January - February 2023

New Internationalist

People, Ideas and Action for Global Justice

New Internationalist1 min read
This Month’s Contributors Include:
Amandeep Sandhu is a writer and journalist based in Bangalore, India, and is the author of Punjab: Journeys Through Fault Lines. Marianne Brooker is a writer based in Bristol, UK, and communications manager for climate justice charity Platform. Sophi
New Internationalist1 min read
Sharing The Treasure
A recent headline about an Italian design studio’s plans for a gigantic superyacht caught my eye. Shaped like a turtle and the size of a small city, it would be the largest floating structure ever built, with a cool $8 billion price tag. Maybe more p
New Internationalist1 min read
New Internationalist
Accounts: Katalin Szombati Subscriptions and administration: Louise Waters Advertising: Michael York Design: Andrew Kokotka Editorial (Magazine and Website): Dinyar Godrej, Amy Hall, Conrad Landin, Husna Ara, Nick Dowson Contributing editors: Vanessa
New Internationalist1 min read
ONLINE FEATURES newint.org
Hamza Hamouchene and Katie Sandwell call time on ‘business as usual’, which in North Africa means non-solutions that line private pockets at public expense and protect political elites. Anmol Irfan speaks to climate activists in Pakistan and Somalia
New Internationalist3 min read
Send Us Your Feedback
I’m looking forward to reading Take back the land (NI 540). I would also like to add that Oxfordshire Community Land Trust is taking land and homes into community ownership in order to ensure there are permanently affordable homes here for people in
New Internationalist3 min read
A New Beginning
As our boat leaves the bustling port and glides onto the Marañon River, Mari Luz leans over and whispers into my ear: ‘Juanita’s going to have the baby in Shapajilla.’ My heart skips a beat as I glance at her daughter’s massive stomach. We are travel
New Internationalist1 min readCrime & Violence
Borderlines
Escalating delays in the UK’s asylum system are prolonging the suffering of people left unable to work or access many public services. According to analysis by the Migration Observatory, around 101,000 people were awaiting an initial Home Office deci
New Internationalist2 min readCrime & Violence
Iran Revolution Song
For dancing in the streets For the fear of kissing your lover in public For my sister, your sister, our sisters For changing these rusted minds So begin the first lines of ‘Baraye’ (‘For…’), a song that has become a soundtrack-cummanifesto for the pr
New Internationalist2 min read
Introducing… Giorgia Meloni
The quirky world of Italian politics has thrown Europe another curve ball in the person of Giorgia Meloni, a ‘post-fascist’ fascist, who was elected Prime Minister at the head of the decidedly masculinist Fratelli d’Italia (FdL). Meloni is falling ov
New Internationalist1 min read
Seriously?
If you live in the UK, you may have spotted signage for ‘buy now, pay later’ (BNPL) schemes at the virtual checkout while indulging in online retail therapy. Firms such as Swedish start-up Klarna and Clear Pay offer users the option to split payments
New Internationalist2 min read
Mexico Pipe Down
A near-completed natural gas pipeline in central Mexico has been abandoned after opposition from local communities. It recently emerged that an international arbitration court had ordered the state power company to pay $100 million in compensation an
New Internationalist1 min readInternational Relations
Palestine Deadly Wave
Israel ramped up its violent crackdown on Palestinians in the West Bank during 2022, including attacks on civilians and collective punishment of communities. In October, the UN reported that it had been the ‘deadliest year’ for Palestinians in the We
New Internationalist2 min read
Brazil A New Era?
After Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won Brazil’s presidential election in October 2022, supporters of the defeated Jair Bolsonaro blocked hundreds of roads and demanded a military coup. But in the favelas, in the Amazon, in the poorest neighbourhoods of
New Internationalist2 min read
Colombia Petro State
In July 2022, Colombia was once again named by the International Trade Union Confederation as the deadliest country in the world for trade unionists, with 22 murders in 12 months. But in August union-backed Gustavo Petro was inaugurated as president.
New Internationalist2 min readCrime & Violence
India Survivors, Not Victims
In Noida, a satellite city of New Delhi, a sports stadium is playing host to a cafe with a difference. Sheroes, which was established in May 2022, is completely run by acid attack survivors who do everything from cooking and serving to adding up bill
New Internationalist1 min readCrime & Violence
Reasons To Be Cheerful
A new species of owl has been discovered on the central African island of Príncipe. The endangered bird is said to be most easily identified by its particular sound, described by scientists as ‘a short “tuu” note’ similar to insect calls. The bird is
New Internationalist15 min readDiscrimination & Race Relations
Whodunnit?
‘We’ve got cold extremities, you’ve got a cold heart,’ sang musician Ceitidh Mac at a gig in Newcastle, on the night steep government-sanctioned energy price hikes went into effect in the UK. The lyrics were apt: ordinary people were being plunged in
New Internationalist2 min readPoverty & Homelessness
Cost Of Living The Facts
9% average worldwide rise in prices, 2022.1 14.5% rise in prices of food and drinks in the UK, 2022.2 9 poor countries, including Pakistan and Ethiopia, expected to pay 3x more for fertilizer imports in 2022 than in 2020.3 9 of the world’s largest fe
New Internationalist1 min read
Action And Info
Video panel discussion by the Transnational Institute nin.tl/3Vp8qBc Report by global alliance CIVICUS nin.tl/3FiOydX Price Wars: How chaotic markets are creating a chaotic world by Rupert Russell, W&N, 2022 How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The marke
New Internationalist2 min read
De-privatizing The Rain Lessons In Resistance
In 1999, when a subsidiary of the multinational Bechtel took over managing water services in Cochabamba, Bolivia – as part of a wave of privatizations in the country – tariffs were hiked, forcing most residents to pay a fifth of their earnings for th
New Internationalist8 min read
Structural Adjustment 2.0
In November 2020 Zambia became the first African country to default since the pandemic, after missing a repayment on its $17 billion foreign debt.1 Fast forward to August 2022 and the country has signed up for a $1.3 billion loan from the Internation
New Internationalist4 min read
Wealth Safari
It’s not all doom and gloom in the world today. Sure, billions of low-and-middle income people are struggling to keep up with rising food, energy and housing costs. But it’s boom time for billionaires and the super-rich. The number of ultra-high net
New Internationalist3 min read
On Borrowed Rice
Mariama Jalloh grasped the full extent of the crisis facing Sierra Leone in October 2022, when a woman came to speak to her in her organization’s offices in the northern Koinadugu district. Jalloh, a 30-year-old mother of two, is the head of Forward
New Internationalist2 min read
Lessons In Resistance the Farmers Rise
In November 2020, farmers from the northern states of India rose up and camped on the borders of the nation’s capital Delhi in protest against three new agrarian laws. So began a year-long protest by tens of thousands of farmers, young and old, women
New Internationalist2 min read
Debtors Unite lessons In Resistance
Rocketing unemployment fed a wave of mortgage defaults and evictions across Spain during the 2008-2013 financial crisis. Those forced out often remained saddled with debt thanks to punitive mortgage legislation. In response, activists created the Pla
New Internationalist7 min read
Pushing Against The Perfect Storm
‘It’s not that I can’t let it go… but it’s still there,’ Aneita tells me. It’s hard to shift the memory of not knowing how to make ends meet. ‘I’m not rich, I’m not absolutely poor, but – you know – I’m there, kind of lingering, in that in-between pl
New Internationalist5 min read
Busted
Despite living costs going up by 10 per cent or more in many parts of the world, rightwingers keep arguing against workers receiving pay rises, conjuring the old bogey of the ‘wage-price spiral’. Among those seeking to pin the responsibility for infl
New Internationalist4 min readWorld
South Korea
In 2002, South Korean president Kim Dae-jung opened Dorasan railway station on the Korean peninsular’s 38th parallel, which marks the country’s border with North Korea. It was a key milestone in the ‘sunshine policy’, which won Kim a Nobel Peace Priz
New Internationalist6 min readInternational Relations
Is It Morally Right To Send Weapons Into A Conflict?
NO Symon is campaigns manager of the Peace Pledge Union and a history tutor for the Workers’ Educational Association in the UK. His book The Peace Protesters: A history of modern-day war resistance, will be published in May 2023 by Pen & Sword. SYMON
New Internationalist1 min read
Southern Exposure
Ayesha Vellani snapped this haunting photo of the Mazar-e-Quaid, also known as Jinnah Mausoleum or the National Mausoleum, at Pakistan’s independence day celebrations in Karachi. Designed in a 1960s modernist style, this final resting place of Muhamm
New Internationalist2 min readPolitical Ideologies
View From Brazil
Brazil’s close-run general elections, which concluded at the end of October 2022, showed an explosive rise in cases of voter harassment and attempts to buy workers’ votes. The Public Labour Prosecution Office (MPT), which is responsible for receiving
New Internationalist3 min read
5 Good News Climate Stories From 2022
Indigenous communities have won a 12-month moratorium on all new oil and gas projects in Ecuador. This follows a year of struggle between President Guillermo Lasso – who has been trying to open up the Amazon to more oil extraction and mining – and a
New Internationalist4 min readInternational Relations
Muhanned Qafesha
You’ve lived your whole life under the Israeli military occupation. Can you tell me what your first memories of that were? I grew up in one of the toughest times for the country, which was the second Intifada.* I would open my eyes in the morning and
New Internationalist3 min readCrime & Violence
View From Africa
When taking a flight with a regional airline on the continent, it’s hard not to miss the queues of young women in uniform headed to the Middle East. For many of them, the first time they left their county or village was to process the passport that e
New Internationalist8 min readWorld
16, 000, 000……and Counting The Collateral Damage Of Capital
During the 1950s and 1960s progressive and radical movements were gaining traction around the world. In the Global North, labour unions were winning their fight for fairer wages and public services. In the Global South, newly independent governments
New Internationalist6 min readInternational Relations
The Usual Suspects
In an empty café in La Paz, Bolivia’s legislative capital, Olga Flores takes out a book of letters dating back to 1980, the year her older brother Juan Carlos Flores disappeared during one of the country’s military coups. When he first went missing,
New Internationalist1 min read
Why Subscribe?
Rather than offer a skin-deep glance at complicated global issues, we delve deeper with an in-depth focus on a different theme in each edition. We provide both the background and the solutions to the current state of affairs, from multiple perspectiv
New Internationalist15 min readCrime & Violence
The Long Wait Of Thomas Kwoyelo
As a young boy Thomas Kwoyelo excelled at mathematics and piano playing. He was a good shot with a homemade catapult. His mother, Roselina Oyella, remembers that he rose early in the mornings to lend a hand on the family farm, and always insisted on
New Internationalist3 min read
Bongbong Marcos
POSITION: President of the Philippines REPUTATION: Heir of dictatorship and corruption When the 65-year-old Fernando ‘Bongbong’ Marcos swept to power with 59 per cent of the vote last May, he rode in on a wave of disinformation. This included a falsi
New Internationalist3 min read
Spotlight Kishon Khan
My first meeting with Bangladesh-born musician Kishon Khan was when a mutual student friend took me to his flat in central London. The doorbell was broken, it was late, raining and I wanted to go home, but my friend Umair was insistent: ‘Trust me, it
New Internationalist5 min read
Books
by Pete Barker (dixibooks, ISBN 9781913680565) dixibooks.com Climate activism has a long and honourable history in the UK. Many of the U-turns and concessions made by successive governments, who have acted as though global heating will just go away i
New Internationalist2 min read
Film
directed by Laura Poitras 113 minutes Laura Poitras is a biographer, and her latest documentary is about photographer Nan Goldin, whose work is largely autobiographical. But this is not a precious or self-referential enterprise – both are deeply poli
New Internationalist2 min readCrime & Violence
View From India
In February 2022, a hijab row erupted in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. A group of young Muslim women, who wanted to wear the head covering inside their college classrooms, was denied entry on the grounds of breaching the institute’s uniform
New Internationalist4 min read
The Puzzler
6 One takes cruise in retirement to a classical Portuguese city (5) 7 Land here in England from racket fronted by old UK premier (8) 10 Panama, perhaps – this unusual American asylum for a Frenchman (7) 11 Hair-drier’s interior parts are assembled in
New Internationalist2 min read
Music
by Soweto Kinch (LSO Live, CD, LP, DL) soweto-kinch.com During the UK’s first lockdown in 2020, the saxophonist, poet and MC Soweto Kinch followed the rules – one state-sanctioned walk a day. Kinch, who is a historian as well as a musician, took a go
New Internationalist3 min read
Agony Uncle
Q: I feel conflicted – I try and buy local wherever I can, and there’s an independent coffee roastery just down the road from me that certainly does make a delicious flat white. But I also try and buy Fairtrade, which this isn’t – plus it’s not like
New Internationalist3 min read
We Decolonized Mental Health Services?
Around 75 per cent of those who take their own lives are in low and middle-income countries. The WHO’s response to this alarming fact has been to promise a rapid scale-up of access to anti-depressants and anti-psychotics. The problem with this soluti
New Internationalist1 min readDiscrimination & Race Relations
Why Subscribe?
The first ever issue in 1970 carried an interview with the President of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere. He had argued that 10 per cent of all overseas aid should be spent on educating the ‘first world’ about the real causes of world poverty. We wanted to s

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