Introduction The Treaty of Versailles opened an age of broken promises. Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points elevated self-determination into a universal principle, and the world’s stateless peoples believed it applied to them. The Kurds were betrayed and paid the highest price. Today roughly 40 million Kurds — the largest stateless nation on earth — live in…
INTRODUCTION In an era where the constitution, legislative reforms, judiciary restructuring, and the roll-out of constitutional courts are under review in Botswana, there is an undeniable need for massive change, solutions, redress, and most importantly, solidarity and targeted interventions in protecting the rights of survivors of violence. Women and girls undisputably continue to suffer the…
Shiler Sido was born in Afrin, in the olive-covered hills of northern Syria, where 95 percent of her neighbors were Kurdish, and a fragile experiment in pluralism briefly took root. Then came 2018, Turkey’s Operation Olive Branch, and what she describes not as counter-terrorism but as demographic engineering: 18 million olive trees felled, 10,000 homes…
Israel has betrayed the very values that made the Jewish people the world’s conscience for millennia—values forged in our own persecution, meant to bind us forever to the defense of the persecuted. Instead, from the occupation of 1967 to the genocide now consuming Gaza and Israel’s inhumane crimes against the Palestinian people in the West…
The Institute for Humanitarian Conflict Resolution embraces a philosophy of peace and reconciliation to ensure that men, women, and especially children in many violent conflict-ridden countries have hope for a better and more promising future
BILLIONAIRES GORGE WHILE WORKERS GO HUNGRY
America's minimum wage has been frozen at $7.25 an hour since 2009 — its lowest real value in 77 years, stripped of nearly a third of its buying power. That is the wage of the invisible: people who work full time and still choose between groceries and medicine, still fall behind on rent, still hold two jobs and cannot live with self-respect. In the same economy, billionaire fortunes swelled 16% in a single year to a record $18.3 trillion. Their $2.5 trillion gain in 2025 nearly equals everything owned by the poorest 4.1 billion people, and would end extreme poverty twenty-six times over. Twelve people now hold more wealth than half of humanity. This is not the invisible hand. It is a deliberate arrangement, defended by those it enriches, while one in four people go hungry. The wealth to abolish poverty exists. What is missing is the conscience and humane capacity to use it.
On the latest episode of On the Issues, Alon Ben-Meir spoke with Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a leading expert on the Gulf states and contemporary Middle East politics, about the Gulf's rapidly changing political and security landscape. Their conversation examined relations among the Gulf states, shifting regional and global alliances, evolving security concerns, and the forces reshaping the Gulf’s role in the broader Middle East. They also discussed how Gulf countries are navigating their relationships with the United States and other global powers amid growing geopolitical uncertainty.
The discussion turned to the war in Iran and its broader regional consequences, including its potential impact on security calculations, alliances, and the balance of power across the Gulf. Together, they considered what these profound changes could mean for the Middle East's future.
soundcloud.com/alon-ben-meir/on-the-issues-episode-165
Ebola is not only a health crisis—it exposes how conflict, hunger, displacement, and weak humanitarian infrastructure can converge into a much greater catastrophe. In eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Ebola outbreak is unfolding among communities already devastated by violence and severe food insecurity. The World Food Program warns that fighting the disease requires more than treatment centers; families must also have food and basic support to follow health protocols and protect themselves. This should concern the international community. Epidemics thrive where conflict has weakened institutions and displaced populations. Humanitarian response must therefore address the conditions that allow disease to spread. Global health security begins with protecting the most vulnerable before a crisis crosses borders.
