel Nasser and Nikita Khrushchev.

New Nuclear Hysteria in the Middle East

Three years ago when the tsunami of panic around Iran's potential capability to develop nuclear weapons reached its peak, a combined diplomatic, media campaign warning that a Gulf Arab state would think of purchasing atomic bombs was spread like an oil spot.

Mideast Arms Supplies Continue Despite Falling Oil Prices

The continued decline in oil prices is threatening to have a direct and indirect impact on several fronts, including development aid, migrant workers and remittances, voluntary contributions to UN agencies, humanitarian assistance to refugees and infrastructure-building in the Gulf countries.

Elections in Iran, a Test for the Regime

Iran will hold two crucial elections on February 26, 2016, which could decide the fate of the Islamic Republic for many years to come. Earlier this month, Iranians celebrated the 37th anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution. During that period, the country experienced revolutionary upheavals, a disastrous eight-year war with Iraq that killed and wounded nearly a million Iranians, eight years of populist rule by a hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and crippling Western sanctions.