IDN InDepthNews

By Devinder Kumar China’s President Xi Jinping has rejected U.S. criticism of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, vowing it is not “a trap” and that it is not designed to serve any hidden geopolitical agenda. The project is also known…

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power* LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – “Suppose aliens existed, and that some had been watching our planet for its entire forty-five million centuries, what would they have seen? Over most of that vast time-span, Earth’s appearance altered very…

Viewpoint by Nursultan Nazarbayev The author is the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Following are extensive excerpts from his opening address to the two-day Congress of the Leaders of World and Traditional Religions on October 10, 2018 in Astana,…

By Riccardo Petrella* The first vast work of “worldwide” occupation and predation of the Earth and its inhabitants was that begun in the sixteenth century by a number of European states (Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, England and France). After the…

By Reinhard Jacobsen AMSTERDAM (IDN) – Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon will oversee the Global Commission on Adaptation to climate change, which the Government of the Netherlands and the Global Center on Adaptation have decided to set up. It will be formally…

By Ramesh Jaura BERLIN (IDN) – More than 17 million people across north-eastern Nigeria and parts of Cameroon, Chad and Niger, comprising the Lake Chad region, are facing a complex crisis driven by extreme poverty, climate change and violent conflict…

By Ramesh Jaura BERLIN (IDN) – Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and Buddhist philosopher Daisaku Ikeda recall a quote from Martin Luther King Jr – “We are always on the threshold of a new dawn” – and aver that the adoption of…

By Victoria Tauli-Corpuz The writer is the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and a Member of the South Centre Board. She has served as chairperson of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (2005-2010). Following are extensive extracts from her…

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network Thousands of women and gender activists joined together on the first day of Women’s Month to protest the rising incidence of gender-based violence across the country. The movement’s Brenda Madumise said the marchers, under…

Viewpoint by Tito Alvarado MONTREAL (IDN) – Of the world’s more than six thousand extant languages, three thousand have little chance of continuing to be used in the next century. This tragic fact represents a terrible finding: we will lose…