International issues

by Asif Showkat Kallol (Dhaka Bureau) Bangladesh’s interim government is poised to sign a tariff agreement with the United States on 9 February(Monday), just two days before the country’s 13th national parliamentary election. The move has sparked unease among business…

(Moscow Bureau) – Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, has reiterated the official statement on expanding visa-free travel between Russia and Africa, signaling Kremlin’s earlier position on facilitating people-to-people movement and raising cultural interaction. The question of ‘visa-free’ travel and tourism…

Civil Society Urges New Chair to Enforce Greater Transparency, Inclusivity Geneva, Switzerland – Member States convened in Geneva, Switzerland, on the 7th of February for INC-5.3 to elect a new Chair of the plastics treaty negotiations. Today, they formally elected Julio…

Regarding the new report by the United Nations University (20 January 2026), Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era. Questions. 1. A report for a new global water agenda? The report (72 pages), published by…

The Olympic truce was born as a radical moral principle: the conviction that war must fall silent, even if only briefly, to allow human encounter on equal terms. It was not diplomacy nor spectacle, but a deliberate suspension of violence…

Once again this year, Burmese exiles around the world commemorated the anniversary of the military coup of February 1, 2021, which put an end to an experiment in democracy that had lasted almost a decade, always on a knife edge,…

David interviews Dr. Alon Ben-Meir, retired professor of International Relations and Middle East Studies, for a wide-ranging conversation on the Davids Campaign and the urgent need to renew nonviolent strategies in the Middle East. The campaign seeks to support individuals…

February 5, 2026, was the date on which the New START Treaty expired without the US and Russia renewing it. The People’s Republic of China also did not participate in renegotiations. By Klaus Moegling Nothing now stands in the way…

In Beijing, on Thursday, February 5, a high-level meeting was held between Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and Tô Lâm, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of…

In a series of responses to international media published this week, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel explicitly outlined Havana’s political and geostrategic orientation in the face of the main global challenges of 2026. His statements reaffirmed longstanding principles of Cuban foreign…