FEED / https://www.fairplanet.org

The civilian cost of Pakistan’s counter-terrorism war in Afghanistan

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 11:52:12 GMT

In late February, Pakistan launched ‘open war’ on Afghanistan with Operation Ghazal lil-Haq (Wrath for the Truth), marking the most violent period of fighting between the two countries since the Taliban takeover in 2021. For Pakistan, it was a war of retaliation against the Tehreek-e-Taliban, or TTP, a militia sympathetic to the Afghan Taliban. Pakistan has long accused Afghanistan of offering safe harbour to the TTP ‘Tashkeel,’ or administrative structures and combat units, and was fed up with inaction.

(image)
Would you like us to summarize articles for you?

ARTICLE SUMMARY

Pakistan’s counterterrorism operations along the Afghanistan border have increasingly placed civilians in the crossfire, with airstrikes and military actions killing women and children, destroying homes ...

Venezuela's Deadliest Earthquake in a Century Exposes Failures in Emergency Response

Mon, 6 Jul 2026 16:12:28 GMT

‘This is the worst disaster we’ve ever experienced,’ said Ana Carballo, calm and holding her dog while in an improvised tent in Parque del Este. Venezuelans were confronting what may be the worst natural catastrophe in the last century, casting a deep shadow of grief and fear across the country and its diaspora. ‘We survived something so big and devastating, we can only pray and feel blessed’, Carballo said.

(image)
Would you like us to summarize articles for you?

ARTICLE SUMMARY

On 24 June 2026, two earthquakes measuring 7.2 and 7.5 struck Venezuela within seconds of each other, killing at least 1,400 people, injuring more than 3,000, and leaving an estimated 61,000 missing. The devastation was worst in the coastal state of La Guaira, where entire neighbourhoods collapsed. The ...

Pre-monsoon floods wipe out Boro rice harvests in Bangladesh’s haor wetlands

Fri, 3 Jul 2026 09:38:54 GMT

On a raised rural road cutting through Bangladesh’s haor wetlands, 70-year-old farmer Firoz Khandaker sat surrounded by his family, spreading out freshly harvested but water-soaked rice to dry in the sun. Around him, water stretched endlessly across submerged fields, an image that captured the scale of this year’s agricultural disaster in the country’s north-eastern floodplain.

(image)
Would you like us to summarize articles for you?

ARTICLE SUMMARY

Pre-monsoon flash floods have devastated Bangladesh’s haor wetlands, destroying thousands of hectares of boro rice just as farmers were preparing to harvest their most important annual crop. Triggered by intense rainfall and upstream water flows, the floods have wiped out livelihoods, deepened food insecurity, and threatened national ...

Queer Collectives are shaking up Indian campuses

Wed, 1 Jul 2026 22:04:31 GMT

India's higher education landscape is undergoing a significant transformation fuelled by the emergence and influence of college queer collectives.

Regressive Transgender Bill takes India back by Decades

Wed, 1 Jul 2026 21:57:07 GMT

The 2026 amendment to transgender rights in India replaces self-identification with state-mandated certification, fundamentally altering the legal recognition of gender identity.

The women behind Kashmir's menstrual health revolution

Wed, 1 Jul 2026 21:47:20 GMT

"The cultural stigma surrounding menstruation is deeply rooted. It is crucial that we break free from these oppressive constraints."

Gender Politics in the Indian Subcontinent

Wed, 1 Jul 2026 21:30:02 GMT

India is a country of legal contradictions on gender and sexuality. The Supreme Court decriminalised same-sex relations in 2018, striking down a colonial-era law that had criminalised millions. Yet the same court declined to legalise same-sex marriage in 2023, leaving LGBTQ+ couples without inheritance rights, adoption rights or the legal recognition that heterosexual partners take for granted. A Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act exists on paper, but rights groups argue it has set back the community it was designed to protect.

Some of the contradictions are structural. Gay and bisexual men remain barred from donating blood in India under policies that have persisted for decades — even as the country faces critical shortages and even as medical bodies in other countries ...

The Women They Called Witches in Malawi

Wed, 1 Jul 2026 11:09:51 GMT

At 83 years old, Nasitima Chikadwala still remembers the fear that consumed her every day. Inside a small grass-thatched hut in rural Lilongwe, she endured years of humiliation and violence after relatives accused her of practising witchcraft because she could not bear children. The abuse intensified after her husband died in a road accident, leaving her isolated and vulnerable. She was beaten by her own relatives, who accused her of being a witch and bringing bad luck to the family.

(image)
Would you like us to summarize articles for you?

ARTICLE SUMMARY

In Malawi, elderly women — often widows or those seen as different — are frequently accused of witchcraft, leading to social exclusion, abuse, and killings. Nasitima Chikadwala, 83, endured years of beatings from relatives ...

Venezuela's Political Prisoners Left in the Dark After Devastating Earthquakes

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 20:44:18 GMT

Less than 48 hours after two earthquakes struck Venezuela on 24 June 2026, the human toll was still being counted. The first tremor hit at 6:04 pm, registered a magnitude of 7.2; the second struck 39 seconds later, at 6:05 pm, registered a magnitude of 7.5. More than a minute and a half of shaking destroyed hundreds of buildings and homes across the country. Venezuela has declared a state of national emergency.

(image)
Would you like us to summarize articles for you?

ARTICLE SUMMARY

A 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck Venezuela on 24 June 2026, leaving over 580 political prisoners incommunicado for more than 14 hours while families waited outside prisons for news. Relatives, including those camped at Rodeo I since January, relied on overheard sounds and rare brief phone calls to ...

Can Gaza’s 26 June Demonstrations Mark the Beginning of a New Civic Movement?

Fri, 26 Jun 2026 09:46:05 GMT

As 26 June approaches, growing numbers of Palestinians across the Gaza Strip are discussing what many hope will become one of the most significant public demonstrations against Hamas in years. organised under the slogan ‘We Want to Live,’ the initiative reflects mounting frustration over years of political repression, economic collapse, and the devastating human consequences of the ongoing war.

The campaign is organised by a network of Gaza activists living abroad in co-operation with Palestinians inside the Strip. Over recent weeks, organisers have relied on social media, personal networks, and grassroots communication to encourage peaceful public participation. Their objective extends beyond a single day of protest: they hope 26 June will mark the beginning of a sustained civic ...

The bedbugs Europe sent: How imported used clothes are infesting Zimbabwe's poorest communities

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 16:51:56 GMT

For Gogo Emma Siwela, 70, a grandmother in Matapi Flats — one of Mbare’s most notorious neighbourhoods — the bedbug infestation caused by imported garments poses daily danger for the young grandchildren in her care. When the insects overwhelm her, she boils water in a desperate attempt to flush them out. ‘That makes our blankets wet at night and poses burning risks to my grandkids,’ she told FairPlanet in a face to face interview, gesturing at damp blankets from her latest attempts to scald the bugs away. ‘These bedbugs are terror.’

(image)
Would you like us to summarize articles for you?

ARTICLE SUMMARY

Mbare, Zimbabwe’s largest shanty town, faces a worsening bedbug crisis driven by cheap imported second-hand clothing from Europe.Mbare, Zimbabwe’s largest shanty town, faces a ...

The Girl Who Ran to Football in West Papua

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 18:03:08 GMT

The first time Erma Karafir learned to run, she was not on a football field. She was growing up in a crowded household in Jayapura, Indonesia, where alcohol often dictated family life. Her father drank heavily, arguments erupted without warning, and violence sometimes followed. With seven siblings packed into the same fragile world, there was little room to escape. But Erma found one. Whenever tensions rose, she left the house and joined neighbourhood kids playing football.

‘When I played football, I felt happy,’ she recalled. ‘I felt joy. I felt like myself.’

That simple act of running after a ball would eventually carry her far beyond West Papua. It would bring scholarships, national championships, a chance to study in the United States and enough prize money to buy her mother the ...

Can the NBA preach Justice while ignoring Sudan?

Fri, 19 Jun 2026 17:49:03 GMT

As millions of New York Knicks fans celebrate their long-awaited championship, the NBA advocates social justice at home while partnering abroad with a state accused of helping fuel the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. Where is the global outcry over what seems like sportswashing of a genocide?

It was bedlam on Broadway and all over Manhattan last Saturday the night of 14 June, when the New York Knicks became NBA champions again. After more than 50 years of frustration, their victory has electrified New York and delighted basketball fans around the globe, including the writer of this essay. The NBA, meanwhile, is basking in the glow of another successful season, proudly promoting itself as not just a sports league but a moral leader.

The league publicly lists equality and ...

Migrant raids hit Mexico City ahead of the World Cup

Tue, 16 Jun 2026 15:53:08 GMT

A young Venezuelan woman was bringing food downstairs for her husband when she saw the police officers, the Marine, transit officials, and immigration officers knocking on her building door. The young woman (her identity cannot be disclosed due to the nature of her situatuon) felt a panic attack paralysing her: her whole family, including their 15-year-old daughter, standing next to her, came to Mexico City originally from Venezuela, and their immigration status is still pending. Her Mexican neighbour warned her about the police, thinking officers were coming about parked vehicles, until she realized they were taking people, not bikes, and hid them in her room. They stayed there for two hours, while officers told the neighbour they were raiding the residential building looking for ...

Armenia has voted for a pro-European future

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 13:47:12 GMT

The parliamentary elections on 7 June 2026 served as an existential geopolitical stress test for the small South Caucasus republic. Despite sabotage attempts – from fictitious bomb threats and logistical disruptions to systemic voter bribery – Armenia reaffirmed its pro-Western trajectory. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party retained power, commanding 49.8 per cent of the vote and signalling that Armenia’s future lies with Europe.

A clear mandate amid sabotage

Moscow aggressively leveraged its regional influence in the run-up to the vote. Tactics ranged from imposing de facto embargoes on Armenian agricultural exports, overt threats of cutting gas supplies, and the deployment of a sophisticated matrix of hybrid interference – the so-called ‘Moldova ...

Wine Between Climate Crisis, Technology, and Tradition – Sicily as an Open-Air Laboratory

Mon, 8 Jun 2026 23:35:15 GMT

On July 1, 2025, Francesco Spadafora was in his vineyards, 450 metres above sea level, in the Virzì district of western Sicily. Compared to just two weeks earlier, humidity at dawn had collapsed from 98 per cent to minimal levels, while temperatures had already climbed above 30 degrees Celsius by nine in the morning. ‘The leaves had curled in on themselves like never before,’ he recalled, squinting into the blazing midday sun of May. Already as hot as August.

Spadafora is a third-generation organic winemaker and a member of the Italian Federation of Independent Winegrowers. His 180 hectares between Palermo and Alcamo tell the story of a Sicily long accustomed to sun and drought, but unprepared for climatic conditions this extreme. Downy mildew – a vine disease traditionally ...

How Carmen Navas became a symbol in the fight for Venezuela’s disappeared political prisoners

Thu, 4 Jun 2026 22:32:41 GMT

‘All I need is proof of life for Víctor Quero, my son,’ Carmen Teresa Navas would explain to the press over and over since February 2026, accompanied by dozens of other mothers, wives, and sisters who have made camp in front of detention centres in Venezuela since January. At 81 years old, she looked fragile and exhausted by time, grief, and mistreatment, but when she spoke, she was firm and assertive: ‘My son was kidnapped. He was forcibly disappeared. This is the state’s responsibility, and I just need proof that he is alive.’

But Carmen Navas did not enter the Venezuelan public consciousness in May 2026, and her search did not begin there. For 16 months, she searched relentlessly for her son across at least 21 detention centres, two courthouses, one morgue, and three ...

Indian Women Bearing the Cost of the Global Fuel Crisis

Sat, 30 May 2026 14:09:14 GMT

At 8:15 PM, 30-year-old Dolly Devi sits on the floor of New Delhi railway station, waiting for the Vaishali Express that will take her back to Begusarai, a district in Bihar. She waits alongside hundreds of migrant workers for overnight trains departing from the Indian capital to take them back to small towns and villages across the country. After months of struggling with rising cooking gas prices, Dolly has decided to leave Delhi for now. ‘We can’t afford it anymore,’ she told FairPlanet. ‘We will return when gas becomes cheaper.’

For two months, Dolly had been cooking meals on a small earthen stove using biomass and firewood inside her settlement. The smoke filled the lanes and seeped into neighbouring homes. Her landlord eventually asked her to stop. Like Dolly, thousands of ...

A Democracy in Danger – The Kremlin's Shadow over Yerevan

Wed, 27 May 2026 23:36:43 GMT

On June 7, 2026, Armenian citizens will be called to the polls for parliamentary elections – a vote that goes far beyond everyday party politics. Since the peaceful Velvet Revolution in 2018, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has gradually steered the small South Caucasian state, traditionally strongly tied to Moscow, in a new direction.

While Pashinyan’s leadership style is contested by some human rights activists including Kenneth Roth who recently voiced concerns that ‘Pashinyan’s populism borders on authoritarianism’, his pro-European Civil Contract party is securing a substantial lead according to recent polls. His government’s efforts to steer Armenia towards tackling systemic corruption, elite decision-making, weaknesses in the electoral framework, and the fragile ...

First to See the Caspian Disappear – Kazakhstan’s Vanishing Shorelines

Sat, 23 May 2026 13:10:42 GMT

Over the past decade, the degradation of the Caspian Sea – the world’s largest landlocked waterbody – has raised significant public concern.

While significant fluctuations in the Caspian Sea’s water level have occurred throughout history, scientists warn that the current decline is increasingly linked to global warming rather than natural cycles. Since 2020, the sea has been losing up to 30 centimetres in water level each year. It has now reached a record low of 29 metres below sea level, and experts warn that the decline is far from over.

The situation has drawn comparisons to the ecological collapse of the Aral Sea, which dried up due to the Soviet irrigation projects that diverted its feeder rivers, raising fears that Central Asia may be witnessing another large-scale ...

When you laugh, you are free

Thu, 21 May 2026 13:09:23 GMT

It was an image that went around the world: In September 2020, Maria Kalesnikava tore up her passport at the Belarusian border with Ukraine. It was not a calculated act, but a spontaneous reflex. She did not want to be deported. She wanted to stay with her people. The scene unfolded in the aftermath of a presidential election widely regarded as fraudulent, which triggered the largest protests in the history of Belarus. For weeks, hundreds of thousands took to the streets against the long-time ruler Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled the country since 1994. His regime responded with brutal force: security forces unleashed mass arrests, widespread torture, beatings, and sexual violence against peaceful protesters. In the weeks following the disputed August 2020 election, at least ...

Offside in Rabat: How AFCON Laid Bare Africa's Hierarchies

Tue, 19 May 2026 13:48:19 GMT

AFCON, the Africa Cup of Nations held last December, has recently turned into a battlefield. It was meant to showcase Pan-African unity, but for Morocco, the host, it was also part of a broader strategy to cement its status as a diplomatic and sporting power ahead of co-hosting the 2030 World Cup with Spain.

On 18 January, a dramatic Moroccan penalty shot in the hosts’ final match against Senegal ignited a storm that continues to reverberate across North and Sub-Saharan Africa, fuelling debates about racism, corruption, and African sovereignty.

The Chaos

During stoppage time, with the score level, the hosts were awarded a penalty following a VAR review. In an unprecedented move, Senegal’s head coach, Pape Thiaw, ordered his players off the pitch in protest. When the match resumed, ...

Kenya's forgotten recruits in Russia’s war against Ukraine, and the efforts to bring them home

Fri, 15 May 2026 16:35:29 GMT

Susan Kuloba’s son David, left Nairobi with a plan as he went off to Russia. He would work in Russia for a year, save enough, and come home to open a small footwear shop. He had spent years on construction sites in the Kenyan capital, and Russia felt like a way out. He signed a contract he thought to be for a position as a security guard, left for Russia, joined the military, and has not come back. The money promised to him sits in an account in Russia that Susan cannot access. ‘A friend of his informed me that he was receiving the money, but he never withdrew it. I have never received the money,’ she told FairPlanet.

Loise, from Ruiru near Nairobi, also waits. Her son Simon Gititu was an electrician before he disappeared into the same pipeline. She later read in the press that ...

Floating Schools of Chalan Beel: When the Classroom Comes by Boat

Tue, 12 May 2026 13:05:32 GMT

In Bangladesh’s vast wetland region of Chalan Beel, the monsoon transforms villages into an endless sheet of water. Roads disappear, homes become isolated, and daily life slows to the rhythm of rising and falling floods. Yet even in this waterlogged landscape, one thing does not stop: education.

Instead of children going to school, the school comes to them. Eleven-year-old Mosammat Fatema Khatun waits each morning on the muddy bank of the Gumani River in Chatmohar, Pabna. When a wooden boat fitted with solar panels approaches, she steps aboard. This is her classroom, a literally floating school.

The floating schools of Chalan Beel offer a local response to a much broader structural crisis. Across Bangladesh, climate hazards are increasingly disrupting children’s education.

Regressive Transgender Bill takes India back by Decades

Fri, 8 May 2026 15:37:45 GMT

‘I may have the privilege to assert who I am, but this law will decide who gets to exist for generations to come,’ says Akassh K. Aggarwal.

Aggarwal, a gender-fluid jewellery designer based in New Delhi, is forced to mark “M” on legal documents. They have been an active part of the LGBTQ community for 20 years, educating people about rights and the multifaceted nature of gender identities.

On March 30 this year, India passed the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act. The passage of the law was quick: in less than a week, it was passed in both houses of the parliament and signed into law by the President of India, Droupadi Murmu.

The speed itself was unusual in legislative terms. The residents and citizens of the country were quick to react. Advocates, ...