Twenty years after five Central Asian states signed a landmark treaty banning nuclear weapons across their region, their foreign ministers have used the anniversary to warn that faltering arms-control agreements, nuclear modernization and deepening international mistrust are placing global security under growing strain.
Two weeks after devastating floods struck Nepal, communities across the country are still struggling to meet basic needs as humanitarian efforts continue. The disaster, triggered by a glacial collapse, has become one of Nepal’s deadliest in recent years, leaving widespread destruction in its wake.
Many wonder why men in Afghanistan do not protest when women’s rights are trampled upon. In reality, many are rebelling behind the scenes, for instance, by helping their daughters get an education.
"As parliamentarians, we should understand that behind every demographic indicator is a human story,” Kamikawa Yoko, MP Japan and Chair of AFPPD, reminded lawmakers in her opening address to the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (AFPPD) annual conference held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
My name is Paul Divakar Namala. I am the Executive Director of
The Inclusivity Project and Convenor of the
Global Forum of Communities Discriminated on Work and Descent. My work focuses on communities whose social status, occupations and exclusion are inherited across generations through caste, analogous hierarchies and systems rooted in traditional slavery.
A symposium examining Japan’s death penalty through the lens of human dignity was held on September 5 at Joseph Hall of St. Ignatius Church in Yotsuya, Tokyo.
More and more, global disarmament discussions are encompassing the humanitarian and environmental impacts of the testing and use of nuclear weapons, as it becomes clear that the legacy of nuclear weapons leaves its mark on multiple generations.
Physical borders are shrinking, and digital ones are quietly taking their place. As governments use digital transformation as a powerful driver of economic and sustainable development, the challenge is no longer simply a digital divide between those with technology and those without it. It is a question of digital fragmentation, where infrastructure, standards and regulations make cross-border cooperation more difficult.
That day, Subash Tamang was mining sand along the banks of the Trishuli River near the Trishuli Hydropower Project, working alongside his wife, brother, sister-in-law, and two other family members. Suddenly, he noticed water gushing down from above the hydropower site. His first thought was that the dam had burst.
On Sunday afternoon, Mingma Tamang, 29, rushed into the TU Teaching Hospital’s emergency ward, where a rescue team had just brought in an injured person in the Rasuwa flash flood – but she soon left grim-faced.
On the morning of August 26, an unprecedented series of flash floods struck Nepal and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, causing immense destruction, killing hundreds of civilians and leaving thousands missing. Entire neighborhoods have been buried underwater and beneath mud as the Nepalese government and humanitarian organizations rush to provide emergency assistance.
When the rains fail across Tanzania’s northern Maasai Steppe, herders drive their cattle farther in search of pasture and water.
Bangladesh’s riverine and coastal chars have always been landscapes of movement, but climate change is making that movement more violent, frequent, and unequal. The shifting islands of the Jamuna, Brahmaputra, Padma, and other rivers now reveal how climate stress multiplies deprivation, weakens citizenship, and forces char dwellers to absorb the costs of a crisis they did little to create.
Across the vast steppe of northeastern Kazakhstan, the scars of the Cold War remain visible. At the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site, the Soviet Union conducted 456 nuclear tests between 1949 and 1989, exposing nearby communities to radiation and leaving health and environmental consequences that have endured across generations.
India is ranked the second-largest fish-producing nation globally, accounting for around 8 percent of global output. The fisheries sector in India accounts for nearly 7.43 percent of Agricultural Gross Value Added (GVA), the highest (independent) share among the agriculture and allied sectors.
A massive geophysical disaster along the mountainous Nepal-Tibet border has left at least 160 people dead and hundreds more missing after a glacial collapse triggered devastating flash floods and mudslides on Wednesday.
Across this vast ocean, the latest monitoring by Mercator Ocean International shows marine heatwave conditions ranging from moderate to severe. At the same time, the World Meteorological Organization expects a strong El Niño to intensify through August to October, with a positive Indian Ocean Dipole also likely to develop. These are not distant scientific signals. They are an urgent warning that the ocean system on which millions depend is under mounting stress.
For generations, Pacific children have grown up with the ocean as part of everyday life. It is where families fish, where stories are passed down, where livelihoods begin and where cultures are rooted.
For pastoralists in Arvaikheer — a village in Mongolia’s dry central plains — rain can determine whether there is enough grass for cattle to roam, whether waterholes are replenished and whether families make it through another dry season. But as climate change makes rainfall increasingly unpredictable, even a wet season may no longer provide water and pasture needed to sustain people and livestock.
Afghanistan has seen a number of unexplained murders in recent months.
One of the latest victims is Lailuma, the wife of well-known local singer Salam Maftoon and a community activist.
India’s strongman leader, Narendra Modi, has just been forced to do the thing he likes least: making concessions in response to protests.