“We have a saying here in Ukraine now – ‘young people meet at their friends’ funerals rather than at weddings.' It’s sad, but very true.”
As Russian forces continue to lay waste to civilian areas of towns and cities across Ukraine, Roma in the country are struggling to access compensation to help them rebuild their damaged homes.
The international community must take action to uphold international humanitarian law, say healthcare and rights advocates, as attacks on healthcare in war zones reached a record high last year.
After three years of bloodshed, extraordinary courage and immense sacrifices in resisting Russia’s invasion, the people of Ukraine are in limbo as peace negotiations to end the war, instigated by United States President Donald Trump, remain unpredictable.
“A lot of people are very scared,” says Zalina Marshenkulova. “This is obviously another tool of repression. The state is waging war on the remnants of free-thinking people in Russia and trying to suppress all dissent and freedom,” the Russian feminist activist tells IPS.
The warning from Marshenkulova, who left Russia soon after the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and now lives in Germany, comes just days after new legislation came into force in her home country banning "child-free propaganda.”
At The Hague, the United Nation’s highest court heard Fiji, a small island nation, lay out its arguments on the threat posed by climate change and the legal obligations, especially those of developed nations.
“This is what you get after ten years of state propaganda and brainwashing,” says Anatolii*.
The Moscow-based LGBT rights activist’s ire is directed at a recent ruling by Russia’s Supreme Court declaring the “international LGBT movement” an extremist organization.
On July 26 2023 a man named Colonel-Major Amadou Abdramane, flanked by soldiers with military fatigues, appeared on Niger's national television to announce the execution of a coup. It was the country’s fourth coup since it gained independence from France in 1960.
The Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, held up a child’s glittery, crimson-red diary as he addressed the Member States at the 88th plenary meeting of the General Assembly on Tuesday.
As Russia paused the renewal of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres reacted with regret saying the global south would be badly affected.
A report released this week has highlighted how continuing criminalisation and marginalisation of key populations are stymying efforts to end the global HIV/AIDS epidemic.
As well as creating a humanitarian crisis, the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam in Ukraine has wrought enormous environmental damage which may never be undone, ecologists have said.
The collapse of the dam in the Kherson region on June 6 put more than 40,000 people in immediate danger from flooding and left hundreds of thousands without access to drinking water, according to Ukrainian officials.
The arrest of a US journalist in Russia has not only sent a chilling warning to foreign reporters in the country but is a sign of the Kremlin’s desire to ultimately stifle any dissent in the state, press freedom watchdogs have warned.
Given the complex interplay between geopolitics and financial markets, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 sent shockwaves across the global economy. Admittedly, the implications both within and between countries have varied. However, there were some common denominators, including higher commodity prices.
Since the war in Ukraine started in February last year, at least 1.5 million Russian citizens have crossed the Russia-Georgia border, official data states. However, as of today, it needs to be clarified how many of them stayed in the country, but walking the streets of the Georgian capital Tbilisi, the presence of Russian nationals can be seen almost everywhere.
They began to arrive en masse in Argentina in the second half of 2022, a few months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They are pregnant Russian women who land in the capital to give birth, with the hope of gaining an Argentine passport, given the fact that so many countries refuse to let in people with Russian passports today.
As plans are announced to set up an international centre in The Hague to prosecute war crimes committed in Ukraine, groups involved in documenting them say there must be a fundamental change in how the world reacts to war atrocities.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost one year ago, there have been allegations of tens of thousands of war crimes committed by invading forces.
A new law banning LGBTQI ‘propaganda’ in Russia will further stigmatise LGBTQI people in the country and could worsen what is already one of the world’s worst HIV/AIDS epidemics, critics have warned.
Soon after Russia invaded her country, Anastasiia Yeva Domani found herself forced to abandon the regime of vital medicines she was taking.
The transgender activist could no longer get hold of the hormone medicines she needed to regularly take in Ukraine as supply chains were disrupted and the vast majority of pharmacies were closed.
Tourism to Egypt’s GDP is as vital as the Nile to its people. After Egypt’s tourism sector began to recover following the Russian plane crash in 2015. Then COVID hit, and now the Ukrainian war shot a bullet through its heart.
Egypt is scrambling to find alternate sources of wheat after the Russian invasion of Ukraine has put supply to the country in jeopardy. This is especially urgent because the price of bread in Egypt has in the past sparked protests in the country.