July - August 2022

New Internationalist

People, Ideas and Action for Global Justice

New Internationalist1 min read
One River, Many Stories
DINYAR GODREJ for the New Internationalist Co-operative newint.org A river brims with tales. Take our cover star, barefoot and beaming, as she rows her boat on the Mekong in Vietnam’s delta region. Is her life still in sync with the river or is she n
New Internationalist1 min read
This Month’s Contributors Include:
Busani Bafana is an award-winning Zimbabwean journalist and communication specialist who writes on climate change, human rights, agriculture, and food security issues. Katie Dancey-Downs is a British journalist who covers human rights and the environ
New Internationalist1 min read
New Internationalist
Accounts: Katalin Szombati Advertising: Michael York Design: Andrew Kokotka Editorial (Magazine and Website): Dinyar Godrej, Amy Hall, Conrad Landin, Husna Ara Contributing editors: Vanessa Baird, Chris Brazier, Jamie Kelsey-Fry Funding and engagemen
New Internationalist3 min read
Send Us Your Feedback
I opened the latest issue, with its teasing headline How we stop Big Oil (NI 537), with a sense of trepidation and weariness. I feared it would follow a format I’ve seen many times before. I would be told, in great detail, about the sins of the oil c
New Internationalist3 min read
Cheers To Us
Eleven years have passed since I moved to Buenos Aires from Esquina, my home-town, in order to study cinema. Most young adults in Argentina need to make the move to bigger cities if they want to go to college. Even though the quality of our public ed
New Internationalist1 min readInternational Relations
Borderlines
Rohingya Muslims, fleeing from military brutality in Myanmar, have been arriving in India in large numbers since 2008. An estimated 7,000 have ended up around the city of Jammu, the capital of Jammu and Kashmir, where they live in makeshift shelters
New Internationalist2 min read
UK No White Flag
P&O Ferries unceremoniously dismissed 800 UK-based seafarers in March 2022. The new crew of the European Causeway ferry were among the workers hired to replace them – on far cheaper pay rates to their predecessors. P&O says the new Larne-Cairnryan cr
New Internationalist1 min read
Seriously?
Since the tech giant Meta (formerly known as Facebook) unveiled its Metaverse – a simulated landscape not totally unlike the Sims video game – there’s been escalating clamour for virtual land. In 2021, sales of Metaverse real estate reached $501 mill
New Internationalist2 min readInternational Relations
Ukraine Patchwork Resistance
When the Russian tanks massed on the Ukrainian border in February, Kharkiv was their first big target. But it never fell, and now Russian troops have been pushed back from the outskirts in a huge Ukrainian counteroffensive. Unable to take the city, R
New Internationalist2 min readCrime & Violence
Zimbabwe Killing Dissent
Ahead of 2024 elections, the Zimbabwe government is pushing through a law that civil society groups say could restrict their freedom and quash dissent. The Private Voluntary Organisations (PVO) Amendment Bill, likely to be law by the end of 2022, wil
New Internationalist1 min readCrime & Violence
Drc Lethal Conservation
Donors continued to fund and train guards in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Kahuzi-Biega National Park – in spite of horrific human rights abuses against the Indigenous Batwa community. Minority Rights Group International (MRG) has documented
New Internationalist2 min readInternational Relations
Palestine In Cold Blood
Human rights advocates across the world are calling for an independent investigation into the killing of veteran Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot dead in May as she covered a raid by Israeli soldiers in Jenin, in the occupied West
New Internationalist2 min readInternational Relations
Somalia Fearful Future
Nearly one-third of Somalia’s population is experiencing acute food shortages due to soaring prices, record-breaking droughts and inadequate humanitarian assistance. In Mogadishu, the capital, the price of a three-litre container of cooking oil has t
New Internationalist1 min read
Reasons To Be Cheerful
A court has thwarted a rightwing Australian politician’s plan to clear 1,804 hectares of native forest. The Tasmanian Conservation Trust challenged the proposal to turn the land, which is owned by Liberal member of the Tasmanian parliament John Tucke
New Internationalist2 min read
Introducing… Michelle O’neill
Irish politics was shaken to its core by the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly elections. Sinn Féin is now the leading political force in the North, and 45-year-old Michelle O’Neill is in position to become Northern Ireland’s First Minister. In contrast
New Internationalist11 min read
Holy Waters
Gingerly, I took my feet out of my slippers and felt them squelch into the riverside mud. Then, leaning over into the flow as far as I could, I upended the plastic bag so that its contents tipped out. Thus a part of my mother’s ashes landed into the
New Internationalist2 min read
Rivers The Facts
165 major rivers in the world, according to most estimates. Minor rivers (many of which are tributaries) number in the thousands. 64% of rivers >1,000km in length are no longer free-flowing.1 <10% of river basins are protected by law. 2 263 transboun
New Internationalist8 min read
The River As A Living Being
As a child Isaac Macedo had an imaginary friend, a little girl who brought him fish and played with him on the sloping banks of the Marañón River. Or so his mother thought. Isaac grew up into a strong young fisherman who supplied his mother, Marta Lu
New Internationalist6 min read
To Reclaim Minegolia
In September 2013 a gunshot rang out during a demonstration outside Mongolia’s State Palace in the capital Ulaanbaatar. No-one came to any harm. But the damage it did to a popular movement to protect the country’s rivers made big ripples. But let’s t
New Internationalist4 min read
What’s That?!
Hot summer’s day? Fancy a dip in the river? You might think twice if you live in England. Ponder the number 372,533. That’s how many times water companies there discharged raw sewage into rivers and seas in 2021.1 Untreated sewage now accounts for 35
New Internationalist4 min read
When It Comes To Sharing
From babbling alpine springs to gigantic meandering channels and myriad branches in deltas, rivers are a life-source for billions. The sprawl of their natural catchment areas seldom matches international borders, and, indeed, many of the world’s larg
New Internationalist4 min read
St Vincent And The Grenadines
Indian Bay, a pretty stretch of beach where white coral sand meets volcanic black, plays host each morning to small groups of retired Vincentians seeking health, exercise and discussion. Several have returned from a working life abroad: predominantly
New Internationalist1 min read
Star Ratings
The island of St Vincent does not suffer from significant inequality, relative to other countries. While formal unemployment remains high, abundant food, shelter and access to land provide for most people. The Grenadines are another matter, with the
New Internationalist1 min read
Action And Info
Alliance for Freshwater Life allianceforfreshwaterlife.org Research and education on freshwater biodiversity Blue Planet Initiative blueplanetbd.org Waterkeeper programmes in Bangladesh Dam Removal Europe damremoval.eu For removal of barriers in Euro
New Internationalist8 min readWorld
Arming Europe
The thundering roar of an F-35 fighter plane rips through the tranquillity of the snow carpeted Norwegian landscape. Its silhouette is just visible under the thick layer of clouds. Then, all is silent again. During this NATO exercise, soldiers act ou
New Internationalist5 min read
Take Them Down!
‘At first the idea of removing the dams seemed absurd and unattainable,’ says Annelia Hillman, a member of the Yurok Tribe, ‘but we decided we had to try.’ Hillman is talking about the world’s biggest dam removal project to date, which is moving forw
New Internationalist5 min read
Something In The Water
On the bank of the Méyé River, women wash laundry as children fill jerry cans with water for bathing and cooking. Clothes are laid out to dry on rocks that dot the river’s edge as the children begin lugging their family’s water supply home. Rolling d
New Internationalist1 min read
Southern Exposure
The eternal sea rolling behind, a devotee raises his offering of a coconut and joss sticks to Surya, the sun god, on the occasion of Chhath Puja at Chennai’s Marina Beach, India. Photographer Dipayan Bose was struck by the vibrancy of a colourful Nor
New Internationalist3 min read
Temperature Check
In October 2019, over 1,500 scientists signed a declaration in support of nonviolent direct action on climate change.1 In hindsight, this looks like a starting pistol: growing numbers of scientists have since become involved in civil disobedience the
New Internationalist2 min read
View From India
Communal violence is rarely out of the headlines in India. In the period 11-20 April, which coincided with two major Hindu festivals – Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti – there were clashes between Hindus and Muslims in several states. These days, Hindu
New Internationalist2 min readCrime & Violence
View From Brazil
Brazil’s National Federation of Journalists (FENAJ) recently released a report detailing 430 cases of attacks against journalists in 2021. Leading the charge is our president, Jair Bolsonaro – responsible for 147 registered cases, mainly public vilif
New Internationalist3 min read
Hall Of Infamy
JOB: President of Sri Lanka REPUTATION: Latest scion of the Rajapaksa clan with its stranglehold on island political life Sri Lankan politics is a cosy world, and nothing embodies it better than the presence of the Rajapaksa family at its top. This b
New Internationalist12 min read
Pants Of Protest
The constituency office was empty on the drizzly Saturday morning that artist and theatre maker Lorna Rees strung up her knickers. ‘No-one should be able to photo my pants unless I want them to,’ read the slogan hastily scrawled across the freshly un
New Internationalist7 min read
Who Are You Calling A Nazi?
Europe’s neo-nazi problem has been growing. The horror of the Nazis’ atrocities in Europe is fading from living memory with the passing of the last survivors of the Holocaust, and farright politicians have used this historic distance to manipulate th
New Internationalist3 min read
View From Africa
Back in 2011, the world watched in awe as Egyptians took to the streets to demand the end of Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule. Cairo’s Tahrir Square became a physical focal point for these protests but, as the movement harnessed social media’s then nasce
New Internationalist1 min read
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New Internationalist4 min read
Hot Docs
92 minutes directed by Vee Bravo When the Chilean government tried to bring in a large transit fare hike back in 2019 ‘they knew not what they wrought’. Years of neoliberal oppression rooted in the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1974-90) set off a
New Internationalist5 min read
Books
by Eva Baltasar, translated by Julia Sanches (And Other Stories, ISBN 9781913505387) andotherstories.org Being told by your new lover that she doesn’t like your name and that she is going to call you Boulder instead might be considered an inauspiciou
New Internationalist5 min read
Ndongo Samba Sylla
Ndongo S Sylla believes neo-colonialism is an outdated term. More worrying for him is the trend of Afro-liberalism, which sees African elites allied with corporate transnational interests. We speak over the phone from the Senegalese capital, where he
New Internationalist2 min read
Film
directed and co-written by Todd Stephens 105 minutes Pat, nearly eighty – once a hairdresser by day and performer in a gay bar by night – lives in a grey, functional Ohio care home. He sneaks smokes in an outlying corridor, and serviettes from the di
New Internationalist2 min read
Music
by Gwenno (Heavenly Recordings, LP, DL) gwenno.info In the late-1980s, when Reykjavik’s most famous band, The Sugarcubes, was at its height, someone dim in the audience bellowed at its singer: ‘Speak English!’ Björk, lead singer, shot back: ‘Learn Ic
New Internationalist4 min read
The Puzzler
5 Haggard woman with planks gets round river to outlaw’s place (8) 7 Costs around nothing to reach this group of islands (6) 9 Lunar I/D goes haywire, all day long (7) 10 Before getting coach, must reach a peak down south (6) 11 Uh-huh, a CIA awkward
New Internationalist3 min read
Spotlight nadia Kaabi-linke
‘My art is anchored in the human context,’ says Ukrainian-Tunisian artist Nadia Kaabi-Linke speaking to me from Berlin. ‘I am concerned about the core questions of humanity. We all deserve to live in peace, to eat, sleep, learn and grow. Issues such
New Internationalist3 min read
There Was A World Tax Organization?
They say only death and taxes are certain, but we know for sure that tax avoidance and evasion cause needless death. The half a trillion dollars of revenue lost per year worldwide supercharges inequality and represents the biggest obstacle to progres
New Internationalist3 min read
Agony Uncle
Q: A year ago, I was able to put down a deposit on a flat after inheriting some money from a grandparent. I’ve been living here alone. But my boyfriend and I have recently decided to live together, and the simplest thing would be for him to move in h

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