By Tobias Ide*

This article was issued by the Toda Peace Institute and is being republished with their permission.

PERTH, Australia | 16 January 2024 (IDN) — From a peace and conflict perspective, 2023 was not a good year. In July, the Uppsala Peace and Conflict Data Program revealed that the past few years saw more armed conflicts than any other period since 1945. Fighting related to cartel conflicts in Mexico, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the military coup in Myanmar, and state fragility in West Africa continues with high intensity. Recently, the Middle East experienced a massive eruption of violence in Israel and Palestine.…

By Ramesh Jaura

BERLIN | 1 January 2024 (IDN) — “Even an old fountain pen, if it happened to have belonged to some great writer, is looked on with awe and reverence by the people of later times, for they feel that somehow it is capable of revealing the secrets of the great man’s masterpieces,” wrote Daisaku Ikeda in an essay titled ‘A Mirror’ in November 1978.…

By Jeffrey D. Sachs

Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs testifies to the UN Security Council Session on “Maintenance of International Peace and Security:  Sustaining Peace through Common Development” in New York on 20 November.

UNITED NATIONS | 21 November 2023 (IDN) — In my testimony I will refer to four (wars): the Ukraine War, which started in 2014 with the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s president Viktor Yanukovich; the Israel-Palestine War, which has flared repeatedly since 1967; the Syrian War, which began in 2011; and the Sahel Wars, which began in 2012 in Mali and have now spread throughout the Sahel.…

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS | 17 November 2023 (IDN) — Are the killings of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza an act of genocide or “genocide in the making”?

According to a legal definition, genocide includes violent attacks with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.

A Group of UN experts* say that grave violations committed by Israel against Palestinians in the aftermath of 7 October, particularly in Gaza, point to “a genocide in the making.”…