On the last day of October 2025, leaders from the 21 nations of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum will meet in the city of Gyeongju in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) for the organisation’s 33rd summit. Since its founding in 1989 in Canberra, Australia, APEC has promoted building a zone of ‘free and… Continue reading

Gen Z-led uprisings across the Global South point to long-term socioeconomic and environmental crises caused by neoliberalism. Yet they have often been coopted by entrenched social classes. Can their energy be channelled towards progressive ends? Continue reading

Thursday, 9 October 2025 — The Tricontinental Omar Ba (Senegal), Promenade masquée, 2016. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. In February 2025, Senegal’s Court of Auditors released a report that found ‘anomalies’ in the management of public finances between 2019 and 2024, during the presidency of Macky Sall (2012–2024). Continue reading

I first heard the word ‘depression’ when I was about sixteen. My mother took me to the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) in Bengaluru, India, to be seen by a professional for what I had just considered to be nightmares and difficult afternoons. I was lucky. Today, only 9% of people in… Continue reading

Thursday, 18 September 2025 — The Tricontinental Reading the words of Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) at the grave of Berta Cáceres, August 2025. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. At the grave of Berta Isabel Cáceres Flores (1971–2016) in La Esperanza, Honduras, where she was born and died, I Continue reading

Thursday, 11 September 2025 — The Tricontinental With the promise of the Mexican revolution and the sweeping reforms of cardenismo long erased by decades of neoliberalism and dependency, can Morena’s Fourth Transformation restore dignity and sovereignty to the country? Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Continue reading

On 12 August, Samar Abu Elouf, who won the 2025 World Press Photo of the Year for the picture above, posted on her Instagram account that her son’s close friend Sami Shukour had been killed while he ‘went to look for flour to feed himself and his family’. Samar had taken Sami’s graduation photographs just… Continue reading

A walk through the Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance against Japanese Aggression in Beijing makes one despise war and everything about militarism. The museum is not far from the Marco Polo (or Lugou) Bridge, where the Chinese people began their war to liberate their country from the Japanese occupation in the north.… Continue reading

Burkina Faso has been trapped in neocolonial underdevelopment for nearly all of its post-independence history – can the new government of Ibrahim Traoré follow in Thomas Sankara’s footsteps and change course? Continue reading

In July, a few days after the centenary of Frantz Fanon’s birth, I had lunch with his daughter, Mireille Fanon Mendès-France. When I commented that Fanon had died so young, at thirty-nine, Mireille corrected me: ‘No, thirty-six’. Even three more years would have been a gift – to him because he might have been able… Continue reading

Those who do not live in war zones or in suffocated countries are forced to live life as if there is nothing strange about what is happening around us. When we read about war, it is disconnected from our lives, and many of us want to stop listening to anything about the human misery caused… Continue reading

A horrifying statistic hovers over the poorer nations: 3.4 billion people now live in countries that spend more on interest payments for public debt than on education or health. In 2024, according to a new report from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), global public debt reached $102 trillion – a third… Continue reading

Reason seems to have been gradually abolished by the language of bombs. As weapons systems get ‘smarter’ and ‘smarter’, the range of diplomatic instruments used by the Global North states becomes blunter and blunter. US and European diplomats have returned to the old colonial habit of speaking loudly and brusquely, lecturing the natives about what… Continue reading

In 1957, Mao Zedong oversaw the publication of Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside, a three-volume collection of articles compiled by the Communist Party of China for the political education of the peasantry. The following year, selections from these volumes were republished in abridged and regional editions. One such edition included a report from the Anyang… Continue reading

A decade ago, I was a fly on the wall during a trade negotiation between the United States and a small country in Southeast Asia. What interested me was not the substance of the negotiation, the deliberations around an issue of minor concern to world affairs but of great concern to this one country, but… Continue reading

The number in the graph above, based on data from the International Monetary Fund, is not an exaggeration. Despite the growing technological and industrial capacity of countries in the Global South, countries and corporations in the Global North continue to own intellectual property patents on key products, locking the South into indefinite patent payment regimes.… Continue reading