It Is Imperative To Protect Children In War

All around the globe, the most vulnerable among us are suffering the gravest consequences of war. Children bear the brunt of the horrors inflicted by States and armed groups worldwide, with recent examples found in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, and Afghanistan.

Small Island “Digital” States: Charting the Course for Transformation

Small Island Developing States, or SIDS, have long been pioneers in international development, often compelled by the challenges they face. Positioned on the frontlines of climate change, they lead efforts in mitigation, adaptation, and advocacy, and despite their geographical dispersion, they are innovating approaches to resilience and sustainability.

Women Biomass Producers: Energy’s Largest and Largely Invisible Workforce

The International Energy Agency (IEA) held its annual ministers meeting last week in Paris, marking the 50^th anniversary of the world’s leading energy organization. Critical topics on the agenda included energy security issues linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, as well as advancing a clean energy transition to meet global climate change goals.

Imperialism, Globalisation and Its Discontents*

Imperialism continues to dominate the world. Globalisation is losing to some of its anti-theses, but imperialism still rules, increasingly by law, albeit in changing even contradictory ways.

Another World Seen Through the Lenses of Gender and Sexuality

On a white canvas, people were painting different structures, objects and creatures in a range of colours. Kavita Sada Musahar’s creation was on its way to becoming a painting — with houses, humans, birds, trees and rivers — and a bright red heart.

Local Knowledge and Women’s Leadership are Key to Food Justice: Activists

Manjula Dungdung is explaining why she is fighting for land and agricultural rights for herself and other members of the Kharia tribe, who grow the food they eat. “Women’s right to land is especially important because it is an issue of our dignity, and since we are the ones who do most of the agricultural work, it is to maintain food security.”

UN’s Financial Troubles Jeopardize Critical Human Rights Work

A cash crunch and hiring freeze at the United Nations threaten to hinder UN human rights investigations in places like Sudan, Ukraine, and Syria.

Grassroots Voices Unite to Call for Climate Justice

Kiprotich Peter from the East African country of Kenya is trying to convey his climate crisis message using the platform of the World Social Forum (WSF) taking place in the mountain nation of Nepal, which has also been battered by the impacts of climate change.

UN’s Cash Crisis May Force Hiring Freeze, Limit Official Travel & Curtail Expenses System-Wide

The United Nations is heading towards a severe cash crisis forcing the world body “to implement aggressive cash conservation measures to avert a default in meeting the legal obligations of the Organization”. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has drawn attention to “the unfortunate deteriorating financial situation of our regular budget operations”.

World Social Forum Insists: Another World is Possible!

These are the worst of times, but they can become the best of times, said speaker Dr. Walden Bello, seeking to inspire thousands of progressives who gathered for the World Social Forum (WSF) in Kathmandu on Thursday with the planet under clouds of armed conflict and assaults on democracy.

UN Tax Convention is Historic Opportunity at Risk of Failing

In late November, the UN General Assembly passed a landmark resolution signaling a start on working on a UN framework convention on taxation.

Tracking Global Development in Child Benefits Through New Monitoring and Information Platform

Inclusive social protections for children would be a positive signifier of social development in a time where 1.4 billion children globally are denied them. A step towards realizing this has been taken through a new monitoring tool on current social protection and child poverty statistics.

The West’s Frankenstein Moment

Israel continues to defy its strongest backer the US and its western allies in its quest to control the land from the “River to the Sea”, and in the process ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is determined to push ahead with a ground offensive against Gaza’s southernmost town of Rafah despite mounting warnings from aid agencies and the international community that an assault on Rafah would be a catastrophe. He also snubbed the US on the latest hostage release and ceasefire deal brokered by Qatar and Egypt. The interim order of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to take all effective measures to stop “plausible” genocide in Gaza seems irrelevant to Israel. Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief admits that Netanyahu “doesn’t listen to anyone”.

Women, Girls Equal Partners in HIV Responses, Says Activist

UNAIDS Executive Director, Winnie Byanyima, recently made an impassioned call for governments to support women and girls from marginalized communities at the frontlines of the defence of human rights, to help ensure, among others, that global health is protected.

North Ignores ‘Perfect Storm’ in Global South

A gathering ‘perfect storm’ – due to various developments, several quite deliberate – now threatens much devastation in the global South, likely to most hurt the poorest and most vulnerable.

World Social Forum Seeks to Reemerge as an Influential Gathering of Diversity

The World Social Forum (WSF) is today "more necessary than ever," according to Oded Grajew, promoter and co-founder of the global civil society meeting - a festival of diversity that has not yet succeeded in fomenting or designing the "other possible world" that it predicted when it was created and adopted that motto.

History’s Inflation Lessons

In the early 1970s, conflict in the Middle East set off a spike in oil prices that left central banks around the world scrambling to control inflation. After a year or so, oil prices stabilized and inflation started to retreat. Many countries believed they had restored price stability and loosened policy to revive their recession-hit economies only to see inflation return. Could history repeat?

State of the World’s Migratory Species Report ‘Alarming’ Threats, Global Action Urged

A groundbreaking State of the World’s Migratory Species report is calling for accelerated global conservation measures to counter the threat of extinction faced by 1 in 5 of all migratory species.

From Memory to Policy

A bloodbath is taking place in the Middle East, and yet, the world is embroiled in absurd debates. One is tempted to say, paraphrasing Marx: here the tragedy, there the farce. The German-speaking world – and Germany in particular – takes a decidedly pro-Israeli stance, while in other societies, an equally dubious anti-Israeli position prevails.

Proven Vector Control Interventions Needed to Stem Malaria Infections in Africa

Experts recommend that the current prevention of malaria in highly endemic countries in Africa should integrate "locally appropriate" control measures to cope with the highest burden of mosquito-borne disease on the continent.

Is Anti-Woke a Grass-Root Movement?

“Woke” was for a century, especially among black people in the US, an inspirational concept. However, almost overnight it turned into a pejorative. Like using the term “politically correct” as an insult, calling someone “woke” came to imply that the referred person’s views are excessively ridiculous, or even despicable. Being “anti-woke” has become an indication that you do not belong to an assumed group of “do-gooders”, who at the expense of right-minded “ordinary” citizens assert the demands of interest groups, which declare themselves to be discriminated against due to their ethnicity/race, gender, sexual preference, and/or physical or psychological disabilities.