By Kalinga Seneviratne

NAMOKANDA, West Bengal, India (IDN) – Six years ago this remote village of 130 households about 80 km from Santiniketan – the hometown of famous Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore – was a small picturesque village community surrounded by paddy fields, but without a sustainable development concept.

Today it is a confident community with most households having access to water and sanitation, and most of its children in school aspiring to go to university. One of the community leaders is even doing research in development communication at the famous Visva-Bharati University, India’s first ‘institute of national importance’, set up by Tagore.…

By Ngala Killian Chimtom

YAOUNDE (IDN) – “It was like I was watching a horror movie” is how the bishop of Mamfe diocese in Cameroon’s South West Region described the scene he saw in the village of Kembong village.

Mgr Andrew Nkea had visited the village in the wake of the deaths of four soldiers late December, killed by unknown assailants (although the government claimed they were secessionists). In a retaliatory move, Cameroonian soldiers had incinerated the whole village.…

By Ramesh Jaura

The following article is based on an interview with Hirotsugu Terasaki, the Director General of Peace and Global Issues of the lay Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai International (SGI), in Tokyo, Japan. SGI was the sole Buddhist organization that participated in the Vatican Conference on nuclear disarmament on November 10-11, 2017.

BERLIN | ROME (IDN) – There was an air of surprise when religious leaders and representatives of civil society, officials of State and international organizations, eminent academics, Nobel Laureates, and students, gathered in the Vatican City against the backdrop of an escalating face-off between the U.S. and North Korea.…