Op-Ed

by Lorena Lombardozzi and Neil Warner on 21st October 2019 @floretta_voice A genuinely social Europe must have economic democracy rather than rely only on market mechanisms. Read More »

By Ed Holt Rising populism, anti-media rhetoric from politicians, cyber-harassment of journalists and physical attacks are among the reasons why press freedom in Europe is on the decline, according to the global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF). Read More »

By Countercurrents Collective An intergovernmental coalition about a new U.S. initiative planned to counter Russia in Europe hosted a presentation on September 12, 2019, in Warsaw. Read More »

Sudhirendar Sharma Trains are rolling libraries of information provided one is willing to relinquish home comforts; is ready for the unexpected; and is alive to searching the unknown. Read More »

By Shayda Naficy and Ebuata Pholip Jakpor Geneva / Lagos, Oct 16 2019 (IPS) – In Geneva this week, a treaty process is underway that promises to usher in a new era for human rights around the globe. The process—the intergovernmental working group on the binding treaty on transnational corporations and human rights—could mean that for the first time, human ... Read More »

By Jonathan Cook If there is an upside to Brexit, it is this: it has made it increasingly hard to present Jeremy Corbyn, contrary to everything the corporate media has been telling us for the past four years, as anything but a political moderate. In truth, he is one of the few moderates left in British – or maybe that ... Read More »

Danielle Nierenberg Good morning from Lake Nona, Florida! Today is World Food Day, a day to celebrate the world’s farmers and focus attention on hunger, nutrition, poverty, and how to change food and agriculture. This year’s theme is “Our Actions Are Our Future: Healthy Diets for A #ZeroHunger World.” Read More »

By IPS World Desk Rome, Oct 14 2019 (IPS) – Globalization and urbanization have had a staggering impact on human history, especially over the last decade. Read More »

By Umar Manzoor Shah Srinagar, Oct 11 2019 (IPS) – Haseena Akhtar was only 13 when an agent told her parents that they could earn a good amount of money by letting her marry a Kashmiri man. The man was, however, three times older than Akhtar, the agent said. Read More »

By Ben Phillips Mexico City, Oct 9 2019 (IPS) – Last month 195 world leaders once again met in New York for big speeches and grand events. But on inequality, when all is said and done, more has been said than done. Read More »

UN, Oct 2019 (IPS) – European and North American countries have taken a major stride in cleaning up the atmosphere Monday, 7 October, through the implementation of an amended legally binding treaty to limit the amount of emissions polluting the air. Read More »

By World BEYOND War, October 8, 2019 Letter to Julian Assange from NoWar2019 The fourth annual conference of World BEYOND War, which was held on October 4th and 5th in Limerick, Ireland, produced this letter, which is being delivered to Julian Assange. Read More »

Alexey Likhachev, Director General of Russia’s state nuclear energy corporation-ROSATOM emphasized on maximum harnessing the potential of nuclear technologies in order to implement the decisions of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and achieve sustainable development goals. He was addressing the plenary session of the 63rd Annual General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concluded in Vienna recently. ... Read More »

By Ramesh Bhushal By 2050 two thirds of the world’s population will live in cities, and that infrastructure could be the key to managing the climate crisis, if we act now. Read More »

By Jannick Damgaard, Thomas Elkjaer and Niels Johannesen Washington DC, Oct 3 2019 (IPS) – According to official statistics, Luxembourg, a country of 600,000 people, hosts as much foreign direct investment (FDI) as the United States and much more than China. Luxembourg’s $4 trillion in FDI comes out to $6.6 million a person. Read More »

By John Menadue Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wants us to join with the U.S. in tackling the problems which Donald Trump created with Iran and presumably to soften us up to host missiles to protect the U.S. marines and port facilities in Darwin, writes John Menadue. Read More »

By Desmond Brown UN, Oct 1 2019 (IPS) – The Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley tells IPS her patience is running thin, as she challenges the world to tackle the climate crisis. Read More »

by Hans Dembowski In politics, there are two different ways to refer to religion. One is to pretend to be exerting God’s will; the other is to spell out the ethics of one’s faith. Read More »

Geneva, Sep (Kanaga Raja) – A Global Green New Deal is needed to reverse the polarization of income within and across countries, create a stable financial system that serves the productive economy, mitigate the threats and seize the opportunities associated with new technologies, and undertake massive investments in clean energy, transportation and food systems. Read More »

By: Jennifer del Rosario-Malonzo 28 September 2019, New York City — Following a disappointing Climate Action Summit that yielded few commitments, despite science showing the need for urgent system change, and a Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Summit acknowledging that the international community is off-track to achieve the SDGs in 10 years, the High-level Dialogue (HLD) on Financing for Development convened ... Read More »

UN, Sep 27 2019 (IPS) – A week ago, downtown New York witnessed one of the most historic moments in the climate action moment — hundreds of thousands of people attended the Climate Strike, where teen activists delivered powerful speeches and blows to world leaders for not taking climate change seriously. Read More »

Geneva, Sep 27 2019 (IPS) – “Six years after initiating my term as Special Rapporteur, it is sobering to say that the way to freedom from slavery remains long in spite of the legal abolition of slavery worldwide,” said UN expert on contemporary forms of slavery, Urmila Bhoola. Read More »

Sudhirendar Sharma While there is no denying that algorithms have eased life by managing the information explosion, that it does so at the cost of reducing rich diversity into a world of niches has often gone unnoticed? Google does what confidantes used to, lending advice for resolving personal and professional matters. Read More »

New International Law Is Essential to Retain Human Control Over Use of Force New York – France, Germany, and other nations that are committed to a rules-based international order should begin negotiations on a new international treaty to ban preemptively lethal autonomous weapons systems, also known as fully autonomous weapons or killer robots. Read More »

By Anna Shen UN, Sep 26 2019 (IPS) – On Monday, United States President Donald Trump continued to float the idea that he should be awarded a Nobel Prize, but that it would never happen because the system was rigged. Read More »

When I think back to some of the earliest days of my childhood, I remember moments like this—my brother Craig and I, smiling outside on the South Side of Chicago. It was there, in a diverse and changing neighborhood, that I began a journey that took me to settings I never could have imagined at that age. It’s the place ... Read More »

By Thalif Deen UN, Sep 23 2019 (IPS) – UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres describes the ongoing crisis as a “climate emergency”– as the world continues its hard-fought battle against devastating droughts, floods, hurricanes and rising sea levels that threaten the very existence of small island developing states located in low-lying areas. The heatwave in Europe last summer was a scorcher ... Read More »

By Vandana Shiva New Delhi, Sep 23 2019 (IPS) – The Earth is living, and also creates life. Over 4 billion years the Earth has evolved a rich biodiversity — an abundance of different living organisms and ecosystems — that can meet all our needs and sustain life. Read More »

By Thalif Deen UN, Sep 2019 (IPS) – The two key goals in the UN’s development agenda are the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger by 2030. Read More »

Geneva, Sept (Kanaga Raja) – Civilians continue to bear the brunt of the ongoing hostilities in the armed conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic, which has now entered its ninth year, a United Nations Commission of Inquiry has said. Read More »