Making peace in a world at war

The pressures on our world are serious, and expected to grow. If we take the following approaches, peace will be more likely. It’s time to ditch the military habit...

From occupied Palestine to Scottish high schools, people across the world are challenging the warmongers. We profile eight extraordinary women and men on the peace frontline. Words: Hazel Healy and Louisa Waugh. Illustrations: Olivier Kugler.

The arms trade is a powerful and enduring obstacle to peace.

Colombia’s peace deal promised the return of stolen lands. But it isn’t so easy to achieve, Mira Galanova discovers.

Unusually, victims testified directly at the Havana peace talks between FARC guerrillas and the government. Maria Eugenia Cruz Alarcón, one of the first to bear witness, explains why she will defend Colombia’s peace agreement – at all costs.

After 20 years of brutal civil war, the rulers of Arcadia and the rebels are ready to consider laying down arms. The mediation team needs a leader and – for some reason – your name is chosen. Do you have what it takes? Take our quiz to find out...

Art and story by Ilya, with Yohann Koshy.

Frances Guy makes a plea for traditional diplomacy in the age of the Trumpian tweet.

The brutal gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh in 2012 shone a blistering light on sexual violence as a staggeringly common occurrence in India. Author Sohaila Abdulali explains how, despite the case’s global coverage, the conversation about rape has only just begun.

According to the UN, most surgeries on intersex babies amount to torture. And yet that is the practice in almost every country in the world today. Valentino Vecchietti calls for urgent change.

Some 70,000 Palestinian workers pass through Israeli checkpoints every day. The process, which can take several hours, is disorganized and conditions overcrowded. Those without proper permits often attempt the crossing via gaps in the Israeli wall and mountain routes along the Green Line and run the risk of being arrested or even shot at by Israeli forces. Words & photography by Anne Paq / Active Stills

Politicians of both Left and Right continue to march behind the banners of meritocracy and equality of opportunity as if this were all that is needed to achieve a fair society. But rewarding people for their ‘merit’ may be creating a new class system based on arrogant, insensitive winners and angry, desperate losers, writes Peter Adamson.

Progress without people. Nanjala Nyabola on Kenya's embrace of the Chinese development model.

Nilanjana Bhowmick takes apart the latest viral hashtag campaign for the religious takeover of secular India.

Mark Engler shows how Trump's migration policies are linked to the violent legacy of US foreign policy.

With the Ugandan government announcing it may close down hundreds of illegal orphanages, it is not clear what will happen to the children living in them.

Mexico has a new president, but can AMLO form a government for the many without taxing the wealthy.

India's government has asked WhatsApp to act urgently to halt the spread of "irresponsible and explosive messages" after a spate of deadly attacks. 

Africa's $10-billion energy project faces problems.

The mastermind of the 1995 sarin gas attacks in Tokyo is executed.

Xylella is behind an unprecedented crisis in southern Apulia.

Report from Nicaragua by Steve Shaw.

GI – a rising far-right group that originated in 2003 in France.

Take a stand; Fossil Free; The people’s luxury.

Praise, blame and all points in between? Give us your feedback.

Joining his neighbours one evening, Dan Baron Cohen finds himself immersed in a spontaneous conversation about culture, justice and sustainability that would be rare inside the halls of academe.

Britain and Brexit.

Silicon Valley has taken to drinking ‘raw water’...

Infant mortality rate.

"There is no way all my outrage can fit on a sign".

Refugee Song by Sergii Riabokon.

Cartoon by P J Polyp.

Jordan is nominally a constitutional monarchy with regular national and local elections. However, the façade of democracy is thin. Zoe Holman profiles the country.

The latest news from those fighting against climate change, from Costa Rica going fossil-free to the suspicious creation of ‘low carbon’ kerosene.

Highlighting the work of artists and photographers from the Majority World.

Cartoon by Marc Roberts.

The chocolate king of the Ukraine.

Dalia Gebrial and Thomas Jeffrey Miley go head to head on this complex and topical issue. Illustrations by Kate Copeland.

Periods by Kate Evans.

A friend has invited me to her Hindu wedding...

Vanessa Baird looks ahead at how things could be.

(aka Radwan Ghazi Moumneh) Words by Louise Gray, photograph by Melanie Marsman.

The Incendiaries; Betraying Big Brother; A Radical History of the World; Rupture.

Tehran Taboo; The Heiresses (Las Herederas).

Sound the People; Crave.