Features / Long Read

The urban areas surrounding Paris are often considered a symptom – or cause – of the failure of France’s social policies. Cole Stangler speaks to residents of the banlieues, and finds exploitation and division – but a spirit of resistance too.

For centuries, museums have held human remains as artefacts – including those sold, looted and smuggled out of colonized countries. Hana Pera Aoake explains how New Zealand/Aotearoa has become a world-leader in repatriation. What can be learned from the Indigenous-led programme driving the push to bring ancestors home?

Around the world, people are chanting ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ in solidarity with the women’s uprising in Iran – dubbing it the ‘first feminist revolution in the world’. Not so, argues Rahila Gupta, as she examines its precursor: a Kurdish feminist revolution in Rojava.

It’s 40 years since the establishment of peace camps at the British atomic weapons bases of Greenham Common and Faslane. Speaking to the women at the centre of four decades of resistance, Denise Laura Baker asks what keeps them going.

When the transnational giant decided to dig for lithium in Serbia it was met by widespread protests. But beyond the people’s rebellion lie deeper questions of imperialism, environmentalism and ‘green’ tech. Andrej Ivančić and Sergey Steblev inspect them in this cautionary tale.

Humorous yet shocking, mundane yet intimate – underpants have proved a useful tool for change. Katie Dancey-Downs examines the power of political undercrackers.

As climate change stretches human fragility towards breaking point, should we be preparing for societal collapse? This is the existential question behind ‘deep adaptation’, a theory that is rapidly gaining adherents. Richard Swift assesses how far, if anywhere, it will take us and what better paths we could go down.

Our deep desire for change is continually thwarted by the limiting political choices on offer. Political theorist and philosopher Neil Vallely digs into the roots of apathy and polarization.

Hazel Sheffield explores how the history of failed land reform in Colombia threatens both people and planet. Illustrations by Léo Hamelin.

When it comes to the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade and ongoing support of fossil fuels, what would be the cost of financial reparations? Through exploring the history of a prominent player in the insurance marketplace, Sahar Shah and Harpreet Kaur Paul have an idea of where to start.

Juliet Ferguson investigates the Energy Charter Treaty, an international agreement which could be very bad news for energy policy across the Global South.

As Big Food spreads throughout the Global South using the tobacco playbook, Kabugi Mbae investigates the rise in obesity – and non-communicable diseases – in Kenya.

In the absence of enough trained doctors, reliance on other, less-qualified, health workers is growing in the Global South. Physician Neil Singh’s exploration begins with a surprising personal encounter.

Danny Dorling and Annika Koljonen explain how Finland has come to be so equal, peaceful and happy – and sketch out the lessons we might learn from its example.

Rahila Gupta examines the history of the contested idea of ‘political blackness’ and makes the case for retaining it in today’s ongoing fight against racism.

In 2019, Sudanese strongman Omar al-Bashir was brought down in a revolution orchestrated largely by women. But while the dictator might have gone, the divisions wrought by his 30-year rule endure. Lucy Provan and Alice Rowsome meet the women who helped bring down Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir and discover a movement for change in full swing.

A clamour to return to the status quo after Covid-19 would be bad news for people and the planet, argues Richard Swift. We may never get a better chance for a new normal.

Popular wisdom has it that everything is speeding up, including population growth. Danny Dorling shows just how wrong that is – and argues that we are actually in a time of slowdown.

Wolfgang Sachs wrote a seminal series of essays for the New Internationalist in 1992 called ‘Development: a guide to the ruins’. The concept of development lives on – and takes on new shapes as it is reframed by the UN, reinterpreted by the Vatican or hijacked by authoritarian populists to serve their own nationalist agenda. But, he argues now, we need to move beyond its misguided assumptions into a new post-development era based on eco-solidarity.

In a groundbreaking new work, Trifonia Melibea Obono has sought out and recorded the unheard stories of lesbian and bisexual women living in the small West African state of Equatorial Guinea.