As the son of a career Foreign Service Officer, our family moved every 18 months, changing countries, climates, and languages. Starting in the 1950s, much of the travel was by ship. It is hard to imagine 2025 climbing on a boat in Jakarta and three weeks later climbing off in Genoa – across the Indian…
The collapse of the Assad regime liberated Syrians from decades of brutal and repressive rule and has opened the way for a better path forward. But the group that has taken over—HTS led by Ahmad al-Shara—has an extremist past, the state and economy are in shambles, and the country continues to suffer from deep divisions….
Trump Trade War 2.0: Tariffs bring more questions and fears As soon as US President Donald Trump took office, he signed an executive order that would impose additional customs duties on imports from Canada, Mexico and China. On February 1, the White House announced that an additional 25 percent customs duty would be imposed on…
Refik Anadol, the visionary Turkish artist who captivated millions with his ground-breaking MoMA installation Unsupervised, is now shaping the future of art and technology with the opening of the world’s first AI art museum, Dataland, in Los Angeles in 2025. Recently recognized at the prestigious 2025 TIME100 Impact Awards, Anadol has spent nearly two decades…
Advocating for human rights in the halls and corridors of United Nations headquarters is not easy, but it’s what some of us do every day. Most global crises and conflicts involving human rights abuses end up on the agenda of one or more UN body or agency. It could be the Security Council, General Assembly,…
Nestled across from the United Nations in New York City stands the Millennium Hilton New York One UN Plaza, a hub for world leaders, diplomats, and international dignitaries. At the helm of this prestigious property is Ratna Hendrianto, a General Manager whose impressive journey in hospitality spans over two decades and three continents. With a…
I am a former refugee from Karabakh, born in the Jabrayil region of Azerbaijan. When I was three years old, Armenian armed forces took over my home, forcing my family to flee and become internally displaced persons (IDPs). We spent many years in refugee camps, moving from one city to another in Azerbaijan, searching for…
The collapse of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has marked a turning point in Syria’s protracted conflict. While it has opened the door to potential political and social reforms, it has also intensified power struggles among local factions, regional powers, and international actors. The emergence of the interim government led by HTS, the continued impact of…
Jean Davis, an art therapist, and Nancy Wu, an architectural designer, have been transforming glass shards collected from the landfill into stunning pieces of art. When the Covid-19 pandemic shut down playgrounds and parks, bringing the world to a standstill, two artists discovered an unlikely sanctuary in a Brooklyn landfill beach. This hidden corner not…
From the simplest weather shelter, through the grandeur of castles, to soaring neo-futurist skyscrapers, architecture has always been a marker of human progress. Since the Neolithic era, the spaces we build define our development, transforming building into an art form – flexible despite its structural rigidity. Architecture has shaped religious beliefs, cultural shifts, and political…
On the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Tetinana Spravnykova hid in a shelter underground in the southeastern Mariupol oblast under siege, and didn’t see the light of day until 32 harrowing days later. Her hometown was occupied, collapsing under the strain of siege. “There was no way out,”…
It has been reported that about 750 million or nearly one in ten people in the world are exposed to severe levels of food insecurity, and 2 billion people do not have regular access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food. In northern Ghana, 33% of children are stunted, 11% are underweight, and 6.3% are wasted…
Humanitarians are fighting hunger in a world of waste Imagine a world where hunger is a distant memory, where every person has access to nutritious food, and where there is no poverty. Is a hunger-free world possible or is it unrealistic? Today more than 783 million people grapple with hunger even as we witness a…
“AI is more powerful than fire or electricity.” Those were the exact words of Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Indeed AI is rapidly changing the “expected future”, what we thought was “possible”. It is revolutionizing everything from healthcare, science, communications to national security at record speed. But with great power comes great responsibility. There are significant…
AI, Disarmament, and the Call for Responsible Regulation “UN Disarmament Chief Mrs. Izumi Nakamitsu Warns of AI-Driven Autonomous Weapons: Calls for Global Action to Protect Humanity” Mrs. Nakamitsu highlights crucial points about the integration of AI in military systems and the implications for disarmament and civilian protection. She emphasizes the need for a legally binding…
Levels of violence against children worldwide are at an all-time high and are on the rise, according to a latest UN report, which emphasizes that by working together, states and stakeholders can reverse this appalling trend. “The data shown in the report is alarming and likely underestimated,” said the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General…
