New Internationalist

Usually there’s no discussion about it. The Big Story, the main theme of the magazine, is what goes on the cover. But, in the midst of the current global pandemic, it seemed strange not to give greater prominence to our coverage of Covid-19. Should t

Accounts: Samuel Gormley, Katalin Szombati Administration: Mary Murray Advertising: Michael York Design: Andrew Kokotka, Juha Sorsa Editorial (Magazine and Website): Vanessa Baird, Dinyar Godrej, Amy Hall, Hazel Healy, Jamie Kelsey-Fry, Husna Rizvi E

Re: your striking image of a coal-fired power station in your edition on Air pollution (NI 525). Surely you should be aware that cooling towers emit only steam (as they are cooling waste steam to recycle in the process) and not smoke. The steam may a

‘Lil Miquela’ has 2.2 million Instagram followers and her past collaborations include Prada, Calvin Klein and YouTube. The ‘influencer’ has captured the hearts of under-twenty-fives across the world. Miquela is also a ‘teen robot’ created by Brud, an

In the crosshairs of both pandemic and superpower management, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who was appointed head of the World Health Organization in 2017,is the bête noire of Donald Trump and the US Right. The 55-year-old Eritrean-born Ethiopian has

The Covid-19 pandemic isn’t stopping the exploitation of the Amazon – quite the contrary. Wildfire season has begun in the Amazon rainforest and the combination of seasonal respiratory diseases caused by smoke, the spread of Covid-19, and a nearly co

The World Bank celebrated the 2017 launch of its ‘pandemic bonds’ with a glitzy video. Shots of gleeful African schoolchildren were cut with a speech from Jim Yong Kim, the Bank’s president, pledging to be ‘aggressive and creative’. The initiative wo

Biodiversity loss means that pollinators – such as bees, bats and butterflies – are having a hard time. But a suburb of the Costa Rican capital, San José, is pulling out all the stops to welcome them. Nicknamed Ciudad Dulce (Sweet City), Curridabat m

Since the early 2000s, Argentina has been forced into a cycle of debt and austerity. Nick Dearden presents solutions to this coercive, financialized system. The Covid-19 crisis has triggered an international rent strike. Amy Hall reports on the housi

Kurdistan Solidarity Campaign facebook.com/kurdistansolidaritycampaign Broad-based, affiliated with UK trade unions Women Defend Rojava womendefendrojava.net Network for a free society Canadian Friends of Kurdistan facebook.com/canadian.friends.of.ku

In a pandemic, love can become a luxury some can’t afford. Amid the economic uncertainty brought on by Covid-19, thousands of families in the UK – in which one partner’s passport is from outside the European Economic Area – are now concerned about wh

The Barzanis and the Talabanis have dominated the political life of Iraq’s Kurds for generations. Mustafa Barzani was the legendary granddaddy of the Kurdish revolution, who fought Iraq and Iran for the rights of his people. His son, Masoud, was Kurd

LEADER: President Alejandro Giammattei (since 14 January 2020). ECONOMY: GNI per capita $4,400 (El Salvador $3,820, United States $63,080). Monetary unit: Quetzal. Main exports: Clothing, bananas, coffee, sugar. Agriculture accounts for nearly 10% of

Like the internationalists in the Spanish Civil War, Westerners have gone to Northern Syria to defend Rojava’s revolution – a beacon of socialism, environmentalism and gender equality in practice. Some risk their lives in the war zone. Others risk be

A parade of security guards on Guatemala City’s Fifth Avenue dangle scary-looking shotguns. What they protect are not banks nor casinos, but humble stationery shops. Guatemala, once among the world’s most violent countries, has halved its murder rate

GARY: The SDGs cover a huge number of seemingly intractable issues. What might surprise many people is that there is a good chance they will succeed. There are six reasons to be optimistic. First, the fact that 191 countries actually agreed the SDGs

Despite economic growth, poverty has become more widespread. Poverty rates double in rural areas and triple among indigenous people. 81.5%. 25% of children drop out of primary school, indigenous girls even more. A third of Mayan women cannot read or

Being in the public eye does not take away the rights of celebrities to be activists. Anyone has the right to be an activist, including celebrities. If brands pay them thousands to endorse their brands then why would activism not benefit from their e

In early April, Sierra Leone confirmed its first case of coronavirus, one of the last nations in the world to do so. A low-income country, it has limited intensive care capacity, a total of 18 ventilators and a population of six million, the vast maj

The president of the US stood at a podium with the White House seal emblazoned across the front and suggested that sunshine, household bleach and disinfectant might be a treatment for Covid-19. Newspapers around the world reported his remarks, but wi

According to Brazil’s Ministry of Health, on 6 May the country had recorded 8,536 deaths from Covid-19. Despite underreporting, the figure already showed that the main victims were poor people from large cities. Coincidentally, on the same day, the B

20 short films by various directors and writers 237 minutes ★★★★✩ The quiet opening film, Ellen Evans’ 13-minute Motherland, hits hard. An elderly man, dignified, deeply disappointed and bewildered, a ‘proud Black Britain’ of the Windrush generation,

India’s mid-March Covid-19 lockdown – announced at very short notice at night – led to panic and confusion all over the country. While the plight of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers rushing from the cities made international headlines, the ru

by Andrew Wear (Oneworld, ISBN 9781786079015) oneworld-publications.com ★★★★✩ Reviewers don’t often highlight the process of reviewing, for the good reason that it is usually mundane: receive review copy, read book, write about it. The circumstances

Q: I always thought I would have children, although I wasn’t in a hurry when I was younger. Now I’m in my early 30s and the time seems right in many ways. I’ve been getting those pangs of desire to bring a new life into the world, but when I think ab

In 1955, virologist Jonas Salk was asked about the intellectual property rights of his polio vaccine. To which he responded: ‘There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?’ Salk’s choice to make the vaccine patent free ultimately beat back the US pol

Dilar Dirik is an activist in the Kurdish women’s movement in Europe and is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford. Tehran-based Jalal Sepehr started out as an industrial photographer and has sinc