RECENT ↴
Inside Afghanistan’s Compounding Crises
INKSTICK | As donors debate engagement and isolation, millions of Afghans confront hunger, homelessness, and a future with shrinking options. The past few months in Kandahar have been ruthless, Gul Mohammad Aryan tells me over a spotty internet connection. As director of the Sustainable Goals Organization for Afghanistan, he has been trying to support Afghan refugees who are now coming back from other countries in the region. More than 2.86 million people returned last year, the vast majority from Pakistan and Iran. “They have left everything in Pakistan, they have left everything in Iran,” Aryan says. “They just came with their clothes. They don’t have enough.”
(Image: WFP/Isheeta Sumra.)
Ecuador’s Social Transparency law deepens Noboa’s authoritarian rule
FAIRPLANET | The trial of Indigenous leader Leonidas Iza has pulled back the curtain on a sweeping state surveillance campaign in Ecuador, exposing undercover operations, and a wave of new laws critics say are dismantling civil society. As President Daniel Noboa pushes through neoliberal reforms under a permanent state of emergency, Indigenous and environmental defenders warn the country is sliding into authoritarian rule.
(Image: Amazonian Indigenous leaders from Pastaza in Ecuador’s Amazon convene a press conference to voice their demands to the government as part of the nationwide strike. mullu.tv )
Afghan refugees face deportation in Pakistan
INKSTICK | “This is not just a refugee issue, it is fundamentally a human rights issue that tests our collective conscience,” says Moniza Kakar, Karachi-based human rights lawyer and coordinator for Pakistan’s Joint Action Committee for Refugees. Following an extension to the deportation deadline last month, round-ups were restarted in September. Despite Pakistani authorities emphasizing voluntary return — what a Khyber official described as “honorable and dignified” — many Afghans who have lived in Pakistan for decades feel pressured and blindsided.
(Image: Mohammad Hassan Mukhtar Ahmad.)
SUDAN ↴
Darkness of the heart: Montréal rallies for Darfur amid inaction over genocide
RABBLE | “I speak for the heart that the world pretends not to hear,” says activist Samia Hamid, addressing around two hundred people gathered at Square Phillips in downtown Montréal on Sunday. The El Fasher massacre has renewed calls by Canadian peace groups to end arms trade with the UAE, one of Canada’s favoured military clients and boasting $7 million CAD worth of weapons exports last year. But as Darfur’s horror unfolded, Canada merely expanded trade with the UAE this summer.
The Betrayal of Darfur: Decades of broken promises paved the way for a resurgence in genocidal violence in Sudan.
THE PROGRESSIVE | Even prior to the city’s fall to the RSF, October had been a particularly deadly month for el-Fasher, with RSF forces targeting mosques and hospitals in deadly bombings since the beginning of this year. … Raised banks of sand or gravel built by the RSF, known as berms or earthen walls, hinder its residents from escaping attacks, creating what an August report from the Yale School of Public Health called “a literal kill box.” As long as the gunfire continues, Saeneen says, they are “waiting for their fate.”
(Image: A Sudanese child who fled el-Fasher city with family receives treatment at a camp in Tawila, Sudan, on November 2, 2025. Mohamed Abaker / AP Photo.)
Doctors collect evidence of war crimes amid decimation of Sudan’s hospitals
THE PROGRESSIVE | With an internal conflict nearing its second year, medical facilities are being regularly targeted. The Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition has reported that combatants have occasionally occupied medical facilities for weeks, transforming hospitals into military bases with snipers on the roofs and armed personnel inside while attacking health workers with impunity.
SCIENCE & JUSTICE ↴
Conservationists endorse the age of synthetic biology
TRUTHDIG | From restoring coral reefs and increasing frogs’ pathogen resistance, to reviving extinct species of wolves and engineering microbes to gobble up industrial pollution, synthetic biology offers novel ways to rewrite natural history. At the same time, it is threatening to erode some of the foundational principles of conservation. The growing divide over the future of biotech was on full display during this month’s World Conservation Congress in Abu Dhabi, the quadrennial conference of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
(Graphic by Truthdig; images via AP Photo, Adobe Stock)
NATO War-Games Climate Change
TRUTHDIG | It’s the 11th hour for countries to respond to irreversible climate change, security experts agreed at the fourth annual NATO Climate Change and Security Summit. With militaries responsible for approximately 5.5% of the world’s greenhouse emissions, inaction is deepening existential risk and increasing calls from the scientific community for arms control and conflict prevention.
(Graphic by Truthdig; images via AP Photo, Adobe Stock)
Greed is a hell of a drug
TRUTHDIG | Humanitarian experts see lenacapavir as a potential game changer for marginalized and criminalized communities. But Gilead’s decision to forbid generic producers from exporting the drug to countries outside the license list has earned accusations that the company is contravening the spirit and letter of the 2001 Doha Declaration on TRIPS and public health.
(Graphic by Truthdig; images via AP Photo, Adobe Stock)
MAGAZINES ↴
Copper mining and green sacrifice in Putumayo
NACLA | This special issue of the NACLA Report critically examines the rise of green capitalism in the Americas in the lead-up to COP30 in Belém, Brazil in November. Guest edited by Sabrina Fernandes and Breno Bringel, this collection analyzes how the logics and instruments of green capitalism are shaping policy and territory, enabling new forms of dispossession, and deepening historical inequalities. Together, the voices and examples compiled in this issue expose the traps of a corporate-led transition that claims to be clean and just, but in practice reinforces systems of exploitation and domination. The Fall 2025 issue also highlights the movements, communities, and visions from below that challenge these false solutions and point the way toward just ecosocial transitions.
Making Montréal-Est
MAISONNEUVE | A sulfur processing plant. An oil refinery. A chemical warehouse. Corrals of shipping containers. A depot for petroleum coke, a byproduct of oil refining. Oil tank cars lined up along the street in a long row. The remnants of a factory, and the burnt carcass of a former recycling facility. The site of a soon-to-be-constructed airport fuel storage terminal along the northern bank of the Saint-Laurent River. These are the landscapes of Montréal-Est, a city on the eastern end of the Island of Montreal. The history of this small city is intertwined with heavy industry, as are the plans for its revitalization.
Catering to capitalism: How the informalization of labour is hurting workers
THIS MAGAZINE | For those whose livelihoods depend on the flexibility of catering work, there is also a price for this view into an often inaccessible world. While catering is the quintessential gig economy, temp-worker agencies and the informalization of labour in the sector pose new challenges for workers’ rights in a precarious industry—one that has long lacked many vital labour protections that are considered basic rights for other classifications of workers.
COLOMBIA ↴
River politics and silent disappearances in Buenaventura, Colombia
FAIRPLANET | Long on the margins of South America’s shipping hubs, the industrial city of Buenaventura on Colombia’s Pacific coast is seeing massive changes. Port expansion is ushering in a new era of maritime trade. But justice for victims of armed conflict remains unresolved and their memory is slipping away.
(Image: Vladimir Oprisko / @captoprisko.)
Catatumbo crisis marginalises northeast Colombia communities
FAIRPLANET | With Trump doubling down on an old drug war playbook for Colombia, and Petro already folding to Trump’s executive order to deport Colombians, Catatumbo is now in a critical moment that threatens to deepen social divides.
(Image: UNHCR/Mónica Peñaranda)
An uncertain future for mine clearance in Colombia
THE PROGRESSIVE | New frontlines and funding cuts deepen risks for ex-combatants working in humanitarian mine clearance.
(Image: March 22, 2018. Algeciras, Huila. Photo Credit: Juan Arredondo for UNMAS.)
HUMANITARIAN ↴
When a bridge is not just a bridge: Chenab railway
RABBLE | As the Chenab bridge was inaugurated, the spectacular bridge became a focal point for international pressure on companies and investors continuing to quietly profit off India’s military occupation and human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir.
(Image : Chenab bridge; via Konkan Railway Corporation Limited)
When aid fails in Uganda
FAIRPLANET | The escalation of conflict in eastern DRC has driven thousands into Uganda’s Kyangwali settlement, where dwindling humanitarian funding and World Food Programme ration cuts have left over half the population without assistance. Refugees with disabilities are among those excluded, often with no recourse.
(Image: Jack Taylor, Getty Images)
The silent return of landmines in Europe
FAIRPLANET | As Ukraine becomes one of the most landmine-contaminated countries in the world, a growing number of Eastern European states are abandoning a landmark international treaty banning their use.
(Image : Kalynivka, Kharkiv © Amnesty International)
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