Diplomacy & Crisis News

The country has barred Israeli gymnasts from participating in this week's 53rd FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Jakarta.

Vorapak’s resignation is among the aftershocks of the U.S. government's recent imposition of sanctions against a major alleged Cambodia-based scamming network.

Security cooperation at the military level is a further step down the regional cooperative road.

Alors que le président Donald Trump a lancé une chasse aux sorcières contre ses opposants, un musulman socialiste et propalestinien, évidemment traité d'antisémite par ses adversaires, pourrait être élu maire de la ville qui abrite Wall Street. New York est aussi la cité qui compte le plus grand nombre (...) / Parti politique, États-Unis (affaires intérieures), Ville, Élections - 2025/10

Dans une décennie 1970 marquée par les luttes féministes et la conquête de nouveaux droits pour les femmes, le cinéma français a largement mis en scène la « crise de la masculinité ». Enregistrant les métamorphoses et les bouleversements de l'ordre sexuel, il a souvent servi de vecteur à une (...) / Histoire, Cinéma, Femmes, Société - 2025/10

Takaichi Sanae is hawkish on China, friendly toward Taiwan, and ultraconservative on historical issues. No wonder Beijing isn’t happy.

The travel ban policy specifically states that it does not apply to asylees or refugees, and yet the families of asylee Afghans, who fought alongside Americans, have been consistently denied entry.

A new law passed last week recognized Taiwan’s Pingpu peoples, reigniting debate over who gets to define indigeneity. 

Insights from Winston Ma.

Her road to the premiership was not easy. Governing might be even harder.

C'est une Organisation des Nations unies (ONU) affaiblie qui célèbre son 80e anniversaire. « L'ONU ne règle pas les problèmes (…), elle en crée de nouveaux que nous devons résoudre », tançait M. Donald Trump devant son Assemblée générale, le 22 septembre. Confrontée au désengagement des États-Unis et aux (...) / Organisation internationale, Géopolitique, Relations internationales - 2025/10

Trois ans après son arrivée à la présidence du Conseil italien, Mme Giorgia Meloni a réussi son pari : rassurer l'Europe et les marchés tout en normalisant un projet hérité du néofascisme. Cette stratégie de double langage, mêlant orthodoxie économique et croisade identitaire, s'impose désormais comme un (...) - La valise diplomatique

Christopher Luxon is heading to Asia for a diplomatic double-header. What are his main goals?

Pakistan has made its position clear that the ceasefire’s success hinges on the Afghan Taliban acting to prevent TTP attacks from Afghan soil.

Colombo cannot control the temperature between its two largest partners, but it can control its own predictability, competence, and integrity.

This discussion paper advances a new vision for the United Nations (UN)’s development function at a moment when the organisation is facing profound pressures and persistent scepticism about its relevance. Although a consensus exists that reform is overdue, past initiatives have been too incremental, focusing on coordination and efficiency without addressing deeper institutional and political pathologies. The result is a UN development system that has grown financially large but is losing political significance. It is increasingly shaped by donor earmarking, entrenched patronage and a project delivery model that bears little resemblance to how national development actually occurs.
Our vision marks a significant departure from the UN’s historical role as an aid channel predicated on the North-South divide. Instead, the UN’s future relevance lies in leveraging its universal legitimacy, normative authority and convening power.
We argue for a UN development system that:
1. Acts as a trusted knowledge facilitator: providing high-level and technical advice, supporting peer exchange and helping governments navigate complex policy trade-offs in ways that are independent, politically informed and normatively grounded.
2. Engages in public advocacy that matters: elevating norms, correcting misinformation and shaping national debates in line with globally agreed standards, with sensitivity to national contexts.
3. Applies universality in practice: moving beyond the outdated distinction between donor and recipient to engage with all member states – including middle- and high-income countries – through global monitoring and peer accountability.
4. Serves as an actor of last resort in fragile settings: providing operational support only where national governments cannot or will not act, with strict sunset clauses and safeguards against unintentional harm.
This reconceptualisation is not primarily about money. It implies a financially smaller but politically stronger UN development system that is less dependent on donors and more relevant to today’s multipolar world. The real benchmark for success is not the volume of aid provided but the quality of advice, advocacy and resulting cooperation.
Reaching this vision will be difficult. The UN’s development apparatus is shaped by vested interests, path dependency and political inertia. Yet, opportunities for change exist. The collapse of traditional aid financing, the insistence of middle-income countries on equitable partnerships and fatigue with the current project-heavy model all point towards the need for a new approach. The Secretary-General’s UN80 Initiative offers a platform for bold ideas, but only if the debate moves beyond technical fixes and acknowledges the political trade-offs inherent in transformation.

Stephen Browne is a visiting lecturer at universities in the UK, Switzerland and India. He spent more than 30 years in the UN development system and has published many books and articles on the UN and foreign assistance.
Frederik Matthys is Senior Advisor at Tomorrow Is Possible with a focus on sustainable development, international cooperation and multilateral reform.
Detlef Palm worked for UNICEF for 30 years in country offices and at headquarters. He served as the focal point for programme policy, an auditor and a representative.

Cuts and reductions in international humanitarian aid, driven by shifting political priorities in major donor countries and an increasing number of displacements, are leaving hundreds of thousands of communities in the Global South at risk. The Somali Regional State in Ethiopia exemplifies the severe impact of these funding cuts, as vulnerable communities are now confronted with shrinking external support for basic needs. In this context, diaspora groups and networks are a key source of support to their communities. Their contributions extend beyond individual remittances, encompassing collective emergency relief, and development support such as education, water and health for displaced and other crisis-affected people. This policy brief elaborates on the role of diaspora networks in leveraging home and host country community networks to fill the gaps in areas where aid and government services fall short. However, despite their impact, diaspora groups face barriers to maximising their potential. Among these are a lack of enabling policy and institutional frameworks, complex state–diaspora relations, and a lack of formal structures among the diaspora networks. All this can limit the scope, effectiveness and capacities of diaspora support to communities back home. As a result, the following policy recommendations for the Ethiopian federal government and the government of the Somali Regional State, along with their development partners, are put forward in this brief to enhance the potential of the Ethiopian-Somali diaspora:
• Create enabling policy and institutional frameworks at regional and local levels that recognise and support the collective engagement of the diaspora with crisis response and recovery of vulnerable communities. This includes one-stop liaison units at the regional and local levels to minimise the bureaucracy and streamline diaspora contributions, incentivising diaspora-funded initiatives and ensuring inclusive consultations with the diaspora to ensure the effectiveness of these institutional and policy frameworks.
• Establish an umbrella association that represents the interests of the diaspora in the Somali Region and provides a range of supportive services to the diaspora that will enhance their engagements in emergency response, recovery and development.
• Facilitate exchange, partnerships and collaborations between diaspora-led and diaspora-supported associations and networks, national and local authorities, and international actors to maximise the reach and effectiveness of diaspora-led initiatives.
• Expand the evidence base on the various forms of collective support of the diaspora networks and associations to better understand the scale, impact and best practices for informing planning and programming to enhance diaspora support.

Abdirahman A Muhumad is associated researcher with IDOS and PhD candidate at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Ruhr University Bochum (RUB). He is also a researcher at the Institute of Migration Studies at Jigjiga University, Ethiopia.

America can make a good deal with China without abandoning the island.

The inflation surge in recent years has produced profound social, economic, and political consequences. Food price changes, being part of inflation, affect low-income segments particularly strongly. This is important to consider because macro-economic and central banks’ attention is mainly on core inflation, which excludes food. What makes this period so unusual is the breadth of price pressures that involve both developing and rich countries, meaning that inflation has been getting more synchronized across borders. This study examines the driving factors behind global food price hikes and their rates of change. Our analysis reveals that a complex mix of causes has led to the soaring food prices in 2021-2022. The spread of COVID-19 produced disruptions in the world’s supply chains, pushing the cost of producing and transporting food upward. The increase in fertilizer and energy prices has further exacerbated production costs for agricultural products. Adverse climatic phenomena (La Niña), generating droughts in parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas, caused damage to harvests and fueled inflation. The war in Ukraine and the trade blockade of grain exports made things worse. Additional culprits were speculative activities in financial markets that were already underway before the Russia-Ukraine war. Soaring inflation is increasing inequality and making vulnerable countries hungrier and poorer. At the same time, since global factors contribute to food price movements, implying that a crucial component of price inflation is exogenous to individual countries, the effectiveness of national monetary and fiscal policies could be limited. Instead, enhanced cooperation among nations with coordinated policy responses could be important to avoid the exacerbation of prices.

What America needs to win the innovation race.