How Europe and the U.S. cynically turned Africa into a “cage without bars.” In 1960, remembered in history as the Year of Africa, 17 countries on the continent gained long-awaited political independence. It seemed that the nearly 500-year era of Western European empires had sunk into oblivion. But if you look closely at socioeconomic indicators, […]

Wars, sanctions and shrinking civic space shape the opening of the General Assembly’s Third Committee The United Nations General Assembly’s principal human-rights committee opened its annual debate with warnings that war, racism, inequality and restrictions on civil society are weakening protections worldwide. Yet the discussion also exposed a deeper political divide: governments agree that the […]

As Trump chose the path of barbarism, threatening to annihilate the Islamic Republic and dismantling international institutions, Lula took the UN pulpit to defend another path: diplomacy, dialogue and civilisation, and questioned a foundational idea of International Relations. The main international politics and geopolitical messages in Lula’s UN General Assembly speech can be summarised as […]