Originally published on Global Voices

ICRC’s projects provided solar energy and clean water for hundreds of thousands of Yemenis in 2025 alone — vital for health, hygiene and survival in communities where basic services are facing serious challenges. Picture by ICRC, used with permission.

In Yemen’s capital, shifting weather patterns and ongoing conflict are no longer abstract concerns. They are actively shaping public health outcomes.

In a neighborhood of Sana’a, 17-year-old Malak Abdulmalik manages chronic respiratory symptoms that worsen with dust and seasonal changes. “I rely on my inhaler almost daily,” she explains, describing how air quality and temperature fluctuations directly affect her breathing.

Her cousin faced a different challenge. After consuming contaminated food, she contracted cholera, a waterborne disease that continues to threaten Yemenis. The illness caused severe dehydration and required 11 days of medical care. Shortly after recovery, she was diagnosed with Hepatitis A, an infection commonly linked to unsafe water and food.

According to the World Health Organization, Yemen has experienced recurrent cholera outbreaks driven largely by unsafe water and limited sanitation access, reporting the highest burden of cholera globally in 2024.

Stagnant water caused by flooding and poor drainage also creates mosquito breeding grounds, contributing to the spread of dengue fever.

The World Bank reports that climate change is expected to intensify extreme weather events in Yemen, which, combined with infrastructure destruction, places additional pressure on water and health systems.

Monitoring outbreaks and adapting on the ground

These cases reflect a broader pattern: environmental stress, damaged infrastructure from war, and limited health resources combine to increase disease risk.

This is what Hana’a Al-Zubairi, coordinator assistant at Yemen’s Ministry of Health and Environment, explains:

Cholera, dengue fever, and Hepatitis A are driven by both climate change and war-damaged infrastructure. Flooded sewage contaminates water, while stagnant pools create mosquito breeding grounds. Many respiratory illnesses remain unrecognized until severe.

“Respiratory illnesses are also increasingly common. Dust storms, rising temperatures, and seasonal shifts contribute to both upper and lower respiratory infections, placing additional strain on individuals and healthcare providers,” Al-Zubairi adds

Her response team conducts weekly district visits to monitor outbreaks, run awareness campaigns, and guide treatments. Seasonal disease spikes often coincide with harvest periods when crops are irrigated with unsafe water. Poverty and misinformation also limit vaccination uptake, leaving children particularly vulnerable.

Expanding health risks

Healthcare workers report that environmental and living conditions are influencing a wide range of illnesses.

Dr. Ali Al-Hamzi, a surgeon based in Yemen, contracted dengue fever after a mosquito bite in 2018. He describes the illness as physically and mentally exhausting, requiring weeks of recovery.

 “Prevention is critical,” he says, emphasizing mosquito control and household protection measures such as window screens. In his case, the disease was relatively mild, but severe cases can require patients to be admitted to intensive care units, he explains.

Delayed care and community-level challenges

Ashwaq Abdullah, a nurse with over 15 years of clinical experience and founder of her own clinic, highlights delayed treatment as a major challenge. “Many patients wait too long before seeking care,” she explains. “By the time they arrive, dehydration or infection has already reached a critical stage.”

During outbreaks at Al-Sabeen Hospital in the south of Sana’a, she observed how poverty forces many patients, especially from rural areas, to delay care, sometimes leading to severe complications such as kidney failure.

She also notes that respiratory illnesses, worsened by dust and changing weather, are becoming more complex, with viral infections increasingly developing bacterial complications. Her advice is clear: “Seek early medical care and maintain hygiene practices such as thoroughly washing fruits and vegetables to reduce risk.”

The role of humanitarian organizations

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Yemen, six diarrhea treatment facilities are currently supported across Yemen, providing medical supplies, hygiene kits, staff training, and operational support.

Their water and sanitation programs aim to improve access to clean water, a critical factor in preventing disease spread. According to ICRC, more than 580,000 people gained improved access to health care services, while around 390,000 people benefited from improved access to safe water through its interventions in the first half of 2025.

Humanitarian organizations, alongside teams such as the Ministry of Public Health and Population staff and community-based health workers, continue supporting disease response efforts through medical assistance, water and sanitation interventions, healthcare training, and the maintenance of essential treatment services despite ongoing systemic challenges

From crisis to climate solutions and resilience

The connection between climate change, conflict, and public health is undeniable. It is visible in water scarcity, disease outbreaks, and the increasing pressure on healthcare systems. Yet focusing only on vulnerability does not reflect the full reality on the ground.

Alongside these challenges, there is a continuous process of adaptation. Communities are not only responding to crises , they are actively developing solutions. They are adapting through renewable energy, solar-powered water systems, improved hygiene practices, community health awareness, and local health workers who continue disease surveillance despite limited resources. Adaptation is no longer an exception; it is becoming part of daily life in Yemen.

Expanding renewable energy, particularly solar energy, represents one of the most practical climate solutions for Yemen. Solar power is not only an alternative energy source; it is a lifeline that supports clean water access, strengthens healthcare services, and improves living conditions in areas affected by infrastructure damage and climate stress. Yemen’s diverse geography also creates opportunities for expanding sustainable energy solutions in different regions of the country through locally driven approaches.

At the same time, effective climate action depends on collaboration with local actors because communities understand their environment, risks, and needs better than external systems alone. This local knowledge makes climate interventions more sustainable and more connected to realities on the ground.

What becomes clear is that Yemen is not only a place of crisis, but also a place of continuous problem-solving. Where challenges exist, solutions also grow. Where climate risks increase, communities continue to adapt and build resilience through practical climate solutions.

In Yemen, adaptation is ongoing. Solutions are already being built. Resilience is not theoretical — it is happening every day through communities, local knowledge, and climate solutions that are shaping a more sustainable future.

Originally published on Global Voices

Shelters, including a temporary improvised bathroom set up between the tents. Photo by the author, used with permission.

By Marwa Rommaneh

In the early morning hours, when schools are supposed to prepare to welcome students, the yards are filled with men sleeping on the ground. Movement begins before sunrise, and lines gradually form outside sanitation facilities. Gaza’s schools are no longer places of education, but have been transformed into displacement shelters, hosting hundreds of families within a single shared space.

In the first week of the war on Gaza in October 2023, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) reported that around 218,600 displaced people were sheltering in 92 of its schools across the Gaza Strip, while many others sought refuge in government schools and other buildings. Over time, these numbers grew, and overcrowding became an entrenched daily reality.

In these environments, it does not take long to realize that something fundamental has disappeared: privacy is no longer part of life.

A continuous collective scene

Everything that once took place behind the walls of a home is now exposed. Cooking, washing, resting, and daily routines all unfold in a single shared space, in front of everyone. There are no rooms, no closed doors, and no corners that offer even a moment of solitude. Life here is not lived separately, but in constant overlap, where the details of each family become part of a continuous collective scene.

This overlap is not only about limited space — it is also about the loss of the ability to be alone, even briefly. Silence becomes rare, and rest is practised cautiously, as if it were temporary in a place that does not allow stability.

During my involvement in polio vaccination campaigns in Gaza, where I worked in data entry and field support, the experience was not limited to its administrative dimension. It was a daily confrontation with this reality. Reaching children required navigating overcrowded spaces and working in environments that offered neither comfort nor privacy. There was no designated space for interaction or care; every step took place within a crowded setting where movement constantly intersected with daily life.

Over time, the loss of privacy is no longer a minor detail; it becomes part of the lived experience itself. Life is exposed, shared, and constantly visible, where nothing remains “private” as it once was understood.

The difficulty of daily life

The World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF have highlighted the growing health challenges facing children in Gaza, particularly the difficulty of delivering healthcare services and conducting vaccination campaigns in overcrowded and resource-limited settings.

In this context, overcrowding becomes more than a description; it becomes a condition that governs everything: movement, communication, and even the delivery of care. Every small detail is shaped by the lack of space and the density of people, making even the simplest tasks more complex.

Tents and shelters for displaced families in Gaza. Photo by the author, used with permission

Children live this reality every day, often without fully understanding or adapting to it. There is no space for normal play, and no environment that provides a sense of safety or comfort. For children with disabilities, the challenges are even greater, as they live in conditions that do not meet their basic needs.

Estimates by Save the Children indicate that during 2024, around 475 children each month in Gaza sustained injuries that could result in lifelong disabilities, including limb loss, hearing impairment, and severe eye injuries. In overcrowded environments, such realities further intensify the difficulty of daily life, where even the most basic conditions for safety and privacy are absent.

After the war: A reality that has not changed

Despite the notion of “after the war,” very little appears to have changed inside displacement shelters. Overcrowding persists, space remains limited, and daily life continues with the same routines that leave no room for personal space. There is no real return to homes, nor alternatives that provide even minimal comfort, only a continuation of the same conditions that have become normalized despite their harshness.

In this reality, “after the war” does not emerge as a new phase, but as an extension of what came before. The same queues, the same shared spaces, and the same sense that life is constantly lived in full view of others. It is as if time stopped at the moment of displacement, without offering people a real chance to regain any part of their previous lives.

This continuity does not only mean that conditions remain unchanged, but it also means they become deeply rooted. Over time, the loss of privacy is no longer temporary, but a long-term condition that reshapes how people relate to space and to themselves.

What do we lose when privacy disappears?

Displacement is not only the loss of a home, but the loss of an entire way of life, the loss of a space that once protected daily details and gave individuals the simple sense that part of their lives belonged only to them

In displacement shelters, people are not just living in temporary places, but in a new reality shaped by constant overcrowding. Over time, the loss of privacy ceases to be temporary and becomes part of everyday life, a reality that reshapes the relationship between people, space, and life itself.

Here, it is not only walls that disappear, but also the boundaries that once gave life its simplest meaning: the ability for a person to have a space of their own, even if it is nothing more than a small corner where no one is watching.

Originally published on Global Voices

Illustration showing a dictator using surveillance and automated control to watch, predict, and suppress citizens. Illustration by Khalid Bencherif. Used with permission.

By Khalid Bencherif

“On coins, on stamps, on the covers of books, on banners, on posters and on the wrapping of a cigarette packet — everywhere. Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed — no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.” – George Orwell, “Nineteen Eighty-Four.”

Orwell could not have imagined that eventually, even those few cubic centimetres inside the skull would be contested on a continent already plagued by corruption and tyranny. This matters especially on a continent where corruption, impunity, and executive appetite long predate artificial intelligence. And where AI adoption is outpacing the development of rights-respecting legal frameworks

Africa rushes for smart tools of tyranny

In the past, tyranny in Africa required prisons, informants, secret police, and visible repression. Today, more and more of it arrives as software, financed by credit, wrapped in the language of modernisation, and sold as an upgrade to public safety.

A March 2026 study by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and the African Digital Rights Network found that 11 African governments had collectively spent more than USD 2 billion on AI-powered surveillance systems. Nigeria alone accounted for more than USD 470 million. The kit includes high-definition CCTV, plate readers, facial recognition, biometric identity layers, and a control room where the feeds converge. Much of it is supplied or financed by Chinese firms and banks, while other layers come mainly from Israeli firms.

Statistics about AI-powered surveillance. By the Institute of Development Studies. Used with permission. 

The common justification usually given by African governments is that acquiring this equipment is necessary to fight crime, but the crime numbers are not decreasing. IDS researchers, having examined the installations across several cities, found little evidence that the cameras reduce offending, and the evidence actually shows that cameras cluster in neighbourhoods where opposition parties organise, where protests have happened and where the press has “made trouble” for ruling regimes.

The info-infrastructure of dictatorships in Africa is not new, and it won’t be starting from zero. In most African countries, the state has long had an appetite for data. Records from communications, tax rolls, bank accounts, and administrative registries have been collected for decades and used with little legal restraint, even where protections exist on paper. What is new is the engine. AI turns the dormant files into a queryable archive. A name, a network, a pattern of travel, a history of transactions, now surface in seconds. 

Even the KGB, the Soviet Union’s secret police, as Yuval Noah Harari has pointed out, did not have enough people to read millions of reports on millions of citizens every day. The dust in the archive was itself a form of freedom. AI dissolves that dust.  

The AI-enabled surveillance now coming online in African cities is much cheaper thanks to Chinese open AI models and Israeli smart tools, because it rarely needs to punish anyone. Mass surveillance technologies — cameras, phone software, local internet networks — do not have to arrest anyone. They only need the citizens to know they are there. The awareness of being watched stops most action before it begins. 

The target list

Every movement for change on the continent has begun the same way. A group of people decides the risk of being seen in public is lower than the risk of staying silent. They gather. They post. The images travel. Sometimes the government falls. Sometimes it holds. The calculation in both cases turns on a single moment, when strangers become visible to each other and to the world as a movement. 

The upgrade changes that calculation at the source. 

AI-enabled surveillance is not a neutral grid cast over a city. It is configured around a target list, and that target list is political. The IDS mapping shows cameras clustered where opposition parties organise, not where ordinary crime is highest. 

The effect is pre-emptive; it suppresses dissent before it forms. Facial recognition at a bus stop does not need to arrest the organiser; it only needs to make clear that organising is no longer anonymous, and that being identified carries a cost. For instance, a protest planned for Sunday and identified on Saturday — through metadata, social media posts, network analysis and face-matching — rarely needs to be broken up by police. The organisers already know they have been seen, and they know what being seen can cost: arrest, charges filed later in court, or even being banned from government jobs. Often, the protest simply does not form. 

The logic compresses into a loop: the algorithm flags a person as a likely organiser, and that flag is treated as proof that the event would have occurred; thus, the person cannot be innocent because the alarm itself is the evidence. In a country with thin courts and a politicised security service, this becomes a machine that treats intention as guilt. 

Digital footprints widen the target list. Through the traces users leave online and through state-controlled communications, the state can build a profile of every citizen, then query it for signs of disloyalty. Not for what the person has done, but for what they have liked, who they have called or messaged, which rally their phone was near, which anti-government hashtag they shared. The quietest and most uncomfortable finding within the Atlantic Council’s report concerns this integration of administrative databases into something broader, a loyalty index, built out of records that were each introduced, separately, for a different reason.  

The consequence is that reform dies early. CIPESA (the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa) documents the chilling effect across fourteen countries; a measurable retreat of expression, assembly, and independent media in places where the surveillance architecture has been built out without rights-based safeguards. The citizen who would have marched, posted, joined the committee, filed the complaint, now calculates and stays home. 

From North to South Africa, a new kind of everyday atmosphere settles in. The seed of change is aborted, not in a cell but in a bedroom, by a person who has understood that the database remembers, and that the algorithm does not distinguish between the opinion expressed and the opinion held. 

This is what the upgrade protects most efficiently. Not the state’s capacity to punish. It’s capacity to make punishment unnecessary. Foucault called this the panopticon: a design in which the inmate, uncertain whether the guard tower is occupied, learns to guard himself. 

Those who refuse

While AI surveillance is becoming a powerful tool for authoritarian regimes, there are small counter-efforts, underfunded, and racing against a procurement cycle that has already delivered the cameras and wired the databases. Several journalists and organisations are documenting abuses, litigating test cases, and pushing for rights-based AI governance. Civic technologists are turning the same tools back on the state, including fact-checking generative content, monitoring hate speech, observing elections, and offering open, safe, smart tools for journalists and activists. 

However, the symmetry is false. The infrastructure, the compute, the training data, the vendor contracts, the technical talent, all sit with the state and its foreign suppliers. They do not sit with the African citizen, who struggles every day for just their daily bread. A civic-tech app might monitor some corruption, but it cannot match the control room. 

The few cubic centimetres

Orwell’s dictatorship needed a ministry, a war, an informant behind every door. The new African version seems to need only a loan agreement for buying AI infrastructure, and a population that has been persuaded that the whole thing is for their convenience. 

The historian Yuval Noah Harari has warned that the combination of biometric sensors, facial and voice recognition “make it possible for the first time in history for a dictatorial government to follow all the citizens all the time,” and could produce totalitarian regimes “much, much worse than anything we saw in the 20th century.” That warning is usually aimed at Beijing. But Beijing and Tel Aviv are starting to export the tools to Africa. 

The fear on the continent is not that AI will turn any single African state into a dictatorship. The fear is that AI is lowering the cost of authoritarian capacity and raising its ceiling — at an unprecedented pace, at precisely the moment when the appetite of corrupt regimes is growing, and the legal and institutional safeguards meant to contain them are thin or absent.  

Certainly, AI can be a lever for development and well-being in Africa; for public services, for innovation, and for expression, too. But, without the underlying infrastructure of democracy and a free press, it becomes a nightmare. 

Originally published on Global Voices

The Solidarity Fields in Jaramana initiative is an extension of the “Solidarity Fields and Dignity” project. Picture by Lahlah. Used with permission.

By Leida Zeidan

This article was originally published in Lahlah in Arabic on April 7, 2026. This translation is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement. 

This post is part of Global Voices’ May 2026 Spotlight series, “Global crisis, local solutions.” This series offers stories of resistance and successful climate action, insight into how communities in the Global South are fighting back against the crisis, analysis of what this might mean for future generations, and more. You can support this coverage by donating here.

On a small plot of land on the outskirts of Jaramana, in rural Damascus, the earth has been transformed into a site for reviving local seed production. In stark contrast to the city's crowded streets, the green expanses of this area represent a departure from the ordinary. It is an attempt to return to rural life, nature, and farming. On these grounds, the initiative known as “Solidarity Fields in Jaramana” was launched at the beginning of last March, when a group of organizers and farming enthusiasts began restoring the production of local and indigenous seeds by preparing the soil, sowing, covering, and irrigating it with the goal of recovering crop varieties that had nearly disappeared, amid the country's deteriorating economic conditions and the decline of agriculture.

From Greece to Jaramana

The Solidarity Fields in Jaramana initiative is an extension of the “Solidarity Fields and Dignity” project, which operates across various regions of Syria with the aim of supporting agriculture and rebuilding the relationship between people and the land. It seeks to empower communities to produce their own food, share harvests with those in need, and create a different model of cooperative work, particularly as environmental challenges and climate change increasingly affect land and agriculture.

Muhannad Deeb, an artist and coordinator of the Solidarity Fields in Jaramana initiative, spoke to Lahlah magazine about the project's origins. It emerged, he said, “from the convergence between the Shughl wa Fan [Work and Art] initiative and ‘Solidarity Fields and Dignity in Syria,’ which was established in 2025 as an extension of the Solidarity Fields project in Greece.”

The Greek Solidarity Fields project was founded by Suleiman Dakdouk, a Syrian refugee, and his fellow Syrians in Greece. Beginning with just 0.4 hectares, two cows, and three sheep, the project eventually expanded to more than 15 hectares, spread across displaced communities. The initiative was built on a principle of self-sufficiency, organizing work residencies, farms, poultry raising, crop harvesting and marketing, as well as the production of food items including dairy products, cheeses, beverages, and other daily necessities. It also established shops to market any surplus production. 

The Shughl wa Fan initiative, for its part, was founded in 2008 as an artistic, cultural, and developmental project aimed at raising awareness within Syrian society about its role in preserving living spaces, and recognizing the impact of art on creating a better environment, engaging local communities alongside governmental institutions, and clarifying the role of artists in society. This alignment in vision and goals led to collaboration and ultimately to the establishment of the Solidarity Fields in Jaramana.

Deeb continues:

After connecting and meeting with the general coordinator of Solidarity Fields in Syria, Suleiman Dakdouk, the Jaramana Solidarity Fields was established in March 2026, work in the field began, and interested parties, farmers, volunteers, and friends were invited to engage with the experience.

Local seeds and food security

The importance of local seeds lies in the fact that they represent the primary source of planting material for farmers. According to FAO, community-based seed systems can account for 80 to 90 percent of total seeds consumed, particularly for self-pollinated crops. Ensuring a supply of local seeds also helps reduce dependence on food aid.

Local seeds are well-suited to local climates and low-input farming systems, and they carry wide genetic diversity, making them resistant to disease and adaptable to climate variation. FAO notes that community seed system activities tend toward integration and self-organization, encompassing the ways in which farmers produce, disseminate, and access seeds directly from their harvests, or through exchange and barter with friends, neighbors, relatives, and through local markets.

Deeb describes the heart of the Solidarity Fields work as relying on “diverse agricultural experiences that are shared to enrich the project,” adding that the initiative sources its seeds primarily from household gardens, “where most people rely on their home plots to produce vegetables.”

According to Deeb, indigenous seeds can be identified by experts, but the most reliable method remains obtaining them from a mature, locally grown fruit. Seed planting is the project's first phase: the initiative has allocated approximately 300 dunams (around 75 acres) of farmland for cultivating the seedlings that emerge from these seeds. After the cultivation and harvest process is complete, the produce is distributed in a way that ensures the project's continuity and the availability of authentic local seeds going forward.

Seeds are the fundamental source of human food and the carriers of the genetic traits of crop varieties and types. Over time, through improvement, selection, and adaptation, the highest-quality varieties have emerged. Improving seeds and obtaining high-quality varieties is essential to increasing production and meeting environmental challenges. FAO underscores that food security depends critically on farmers having access to good seeds appropriate to their environment. Without good seeds, there can be no good crops. This makes projects that provide local seeds particularly significant, especially in post-war and post-disaster periods. 

The importance of Indigenous seeds

The war in Syria caused the rural population to shrink by 50 percent between 2011 and 2016, leading to heavy losses in crop and livestock production, the destruction of irrigation systems, damage to vast agricultural areas, and sharp increases in the costs of agricultural inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides. The blockade of certain areas also prevented the transport of seeds, pushing farmers to rely on imported varieties. When war ravages a country, the continuity of its agricultural systems is also destroyed. Farmers may keep their lives but lose land and seed stocks carefully stewarded for generations, lacking the resources for reconstruction. 

Deeb considers this initiative especially significant following the years of drought and conflict, arguing that it “helps increase the number of farmers adopting this approach, thereby expanding the areas cultivated with local seeds, particularly as production costs are reduced through the elimination of chemical pesticides and fertilizers.”

He also believes the initiative has the potential to bring about lasting change in agricultural practice and to influence farmers and local communities: “Most farmers rely on experience before adopting any method in their work, so it's possible for the results of this experiment to influence farmers and the wider community, making it more widespread.”

Given the challenges facing agriculture in Syria and the decline in agricultural output in recent years, the production of local seeds represents a vital step toward ensuring sustainable farming and toward rebuilding the farmer's relationship with the land and their dependence on it as a source of food, in the face of both climatic and political crises.

Originally published on Global Voices

The Qasmiya Bridge on the Litani River, which connects southern Lebanon to the rest of the country, was destroyed by the Israeli army on March 22, 2026. Photo by Megaphone on Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).

By Mohamed Soufan

Social media platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) are often treated as reflections of public opinion, with journalists using social media trends and posts to infer broader sentiment, especially during political conflicts.

Trending topics and viral posts can give the impression of broad, representative debate. But this perception can be misleading. An analysis of online discussions related to Lebanon showed that a small minority of users can dominate visibility and interaction, with the top 1 percent accounting for more than 60 percent of total engagement.

If a handful of highly active accounts shape most of what we see, what does “public opinion” online actually represent?

A small minority

Engagement — likes, reposts, and replies — is not evenly distributed. A small group of highly active or highly visible accounts captures a disproportionate share of attention. As a result, a limited number of voices can shape narratives, amplify specific viewpoints, and set the tone of discussion.

This is not always obvious. Repeated exposure to similar messages can create the impression of consensus, even when it is driven by a narrow segment of users.

This becomes clear in a dataset I compiled of Arabic-language posts about Hezbollah on X. The dataset includes 15,767 posts from 8,148 unique users collected between March 1 and March 8, 2026. Posts were identified using Arabic-language keyword variations of “Hezbollah,” and engagement was measured as the sum of likes, reposts, and replies. Accounts were classified as media or non-media based on profile metadata, supplemented by manual review of the most engaged accounts.

The results reveal a sharp gap between participation and visibility. Non-media users make up 89.6 percent of accounts and produce 79.9 percent of posts, yet the top 1 percent of users capture 61.5 percent of total engagement. The top 5 percent capture 90.6 percent , and the top 10 percent capture 96.2 percent.

Media accounts, although only 10.4 percent of users, account for 29.6 percent of the top 1 percent most engaged users and receive roughly 34 percent more engagement per post than non-media users — about 41 interactions per post on average, compared to 31. At the same time, most total engagement (74.8 percent) still comes from non-media users because of their much higher volume of posts.

Beyond social media

The implications go beyond social media itself. In practice, journalists, researchers, and audiences often turn to X during fast-moving events to get a sense of what is happening and how people are reacting. Trending topics, widely shared posts, and visible engagement can quickly become shorthand for public sentiment.

But these signals are not neutral. Research by Shannon McGregor shows that journalists sometimes rely on social media trends as indicators of public opinion, even though the users driving those trends are not representative of the broader population. A widely shared post or a trending hashtag can give the impression of a dominant public mood, even when it reflects the activity of a relatively small and highly engaged group.

Data from the Pew Research Center shows that political activity on X is concentrated among a small share of users. When the same accounts and viewpoints dominate what is seen, they can influence how events are framed, which voices are amplified, and which perspectives are overlooked.

This dynamic can reinforce itself. Content that gains early visibility is more likely to be seen, shared, and amplified again, making certain narratives appear more widespread than they actually are.

At the same time, social media data still provides valuable insights into how information spreads and narratives form, but it requires careful interpretation. This shifts the focus from ‘What is everyone saying?’ to ‘Who is being seen and heard — and why?’

In conflict contexts, this matters. When a small group dominates what is seen, it can create the impression of consensus where there is none. For those following events in Lebanon, highly visible reactions may reflect amplification rather than widespread agreement, making online discourse a misleading signal of public sentiment.

Originally published on Global Voices

Image from iMEdD, used with permission.

This article by Elli Kostika, Katerina Voutsina, and Kelly Kiki is an excerpt from a longer piece, first published on March 18, 2026, by the non-profit journalism organisation Incubator for Media Education and Development (iMEdD). This excerpt is published on Global Voices, with permission. It has been republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. Any other use of images or charts by third parties require permission.

On January 8, 2026, Iran went dark. As protests spread across the country, the government imposed a near-total internet shutdown, cutting millions off from the outside world. The move came in response to the largest protests the country had witnessed since the 1979 revolution. During these protests, which started in late December 2025 and lasted almost a month, Iranian security forces carried out a sweeping crackdown, killing thousands of protesters, a number that spanned from 3,000 according to Iranian official figures, to 30,000, based on several reports.

Limited access returned in late January, but journalists still struggled to stay online. Then, hours after the first US-Israeli strikes hit Iran on February 28, authorities imposed another internet blackout.

 

Post by @netblocks@mastodon.social

View on Mastodon

 

On March 11, 2026, Access Now, a nonprofit organization that protects the digital rights of vulnerable communities, urgently called on the Iranian authorities to restore full internet access and to refrain from imposing further disruptions. The organization reemphasized that “internet shutdowns in conflict zones have life-and-death consequences. They put civilians at risk of death, injury, and illness, cause psychological trauma and mental distress, disrupt livelihoods, and block people’s access to essentials for survival like food and medicine. They also block journalists and human rights defenders, weaken social cohesion, and cause lasting socio-economic harm long after connectivity is restored.”

Internet shutdowns are not new. Access Now defines them as “intentional disruption of internet or electronic communications” for a specific population or location.

In its STOP dataset, the organization has documented close to 2,000 internet shutdowns between 2016 and 2024, with the number of blackouts rising since 2020. The team relies on a context-driven methodology, manually verifying each event through local media, United Nations contacts, and regional partners to determine the primary cause behind internet shutdowns. Such disruptions are often “a precursor to atrocities and violence against civilians,” says Zach Rosson, the #KeepItOn Global Data and Research Lead at Access Now, speaking to iMEdD, adding that “throttling” is another form of an internet blackout, where the internet speed is intentionally slowed down to a level equivalent to 2G or less, making it unusable.

Reporting, verifying information, filing stories, and even paying bills or ordering food often depend on a stable connection. Yet, governments have increasingly turned off the internet, cut mobile networks, or blocked apps, imposing what experts describe as “digital curfews” or “kill switches.” Often deployed during moments of conflict or unrest, these shutdowns sever the free flow of information, leaving journalists struggling to stay connected, as rumors and misinformation spread.

Reporting under blackout

Mehdi Mahmoudian, an Iranian political and human rights activist and former journalist, who is currently based in Iran, told iMEdD via WhatsApp in early March that internet shutdowns make it difficult to verify or publish information. “As someone engaged in documenting human rights violations and collaborating with journalists and civil society networks, the loss of internet access effectively prevented me from verifying information, sharing testimonies, or reporting on what was happening”, said Mahmoudian, a co-writer of the 2026 Oscar-nominated film “It Was Just an Accident.” Over the past 16 years, he has been arrested 13 times and has spent nine years in prison because of his journalism and activist work.

He was most recently arrested on January 31, 2026, after signing a statement with other Iranian journalists and activists expressing support for the mass protests in Iran; he was released on February 17. “Basic communication with colleagues, friends, and family was also disrupted. In such situations, individuals can feel cut off not only from the global internet but also, to some extent, from their own society,” he told us a few weeks later.

Iran has not been a unique case. Between 2019 and 2021, India imposed a 552-day internet blackout in Jammu and Kashmir, leaving some 12 million residents without reliable service in the name of national security.

This visualization that from Access Now's STOP dataset shows how often internet shutdowns happen across countries.

Since 2017, laws have outlined the circumstances under which the government can cut connections. Those rules were replaced by the Temporary Suspension of Telecommunication Services Rules, 2024, which came into effect on November 22, 2024. Still, analysts who measure shutdowns in the country say the government frequently issues blanket shutdowns that exceed what the law allows.

“The government is acutely aware of the power of the internet and how it shapes public discourse, how it can be leveraged politically, and when it can be curtailed. Internet shutdowns in India predate the current administration, but their use has expanded significantly in recent years,” said Sadhika Tiwari, an independent journalist and host of Eco India for Deutsche Welle.

Similarly, in Ethiopia, internet access has also been used as a tool for control during conflict. In northern Ethiopia, the Tigray region was largely cut off from the internet for nearly two years, from November 2020 to February 2023, after the government imposed a shutdown following clashes between Ethiopia’s federal forces and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

“One of the most obvious things is that we’re not able to get photos and videos. That’s the biggest drawback,” Maya Misikir, a freelance journalist from Ethiopia, told iMEdD. Not being able to see what other news outlets are publishing online was another challenge for her.

When the Amhara conflict escalated in the summer of 2023, Misikir was able to talk to sources just on the phone. “Sometimes the connection was really bad, so you had to make appointments. […] Plans didn’t always follow through, and stories were delayed. Sometimes they didn’t happen. It just took longer,” she added.

Targeted censorship

While reporting in Turkey, Metin Cihan, a Turkish activist and social media journalist now living in exile in Germany, faced a different constraint: social media censorship.

“Internet or social media, at least in Turkey, are something people can use until it starts to be very annoying for the government. When it comes to that level, they just turn off the button,” he said to iMEdD. Cihan, now part of ECPMF’s Journalists-in-Residence program, decided to flee from Turkey in 2019, after facing online harassment linked to his investigation into the suspicious death of 11-year-old Rabia Naz in northern Turkey.

In 2025, his X (formerly Twitter) account, which now has more than half a million followers, he said, was blocked. “Internet or social media, at least in Turkey, are something people can use until it starts to be very annoying for the government. When it comes to that level, they just turn off the button,” he said.

For more than a decade, the Open Observatory of Network Interference, known as OONI, has worked with digital rights groups around the world to shed light on targeted censorship, which involves the blocking of specific websites or apps.

“We’ve definitely seen a spike in the blocking of social media and VPN websites in recent years, especially during political events,” said Maria Xynou, who leads the organization’s research program. As she explained, targeted censorship happens during protests, elections, conflicts, or wars, when there’s more political incentive to censor information to control narratives.

OONI investigates censorship through its free software app, OONI Probe, which collects data through crowdsourcing. Volunteers around the world install it on their phones and computers to run tests on their local networks. The results are sent back and published as open data in real time to increase transparency. But without internet access, users cannot run the tests, and no data can be collected.

You can read the second part of this story on the iMEdD website.

Originally published on Global Voices

Image made by Ameya Nagarajan on Canva Pro for Global Voices

By Brett Davidson

This post is part of Global Voices’ April 2026 Spotlight series, “Human perspectives on AI.” This series will offer insight into how AI is being used in global majority countries, how its use and implementation are affecting individual communities, what this AI experiment might mean for future generations, and more. You can support this coverage by donating here.

Technology such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and algorithm-driven platforms is having unprecedented impacts on almost every aspect of life, from academia to employment to the environment. When it comes to social justice, democracy and human rights, things look bleak: algorithms are channeling us into ideological echo-chambers, while AI has taken surveillance and data extraction to alarming new levels. At the same time, social media platforms enable civil society organizations to reach audiences and tell stories in powerful new ways, while AI allows people to do research and message testing they would never otherwise be able to afford.

As part of a recent project called “New Tech, New Rules,” the International Resource for Impact and Storytelling (IRIS), with support from Luminate and the Open Society Foundations, commissioned 10 case studies from organizations and researchers across the Global Majority, to hear how this new technology is affecting them and their work, and how they are adapting and adjusting. The studies came from across Latin America and the Caribbean, the Arab region, Nigeria, Tunisia, India and Hong Kong.

Each case study is incredibly rich and interesting in itself (and some of their authors are writing about them for Global Voices) — but, looking across them, we were able to discern several interesting patterns that perhaps resonate and offer lessons for others.

A toolkit of tactics: Co-opting, countering and innovating

Across the case studies, we saw three clear ways in which civil society is responding to the tech-infused authoritarian context: through Co-opting, Countering and Innovating.

Some organizations are co-opting culture and technology for their own purposes: for example, Fogo Cruzado in Brazil is collaborating with the UK-based Future Narratives Lab to use AI to test messages aimed at reducing public support for police violence in favelas.

Others are focused on countering and resisting tech-driven surveillance and digital violence, such as Derechos Digitales, which is using social media to campaign and mobilise opposition against the widespread use of facial recognition technologies by authorities in Brazil and Chile.

Still others are innovating, finding new forms and approaches to journalism and to narrative civic engagement. An example of the former is Alharaca, a group of feminist journalists from El Salvador working in exile and experimenting with getting offline and slowing down rather than giving in to the tech-driven pressure to speed up. They are bringing audience members together in person and trying out new storytelling approaches, such as board games and immersive sound installations. When it comes to civil society, activists in Hong Kong are adapting to pervasive AI-driven surveillance by using humor, embedding meaning in seemingly innocuous terminology and working through short-lived, temporary organizations.

Of course, co-opting technology, countering it, and innovating in the face of it are not mutually exclusive. Fogo Cruzado’s co-optation of the research possibilities AI offers is, of course, hugely innovative. It is only through narrative and organizational innovation that activists in places like Hong Kong and Tunisia are able to counter and resist state repression. Nevertheless, they are also distinct approaches, and we believe this trio of tactics serves as a potentially useful menu for organizations to consider as they navigate our current moment.

From the hyperlocal to the transnational

Several of the case studies foreground a turn to the hyperlocal as a way to prioritize grassroots issues and voices sidelined by national media and politics, as well as to sidestep the scrutiny of authorities mostly focused on the national stage. Shifting the frame from one that places national politics in the center, what was previously thought of as marginal becomes central: hyperlocal stories, news and politics are where it’s at. This is where politics intersects with people’s lives, where connection and power-building can happen outside of surveilled tech platforms, where issues intersect, where audiences and media creators overlap, and where change seems possible.

At the same time, there is a turn to the supra-national, looking at trends and connecting the dots of political developments beyond the nation-state, and as a way of sharing lessons and building cross-border solidarity. Just as authoritarians connect and learn from one another across borders, just as technology knows no borders, so civil society actors realize they need to connect across boundaries and borders to make meaning and build power.

Flexibility is everything

In a fast-changing environment, where techno-authoritarianism is both continually innovating and intentionally disrupting and overwhelming, being flexible and adaptable is an essential strategy. While this is apparent across all of the case studies, perhaps the clearest example comes from Hong Kong, where the case study authors highlight the importance of ephemeral infrastructures that can appear, dissolve and reappear or reconfigure themselves as needed. These arrangements — micro-groups, informal collectives, rotating convenors, volunteer networks — sustain momentum while avoiding singular points of vulnerability. This is also a really important lesson for funders to note – both resilience and impact depend on the ability to anticipate and pivot at short notice, and funding arrangements need to build this in.

It takes a constellation

No single organization can do everything; no one can achieve systemic impact acting alone. As our case studies illustrate, robust, decentralized and collaborative networks are necessary, both within countries and across borders. Narrative workers and civil society actors are actively forming alliances and seeking assistance and expertise from organizations and peers from beyond their fields to bolster their narrative efforts, strengthen their advocacy campaigns, and guard themselves against digital attacks and surveillance. Funding strategies in turn should proactively support what the Polis Project calls “the infrastructure of resistance.”

The interconnectedness of narrative, technology and power

Across the 10 case studies, we see three elements in constant interaction, each inseparable from the others: narrative, technology and politics. Civil society actors are narrative workers: narrative is upstream of technology, and culture and meaning-making constitute THE key terrain of struggle right now. They are technologists: operating with, on and through current and emergent technology to build power and engage in the struggle over culture, narrative and meaning, constantly adapting and innovating, always balancing technology’s possibilities and affordances with its risks, limitations and harms. They are political actors, organizers and power-builders: making meaning both about and with technology, in the interests of social justice and democracy.

Overall, while the surveillance, abuses, and huge concentrations and imbalances of power that AI and other new technologies enable are very worrying, we found a good deal of encouragement in these case studies. Operating in hostile territory, using tools owned by so-called “broligarchs” and authoritarians, social justice-focused advocates and activists, journalists and storytellers around the world are successfully adapting and employing technology and culture to build people power in the interests of democracy and social justice.

Brett Davidson is founder and principal at Wingseed LLC, and works with the International Resource for Impact and Storytelling (IRIS) as lead for narrative infrastructure building. Previously he was Director of Media and Narratives at the Open Society Public Health Program, and before that worked in civil society and a radio journalist in South Africa. He writes about narrative change and listening as a political act. 

Originally published on Global Voices

A boy at a camp in Idlib, Syria. Photo by Ahmed Akacha on Pexels. Free to use.

By Noorudeen Veetykadan

It was the end of 2023 when images from Gaza began to fill our television screens. I found myself returning to them again and again: the ruins, the sirens, the unbearable stillness of small bodies wrapped in white.

The scale of destruction was immense. But what lingered were the faces of children — some gone, others injured, many too young to understand why their world had collapsed overnight. News reports spoke in numbers — casualties, statistics — but behind those numbers were stories that refused to leave the room even after the television was switched off.

This is no longer a reality confined to conflict zones. In an age of constant connectivity, children across the world are being exposed to war in real time, through screens, conversations and the ambient anxiety of the adults around them. This article argues that such exposure is quietly reshaping childhood, even for those far removed from the battlefield.

I would often sit with my wife, discussing what we had just seen, trying to process a grief that did not belong to us, yet somehow did.

And in all of this, I missed something important.

I have two daughters. My elder one is nearly 15, old enough to understand the language of conflict. My younger one, just six, still lives in a world where questions are simple, and answers are expected to reassure. They were in the room more often than I realized — watching, listening, absorbing.

At first, their reactions were subtle. A question here, a glance there. “Why are they crying?” my younger one once asked, pointing at the screen. I offered an answer that felt safe, something incomplete, something designed to protect. But children do not just hear words; they read faces, tones and silences. What I thought I had softened, they had already understood in their own way.

Then, more recently, the distance between “there” and “here” began to collapse.

As tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran intensified, the tone of the news shifted. It was no longer just about another place. Reports mentioned the Gulf. Alerts flashed across screens. Words like “missiles” and “drones” entered everyday conversation, not as distant vocabulary, but as possibilities.

Schools closed. The rhythm of daily life paused.

And then came the moment that altered everything: the realization that Qatar, where we live, along with other Gulf countries, could itself be at risk. The headlines I had once consumed with a degree of separation were now unfolding uncomfortably close to home.

I saw the fear before it was spoken.

My elder daughter tried to remain composed, but her questions returned, faster this time, sharper. “Will it happen here?” “Are we safe?” There was no easy way to answer without confronting a truth I myself did not fully know.

My younger one did not ask. She held on.

A sudden sound made her flinch. A notification drew her attention instantly. The sky, once just an open expanse, had become something to watch carefully as if it could change without warning.

It was then I understood what I had failed to see all along.

War does not need to reach your doorstep to enter your home. It arrives quietly, through a screen, through a headline, through conversations not meant for young ears. And by the time it feels real, it has already settled into the minds of children, shaping fears they do not yet have the words to explain.

Research in child psychology has long shown that repeated exposure to violence, whether direct or mediated, can influence how children perceive safety and stability. In today’s 24-hour media environment, where graphic images and breaking alerts are constant, the boundary between distant conflict and personal reality is increasingly blurred. What was once filtered now arrives unmediated, often without the emotional tools needed to process it.

We often measure war in terms of territory, power and political outcomes. But there is another cost, less visible and far more enduring. It is carried in the questions children begin to ask, in the silences they grow into and in the way they start to see the world, not as a place of possibility, but as something uncertain.

Childhood is meant to be a time of discovery — when the sky is just the sky, not something to fear. When loud sounds are moments of excitement, not signals of danger. When the world feels large, but safe.

For many children today, that sense of safety is being quietly eroded.

Some lose it in the direct shadow of conflict. Others lose parts of it from a distance, through repeated exposure, through unanswered questions, through a growing awareness that the world is not as secure as it once seemed.

This raises difficult questions for parents, educators and media institutions alike. How much exposure is necessary for awareness, and when does it become overwhelming? Are we equipping children to understand what they see, or simply expecting them to absorb it? In trying to stay informed, we may be underestimating how deeply these moments settle in young minds.

We cannot shield children from reality forever. Nor should we pretend that the world is untouched by conflict. But somewhere between awareness and exposure, there is a line we are failing to draw, a line between informing and overwhelming, between preparing and frightening.

Because when a child begins to fear the sky, something fundamental has already been lost.

The sky was never meant to be a source of anxiety. It was meant for clouds that change shape, for birds that cross without borders, for stars that arrive quietly at night.

Not for missiles. Not for drones.

And yet, for many children today, the sky is no longer a place of wonder, but a question mark, something they look at not with curiosity, but with caution.

And perhaps that is the most lasting damage of all — not what war destroys in the moment, but what it quietly rewrites for the future.

Because long after the noise fades, these children will remember one thing:

They learned to be afraid of the sky before they ever learned to fully understand the world beneath it.

Originally published on Global Voices

An aerial view of the Flour massacre, when at least 118 Palestinians were killed, and 760 were injured after Israeli forces opened fire while they were seeking food from aid trucks, February 29, 2024. Photo on Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0).

By Nadim Nashif

This post is part of Global Voices’ April 2026 Spotlight series, “Human perspectives on AI.” This series will offer insight into how AI is being used in global majority countries, how its use and implementation are affecting individual communities, what this AI experiment might mean for future generations, and more. You can support this coverage by donating here.

The European Union (EU) presents itself as the world’s most ambitious regulator of artificial intelligence (AI). With the AI Act, the Digital Services Act, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) or the Dual-Use Regulation, Brussels has built an elaborate architecture of rules designed to ensure that technology serves human rights. What that architecture does not do is follow the technology when it crosses a border.

Our research at 7amleh, the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, traces what happens when it does.

A system, not isolated failures

What we found is not a series of isolated procurement mistakes or funding oversights. It is a pattern. A structured, largely opaque system through which European money flows into high-risk AI and surveillance technologies, which then reach governments and militaries in the West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region, including Israel, with no binding obligation to assess what those technologies will be used for, against whom, and at what human cost.

The mechanism has three main channels.

The first runs through migration control. Under the EU’s main instrument for third-country cooperation, 10 percent of the financial envelope is earmarked for migration governance. In 2023 and 2024, the EU signed agreements with Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, and Lebanon, conditioning aid on those governments’ cooperation in controlling irregular migration. What followed was the transfer of biometric identification systems, traveller screening tools, smart border gates, and maritime surveillance infrastructure.

The funding is rarely direct. It is routed through member states and implementing organisations, creating layers of institutional distance that make accountability structurally difficult to establish. People in transit face detention, violence, and pushback before they can make asylum claims. The infrastructure that the EU helps build does not protect them. In many documented cases, it places them in greater danger.

The second channel runs through research and innovation funding. Horizon Europe has awarded grants to Israeli companies whose technologies have been documented to have military applications. The European Defence Fund has channelled significant resources to companies with direct ownership links to Israeli weapons manufacturers. The European Investment Fund has invested, through fund-of-funds (FoF) structures, in Israeli surveillance and spyware companies. Horizon Europe funded Xtend, which was subsequently contracted by the Israeli Ministry of Defence to supply thousands of assault drones. The European Defence Fund channeled over 15 million euros to Intracom Defense, a company 94.5 percent owned by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). The European Investment Fund committed 21.2 million euros to a fund that invested in Paragon Solutions, an Israeli spyware company whose tools have been used against journalists, activists, and human rights defenders across the region.

Direct exports, minimal safeguards

The third channel is the most straightforward: direct commercial exports. European companies sell facial recognition systems, biometric tools, drone components, and smart city technologies to governments across WANA with no binding obligation to conduct human rights due diligence before or after the sale.

On paper, many of these technologies are described as civilian. In practice, the line between civilian and military use is almost always blurred, particularly in authoritarian contexts and active conflict zones. A facial recognition system described as an urban management solution functions as an instrument of mass surveillance in the hands of a government with no judicial oversight. A targeting system described as AI-assisted intelligence becomes something else entirely when it generates lists with documented inaccuracies and minimal human oversight in the decision chain.

In Gaza, that something else has a name. High-risk AI targeting systems have been deployed in conditions that violate core principles of international humanitarian law. Approximately 67,000 deaths have been officially reported, the majority civilians. A study published in The Lancet found that life expectancy in Gaza was halved within the first year of the war. The International Court of Justice has found that Israel’s conduct involves plausible acts of genocide. And yet, in 2020, Frontex awarded 100 million euros in contracts to two Israeli companies, IAI and Elbit Systems, to operate surveillance drones over the Mediterranean. Both platforms have been actively deployed by the Israeli military in Gaza. Europe accounted for 45 percent of Israeli arms exports in 2024, a nearly 20 percent increase from 2023, coinciding with the escalation.

Political inertia despite mounting evidence

In September 2025, the European Commission itself acknowledged, in response to a parliamentary question, that it had come to the conclusion that Israel is violating human rights and humanitarian law. A proposal to partially suspend Israeli entities from Horizon Europe was put forward in July 2025. As of today, it has still not been approved by the Council. Some member state governments continue to block it.

This is not a knowledge problem. The evidence is not in dispute. It is a political problem, one of institutional inertia, economic interest, and the absence of binding mechanisms that would force a different outcome.

The path forward is not complicated to describe, even if it is politically difficult to achieve. The AI Act must be extended to cover exports: systems that are prohibited or classified as high-risk within the EU can currently be sold freely to third countries, a fundamental gap that the regulation does not address. Binding human rights due diligence must apply to all exports of AI and dual-use technologies, regardless of company size. The CSDDD was significantly weakened in November 2025 when the European Parliament raised the employee threshold to 5,000, exempting the vast majority of European technology companies.

Migration agreements must be subject to independent, public human rights impact assessments before signature, not after. Moreover, the European Union must urgently reassess Israel’s participation in Horizon Europe, including the eligibility of Israel’s entities as beneficiaries, in light of their human rights conduct and in line with the EU’s own position, values, and legal obligations. The fundamental challenge is visibility. These funding flows, procurement decisions, and technology transfers operate largely out of public view. The further the distance between a decision made in Brussels and its consequences on the ground, the easier it is to avoid accountability. That distance is not accidental. It is a design feature.

Closing it, making the connections readable, specific, and public, is what accountability requires. It is also, for the communities living under the infrastructure Europe helps build, what survival sometimes depends on.

Originally published on Global Voices

Motorists queue at a Dhaka fuel station on March 9, 2026, during government-imposed rationing that left delivery riders and commuters waiting hours to purchase limited fuel supplies. Photo by Zulker Naeen. Used with permission.

Rashid Ahmed waited two hours at a fuel station in Dhaka’s Mirpur district on March 10, watching the line of motorcycles stretch into the next block as the pump operator turned away customer after customer. The forty-two-year-old delivery rider had visited three stations since dawn, each time finding either empty tanks or queues too long to wait through before his first delivery deadline. His motorcycle sat idle while his family’s income evaporated with each passing hour.

Ahmed’s frustration mirrors the experience of hundreds of thousands across Bangladesh as government-imposed rationing collides with daily survival. The rationing emerged from a crisis that began thousands of kilometers away in the Persian Gulf.

During mid March, the government withdrew the temporary rationing system for fuel sales; however, shortages, long queues, and irregularities at most filling stations made it difficult for vehicles to obtain fuel.

As tensions between Iran, Israel, and the United States escalated into open warfare, Bangladesh found itself plunged into an energy emergency despite the geographic distance. The country of 175 million people imports roughly 95 percent of its energy, making it almost entirely dependent on global fuel markets.

When the Strait of Hormuz became a battleground, the world’s oil supplies dipped, as the narrow waterway is the gateway for nearly a third of the world’s seaborne oil. Bangladesh felt the squeeze immediately.

A map of the Strait of Hormuz. Image via Wikipedia by Goran_tek-en. CC BY-SA 4.0.

The cascade begins: Supply lines cut

The crisis hit with devastating speed in early March.

QatarEnergy, one of Bangladesh’s three long-term liquified natural gas (LNG) suppliers, suspended deliveries, invoking force majeure, after Iranian attacks on energy infrastructure disrupted production. Qatar accounts for 20 percent of global LNG supply. Within days, the other two suppliers followed suit, cutting off Bangladesh from all contracted deliveries.

Bangladesh had been purchasing spot LNG cargoes at approximately ten dollars per million British thermal units in January. By mid-March, those prices had skyrocketed to USD 28.28 per MMBtu (million metric British thermal units) for emergency purchases.

“We are buying spot LNG at an exorbitant price, which is almost 2.5 times higher than the price of four days ago,” Energy Secretary Saiful Islam told reporters.

This price explosion created a vicious cycle. When Petrobangla floated an initial tender for spot LNG on March 1, it received zero bids. Traders considered Bangladesh’s market too volatile and risky. Only after offering even higher prices did the country secure cargo from Gunvor at USD 28.28 MMBtu and Vitol at USD 23.08 per MMBtu.

“We are now looking for alternatives from the spot market to fill the window left vacant by the three suppliers,” Petrobangla Chairman Md Arfanul Hoque acknowledged.

Bangladesh was scheduled to receive 115 LNG cargoes in 2026. Officials projected losing forty of them due to disruptions in Western Asia.

Who gets the gas?

Power generation and household consumption took precedence over industrial uses. This meant four of five state-run urea fertilizer factories had to shut down for at least fifteen days. Only the Shahjalal Fertilizer Company continued operating, along with one private facility.

Bangladesh was in the middle of the Boro season, when rice paddies require consistent irrigation and fertilization. Government officials insisted there was no immediate crisis due to existing stocks. Farmers and agricultural experts worried about medium-term shortages.

Meanwhile, gas supply to the power sector dropped from 870 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) to 820 mmcfd. Officials warned this reduction would likely increase power load-shedding across the country and could lead to blackouts.

“Until the supply side is fixed, I have to use what I have in my hand in a prudent manner,” Power and Energy Minister Iqbal Hassan Mahmood Tuku told reporters. “We must use what we have sparingly. If people cooperate, it will be possible to overcome this crisis.”

Universities closed, fuel rationed

On March 8, authorities announced that all universities would close early, advancing Eid holidays to reduce electricity consumption.

University campuses consume large amounts of power for dormitories, classrooms, laboratories, and air conditioning. Shutting them down offered immediate relief to the strained power grid. Students faced uncertainty about when normal operations would resume.

“We are doing everything we can to reduce consumption and ensure stability in power, fuel, and import supplies,” a senior official from the Ministry of Power, Energy, and Mineral Resources explained.

Simultaneously, the government ordered petrol pumps to reduce daily sales by 10 percent to preserve national fuel reserves. This rationing triggered panic across major cities. Long queues formed at fuel stations as motorists rushed to fill their tanks.

Drivers reported waiting hours to purchase fuel. Some stations ran dry by midday.

The industrial toll

The ready-made garment industry accounts for 84 percent of Bangladesh’s exports and employs millions of workers.

When power cuts doubled to as much as five hours per day, factories faced impossible choices. Industry leaders described a nightmare scenario unfolding since the conflict began in late February. Running diesel generators during extended outages dramatically increased operating costs.

In recent months, many textile and garment factories operated at only 40–50 percent capacity. These production losses threatened export orders.

By early March, diesel reserves had fallen to just nine days of supply, measured at 115,473 tons as of March 4.

The government scrambled to secure emergency shipments. Bangladesh received 5,000 metric tons through a cross-border pipeline from India’s Numaligarh Refinery. Officials were negotiating for an additional 30,000 metric tons from the Indian Oil Corporation.

Household struggles

For ordinary Bangladeshi families, the energy crisis manifested most painfully in rising cooking fuel costs.

The price of a 12.5 kg liquefied petrolium gas (LPG) cylinder, which most households use to operate stoves and burners, surged from Bangladeshi Taka (BDT) 900 to 1,500 (USD 7.3 to 12.2), adding between BTD 500–800 (USD 4–6.5) to monthly household expenses. The minimum wage in Bangladesh is BDT 12,500 per month (approximately USD 101). For low-income families already struggling with inflation, this increase forced painful adjustments. Some families began undercooking meals to conserve gas. Others reverted to traditional fuels like wood and dung.

“The Middle East war has made LPG imports very difficult,” Abdur Razzaq, Managing Director of JMI Group, explained. “Freight costs are rising, shipping routes are uncertain, and traders are becoming cautious.”

Transportation costs for LPG jumped to USD 275 per ton, compared to the Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission’s calculation of USD 120 per ton.

“There was no risk of a shortage until March, considering the LPG already imported by the private sector,” Mostafa Kamal, Chairman of Meghna Group of Industries, stated. “Our concern began in April.”

His company was attempting to source LPG from Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, and China as alternatives to Middle Eastern suppliers.

A fiscal time bomb: The cost of crisis

Analysts estimated that spot LNG purchases between 2022 and 2024 could cost USD 11 billion. This enormous outlay strained foreign exchange reserves and forced difficult trade-offs across government budgets.

“If the disruption drags on, we’ll have to lean more on costly spot LNG, which will add to our import burden and tighten supplies for power and industry,” an energy ministry official told Reuters, speaking anonymously.

Each month of elevated prices deepens Bangladesh’s vulnerability.

Petrobangla requested additional subsidies from the government to cover the gap between international prices and domestic retail rates. The government’s own fiscal position remained tight, with limited room for increased energy subsidies.

“There is no fuel shortage at this moment. In fact, we have increased fuel supply compared to last year,” Minister Tuku assured recently. However, in early March, he addressed the issue: “If consumption is controlled, we will be able to run March properly. If committed supplies arrive, the pressure will ease.”

Domestic fuel prices remained unchanged for the third consecutive month by absorbing rising import costs through heavy subsidies.

BDT 5,000 crore (50 billion, about USD 407.4 million) was spent on subsidies in March alone, adding to the strain on the budget and further widening the gap with international market prices.

Diesel is being sold under subsidy at BDT 100 (USD 0.82) per liter, while prices of octane remain at BDT 120 (USD 0.98) per litre, while the market price remains at BDT 180 (USD 1.61) and BDT 150.72 (USD 1.22) respectively.

Originally published on Global Voices

Children playing in a street in war-torn Damascus, Syria. Undated photo by Baraa Obied on Pexels.

By Angela Joyce

The brutal reality of wars unfolding in our world, such as the current war in Ukraine, the Iran-Israel-US conflict, or the devastating humanitarian crisis in Gaza, reveals that war is never just fought on battlefields. It is fought on every road, in every schoolyard, and in every home. 

The latest war news dominates headlines, but behind the scenes, it is ordinary people, civilians, especially children, who suffer most, as seen in cases like that of a 21-month-old child in Gaza who was returned to his family with injuries that doctors said were consistent with torture. Children in war zones suffer lasting emotional, physical, and developmental consequences. 

While the global community often counts the visible toll, lives lost, schools destroyed, the wounds of trauma, displacement, and broken trust can follow children growing up in war zones for the rest of their lives.

Trauma, the number one predictor of lifelong struggles for children in war zones

Trauma is one of the most serious challenges facing children living in war zones. While some physical injuries heal or can be managed, the invisible wounds of mental trauma can last a lifetime.

Sadly, mental health is often overlooked, especially in violent areas. Understanding and addressing this trauma is key to helping these children heal and rebuild their lives.

Increasingly, many experts argue that the psychological trauma caused by war should be recognized and treated as a global public health crisis.

One way professionals working with children, such as child protective services, assess the state of a child entering care and how best to provide support is by screening for Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).

These screenings include questions like: “Have you ever not had access to food, water or shelter? Have you lost one or more caregivers to illness, prison or divorce? Have you ever experienced violence from a family member? And did you experience unwanted sexual contact with an adult?”

There are 10 questions in total. These questions are used to discern the level of trauma that a child has experienced and are currently being used by social workers and psychologists in U.S.

If a person experiences three or more ACEs, it puts them at a much higher risk for PTSD, depression, anxiety, suicide attempts, drug use, and many different kinds of physical illness, including cancer, high blood pressure and heart failure.

A total of one in 10 people in the U.S will have three or more adverse childhood experiences. This is much fewer than the one in six children worldwide who are estimated to be living in active conflict zones, experiencing high levels of multiple ACEs all at once.

When such a large portion of the world’s children are exposed to repeated trauma, the psychological impact of war becomes more than a humanitarian concern.

It becomes a global health issue that will shape societies for decades.

Current statistics of children in violent areas in the world

Across the world, children continue to experience the devastating effects of war firsthand.

In Ukraine, thousands of children have been killed or injured, and millions have been displaced since the war began, leaving families struggling to rebuild daily life amid continued uncertainty. 

In West Asia, the recent war involving Iran has added to an already fragile regional situation. Reports indicate that hundreds of children have been killed or injured during the bombing, with attacks on schools and civilian areas raising serious humanitarian concerns. 

In Gaza, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder has described the territory as “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child.” Tens of thousands of children have been killed or injured, while hundreds of thousands have been displaced and now face severe humanitarian conditions.

In Sudan, millions of children have also been displaced by ongoing conflict, leaving many without reliable access to food, education, healthcare, or safe shelter.

For children living through these crises, war is not a distant event that flashes at them through the TV, but rather it surrounds them, dictating every part of their lives.

Healing

The good news is that children are resilient.

There are some factors that buffer the effects of trauma, the most effective being a consistent, present, supportive, calming caregiver.

We, as adults, have an incredible opportunity to reduce and even reverse the effects of the trials and tribulations our young experience.

Unfortunately, many children in conflict zones have lost either one or both primary caregivers in their lives, leaving them more susceptible to the effects of ACEs.

Resilience in children who have experienced trauma doesn’t always mean returning to normal or “bouncing back.”

After compounding ACEs like losing a home, belongings, loved ones, experiencing injuries, and much more, “normal” is hard to define.

Many specialists in the field of trauma working with children think it is more realistic for children to experience something called “meaning making,” where individuals derive meaning from their experiences, how they shape them, and how they can move forward.

This process often requires psychological support, stable environments, and community networks that allow children to begin rebuilding their sense of safety and belonging.

The collective responsibility to protect childhood

Whether we reflect on wars happening today or consider how future conflicts might be prevented, one thing remains clear: children must be protected from the crushing weight of violence.

A generation that grows up surrounded by war is not necessarily a lost generation. With stability, support and opportunity, those same children can grow into leaders, innovators and advocates for a more peaceful world. But they cannot do it alone.

The responsibility of the global community is not only to rebuild infrastructure but also to help children rebuild their sense of safety, stability and hope.

This responsibility belongs not only to governments and international institutions but also to educators, humanitarian workers, community leaders and ordinary citizens.

Supporting efforts that provide education, psychological care and stable environments for children affected by conflict, advocating for policies that protect civilians, and remaining informed about humanitarian crises are all ways individuals can help ensure that children are not left to carry the burden of war alone.

The true cost of conflict is not measured only in destroyed buildings or lost territory. It is measured in the childhoods shaped by violence and in the collective responsibility we share to protect the generations growing up in its shadow.

Originally published on Global Voices

Letters from an Afghan woman. Image used with permission.

When Afghan journalist Khadija Haidary fled the Taliban, she never imagined that her writing would reach readers thousands of miles away in China. Yet it did — prompting small but meaningful acts of support that empowered her to move forward amid her uncertain situation. In China, where civil society is tightly regulated and spontaneous cross-border humanitarian support is rare, her letters, which evolved into a book titled “A Letter from an Afghan Woman,” sparked an unexpected cross-border solidarity with the oppressed women from far away. Rather than forming a visible movement, these responses took shape as quiet, individual acts, revealing how solidarity adapts under constraint.

The story began in October 2024, when a Chinese journalist, Weilin Hong (洪蔚琳), translated and published her month-long email correspondence with “Haidary on Positive Links” (正面連結), a medium-sized WeChat account covering social issues to enlighten Chinese readers on the transformation of Afghan society under the Taliban. The Islamic militant organization, which ruled the region between 1996 and 2001, recaptured Kabul in 2021, after the U.S. withdrew its troops.

Through emails, Haidary explained how women lost their rights between 2021 and 2024: they were forced out of their jobs and forbidden from walking the streets alone; women were not allowed to be treated by male doctors, even as women were blocked from attending medical schools; girls were barred from schools, parks, and swimming pools, and many were forced to marry before reaching adulthood; journalists were imprisoned and in some cases killed for telling the truth. These accounts are not abstract statistics — they are Haidary’s lived experiences. She lost her job, male friends, social life, and bore witness to the harassment of women every day.

In China, where civil society is limited, and media coverage of foreign crises is selective, such storytelling carries particular weight. Haidary’s personal narrative on gender oppression in Afghanistan quickly went viral online and generated emotional resonances among female Chinese readers. One Chinese reader wrote on Weibo, addressing the subtle connection among women across the border:

人类跨越国界高墙，其本质相似，心灵相通 / 他们想封住女人的嘴，她就成为劈开黑夜的光。

Across borders and walls, human nature remains the same, and hearts are connected / They want women shut up; she becomes the light that cuts through the darkness at night.

Haidary was writing for Zan Times, an Afghan women’s media outlet, and taking refuge in the countryside to avoid the Taliban when the Chinese journalist first reached out to her in September 2024. The email exchanges encouraged Haidary to consider leaving the country:

我第一次清晰地感受到：我的故事、我的斗争、我的苦难，是重要的；我必须找到一个能够自由说话的地方，去讲述发生在我们身上的一切。你知道吗，洪蔚琳的邮件让我意识到，世界上确实有人在关心我们的痛苦。我知道自己必须鼓起全部勇气，尽一切可能离开这里。

For the first time, I realized that my story, my struggles, and my suffering matter; I had to find a place where I could speak freely and tell everything that had happened to us. You know, Hong Weilin’s email made me aware that there are people in the world who care about our pain. I knew I had to muster all my courage and do everything in my power to get out of here.

By early October 2024, Haidary and her family were settled in Pakistan. As her letters gained public attention, a Chinese publisher reached out to offer her a publishing contract and a royalties advance, which could help her family end their status as exiles in Pakistan and resettle in Canada.

The book was eventually published in August 2025, and within months, more than 10,000 copies were sold. Knowing that the book's royalties would help Haidary’s family resettle in a less precarious environment, many Chinese have helped promote her book through reviews and reflections on social media.

In one widely circulated post on the Instagram-like Xiaohongshu, the user “WOMEN’s view on the world” (WOMEN看世界) contrasted historical images of empowered, free Afghan women with today’s restrictions, accompanied by the following caption: “They, too, once lived vivid and vibrant lives.” The main text of this post says:

翻开这本书，倾听最真实的声音，以18篇短篇小说，揭开最伤痛的回忆 / 跨越过界与偏见，看见本身，就是一种力量。

Opening the book, readers encounter some of the most authentic voices, as 18 short stories unveil deeply painful memories / To look beyond borders and prejudice, and to truly see people as they are, is in itself a form of strength.

Xiaohongshu post by “WOMEN看世界” compares images of Afghan women before and after Taliban rule, highlighting the stark changes in their lives and freedoms. Screenshot fair use.

In this sense, Afghan women’s stories function not only as distant narratives but as a mirror through which Chinese readers negotiate their own unarticulated experiences. Some readers have drawn parallels between Afghan women’s experiences and ongoing gender-related conversations in China, particularly around restrictions on personal autonomy, social expectations, and the shrinking space for feminist expression. These reflections can be seen in discussions among overseas Chinese students and feminist communities on platforms such as WeChat and Telegram, where participants related Haidary’s accounts to their own experiences.

These perspectives are also reflected, though less explicitly, in mainstream media discourse. A book review published in the state-sponsored outlet Beijing Daily noted that Haidary’s story is not only read as a distant narrative of suffering but also interpreted through readers’ own social realities:

尽管故事发生在遥远的阿富汗，但其中所蕴含的恐惧、挣扎，以及对家庭的牵挂，是人类共通的情感。它提醒着我们，和平与自由并非与生俱来，而是需要珍惜与守护。

Although the stories take place in Afghanistan, the fear, the struggles, and the family ties are universal sentiments. It [the book] reminds us that peace and freedom is not given, but something that we have to treasure and safeguard.

Some also lauded the resilience of Afghan women living in an oppressive environment. One user left the following comment on a book review on Douban, a Chinese platform for user-generated reviews of books, films, and cultural content:

即便在这样的压力之下，阿迪亚依然写出了独属于阿富汗女性的坚韧、热情和对自由的渴望。书中描绘的女性并非被动的受害者：有的加入国民军找回自尊，有的在绝望中寻找巫师抗争，有的在流言蜚语中坚持自我。正如哈迪亚在自序中所写：“除了战争和破坏之外，人们还必须有其他东西来介绍自己。

Even under such pressure, Haidary managed to capture the resilience, passion, and yearning for freedom that are unique to Afghan women. The women portrayed in the book are not passive victims: some joined the National Army to reclaim their dignity, some seek out shamans in their desperation to fight back, and some remain true to themselves amid rumors and gossip. As Haidary writes in her preface: ‘Beyond war and destruction, people must have something else to define themselves.’

In addition to online promotion, some readers took further steps to support her. One reader even delivered the book to Haidary during a business trip to Pakistan in November 2025.

In such a constrained environment, solidarity does not disappear; it becomes quieter, more fragmented, and often deeply personal.

All these small acts of feminist solidarity were carried out without widespread mobilization or calls to action, as feminist social media outlets have been banned and related networks repressed in recent years. Citizen-initiated fundraising and advocacy work is highly sensitive and almost impossible under China’s tightly regulated online environment. Hong highlighted the cross-border solidarity among women in a reflective piece in January 2026:

在如今人人默认全球趋向保守排外的时代，这样动人的、毫无私心的援助像接力棒一样发生在中国，并奇迹般地帮到了一个他国女性。

As the world is becoming more conservative and xenophobic, this touching and selfless act of kindness has spread like a relay across China, and miraculously helped a woman from another country.

Indeed, the willingness to learn and understand others’ suffering is precious in today’s chaotic world, as explained in a post on Sohu:

哈迪亚·海达里的作品，既是一面镜子，也是一把钥匙。它映照出阿富汗女性的苦难，也叩问着每一个读者的责任：当世界在喧嚣中遗忘某些角落的伤痛时，我们是否愿意成为“知道”的人？这本书的答案或许不在于提供解决方案，而在于唤醒共情。正如书中所写：“她们并不遥远。”

Haidary’s work serves both as a mirror and a key. It reflects the suffering of Afghan women while also challenging every reader to consider their responsibility: When the world, overwhelmed by noise, forgets the pain in certain corners, are we willing to be among those who ‘know’? The book’s answer may not lie in offering solutions, but rather in awakening empathy. As the book states: ‘They are not far away.’

Originally published on Global Voices

US-Israeli bombing of Tehran on March 3, 2026. Photo by Avash Media on Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).

By Bahareh Sahebi

In Iran today, while Israeli and U.S.  missiles and airstrikes hit the country, daily life unfolds under a visible security presence. Since the protests that erupted last December 28, human rights groups have reported an increase in armed patrols and checkpoints along major roads and city intersections. 

Soldiers and members of the Basij militia stand with military rifles, stopping cars, questioning pedestrians, and in some cases asking people to unlock their phones so messages, photos, and social media accounts can be inspected.

Many Iranians today live between two converging fires: From above comes the threat of indiscriminate bombs and missiles from the escalating war waged by Israel and the United States; from below, the constant pressure of a state that continues to arrest, execute, and tighten its control over the population.

What often disappears in geopolitical debates is the psychological environment created by these conditions. When civilians live under both war and authoritarian rule, behavior reorganizes around survival. People learn to calculate risk constantly. They consider what to say, where to go, whom to trust, and when to remain silent. What appears from the outside as passivity may instead be the quiet logic of living under conditions where a single message, conversation, or association can carry life-altering consequences.

Under such conditions, silence can spread through society in ways outsiders often misunderstand. When expressing dissent may bring punishment or isolation, many people remain quiet even when they privately disagree. Over time, this creates the appearance of public consensus where none actually exists.

Statements broadcast on state television by Iran’s judiciary chief warned: “Those who say or do anything in line with the will of America and the Zionist regime are on the enemy’s side and must be dealt with on revolutionary, Islamic principles and in accordance with the time of war.” Further warnings have been directed at the diaspora, suggesting Iranians abroad who “sympathise, support, or cooperate” with the US-Israeli war on the country could face seizure of property inside Iran and legal consequences if they return.

The lives behind geopolitics

Much of the international conversation about Iran focuses on geopolitics and regional power struggles. Inside the country, however, daily life is shaped by something far more immediate. People must navigate war and repression while living in a strained economy and facing growing difficulty obtaining basic necessities.

Moments like this are not only geopolitical crises. They are psychological ones. The decisions made by governments and militaries reshape the environment in which millions of ordinary people must think, speak, and survive, while their fate is being shaped by decisions far outside their control

Over time, environments like this reshape behavior. People learn to scan their surroundings for risk, avoid conversations that might attract attention, and measure their words carefully. Sociologists describe this as adaptive survival behavior. Individuals adjust their actions not because they agree with power but because the cost of defiance becomes too dangerous.

Despite the state’s efforts to project domestic unity during the ongoing war, large segments of the population continue to reject the Islamic Republic. Yet in a country where dissent can carry the risk of imprisonment or execution, silence cannot be mistaken for consent. Compounded fear by repression and war suppresses public expression.

Between two dangers

In most wars, civilians fear the battlefield. Under authoritarian rule, they fear their own government. In Iran today, both dangers exist at once.

The Iranian state has provided virtually no meaningful protection for civilians during the conflict. There are no widespread public shelters, no functioning national system of bomb shelters, and in many areas, no warning sirens to alert people when missiles are approaching. For many residents, the first indication of an incoming strike is seeing or hearing the explosion itself.

In some cities, residents describe gathering on rooftops at night to watch missiles cross the sky, believing open air may offer a greater chance of survival than being trapped inside collapsing buildings. These are the kinds of calculations civilians are forced to make when the U.S. and Israeli bombing is indiscriminate, and the state offers no protection.

The country is also still absorbing the shock of the killings that took place during the January and February protests, when security forces opened fire on demonstrators across multiple cities. Families are still mourning. Communities are still processing the violence. In that atmosphere, fear and grief shape how people respond to the new dangers of war.

For many Iranians, the bombs falling today may eventually stop. Wars end. Airstrikes cease. But the threat posed by the Islamic Republic has persisted for nearly half a century. The state has repeatedly responded to crises with arrests, executions, and intensified control. For those living inside the country, this history shapes how the present moment is experienced.

Outside the country, their silence is often misunderstood. Across global media and online commentary, the absence of visible opposition protests in Iran during wartime, while government-organized rallies are amplified by the state’s total control over domestic broadcasting, has been interpreted by some as evidence that Iranians are not seeking political change and are rallying behind the government in the face of an external enemy. 

But public silence rarely signals agreement. When expressing dissent carries the risk of imprisonment, violence, or death, people often conceal their views in public while holding very different beliefs in private, especially in times of war. Political scientists describe this dynamic as preference falsification.

Danger and uncertainty

Since the beginning of the war, the government has repeatedly imposed communication blackouts and severe internet restrictions. Many people have little access to information beyond what is happening in their immediate neighborhoods. In this environment, even basic awareness becomes fragmented. Much of the information leaving Iran now travels in small pieces: a short video, a voice message sent quietly through a trusted contact, a brief text confirming that someone is safe.

The information environment surrounding the conflict has fractured. Public conversation has hardened into competing narrative camps shaped by different assumptions and loyalties. Commentators often interpret events through ideological frames, highlighting facts that reinforce their position while overlooking those that complicate it.

Complex events are reduced to simplified stories designed to mobilize audiences rather than inform them. In this process, the suffering of civilians can become secondary to the narratives built around it.

Debates unfolding abroad can feel distant from daily life. Inside Iran, people navigate blackouts, militarized streets, economic strain, and the constant uncertainty of what the next day might bring. Families worry about relatives in different cities they cannot reach. Messages fail to deliver. Rumors travel faster than reliable information.

Behind these debates are the lives of ordinary people, rarely visible in geopolitical discussions. A child in Bushehr going to school carries the quiet anxiety that her classroom could become the target of an Israeli or U.S. missile strike. A mother in Tehran moves from pharmacy to pharmacy searching for chemotherapy medication that once kept her child alive but has now become impossible to find or afford.

For many families, these are not abstract policy debates. They are the realities shaping each day.

The people living inside Iran today are not characters in a geopolitical argument. They are human beings navigating extraordinary danger and uncertainty.

For Iranians today, life is lived in exactly this psychological space.

Originally published on Global Voices

Drone footage shows rows of fresh graves in Minab, Iran, where over 150 schoolgirls were killed by a U.S. air strike. Screenshot from video published on Facebook by Reuters. Fair use

For two years, as the genocide in Gaza was unfolding live in front of the world’s eyes, we have warned. For decades, we have documented the hypocrisy that underpins international law and the selective outrage that defines global responses to conflict, which only serve to feed these conflicts. Today, those warnings are no longer theoretical — they are playing out in real time across West Asia, as the war crimes normalized in Gaza now serve as the blueprint for new theaters of destruction in Lebanon and Iran.

Gaza as precedent

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza was never an isolated incident. It was the extreme iteration of a doctrine that has been developing for decades and facilitated by decades of impunity. Israel’s “Dahyieh doctrine,” unleashed on the Lebanese capital during the 2006 war, was explicitly about destroying civilian infrastructure or “domicide” to pressure governments through collective punishment of the civilian population. This doctrine, named after the southern Beirut suburb known as “Dahyieh” (literally “suburb”), established a dangerous precedent: collective punishment of civilian populations could be publicly presented as legitimate military strategy without consequences.

Gaza represented the extreme version of this approach. Now, with the wars on Lebanon and Iran by the U.S. and Israel, we see the same pattern. The tactics are familiar, the rhetoric is consistent, and the international response — or lack of it — is predictably skewed.

A dangerous pattern

Lebanon became the second major theater in 2024 and now again in 2026, mirroring the Gaza playbook but with some regional adaptations. The displacement of populations from Dahyieh, southern Lebanon and the Bekaa valley, nearly 1 million people, follows the same demographic engineering strategy seen in Gaza — forcing civilian populations, in this case predominantly the Shia community, to flee, then destroying the territory, including infrastructure, homes, and poisoning soil so that life can no longer exist. 

Medical workers in Lebanon have faced deliberate targeting, with reports of hospitals being threatened and having to be evacuated. This echoes the systematic targeting of healthcare infrastructure in Gaza, where ambulances, medical personnel, and hospitals became frequent targets. Israeli attacks on United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon represent another dangerous escalation, undermining international humanitarian law and the protections afforded to peacekeeping forces, though again met with little repercussions on the attackers. 

In Iran, attacks on civilian infrastructure have created environmental disasters of catastrophic proportions. The bombing of oil storage facilities in Tehran and other Iranian cities has unleashed environmental crises that will affect generations. These attacks on civilian infrastructure — desalination plants, oil facilities, media outlets, public utilities, among many others — represent clear violations of international humanitarian law and are also met with little repercussions on the aggressors.

Article 54 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions explicitly prohibits attacks on objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, including foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations, and irrigation works. 

The rhetoric of terror

Perhaps most disturbing has been the public rhetoric from U.S. and Israeli officials. A recent post by U.S. President Donald Trump on Truth Social threatened that “we will take out easily destroyable targets that will make it virtually impossible for Iran to ever be built back, as a Nation, again — Death, Fire, and Fury will reign upon them.” Such statements represent not just inflammatory rhetoric but explicit threats of collective punishment.

This is not a single occurrence; we hear it from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, for instance, when he says that “the only ones who need to worry are the Iranians who think they’re gonna live.” Or senior United States senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, and one of Trump’s closest advisors and staunchest Israel supporters, who said: “We flattened Berlin, we flattened Tokyo. Were we wrong to drop an atomic bomb to end the Japanese reign of terror? … If I were Israel, I would have probably done it the same way.”

This is added to the countless documented statements by Israeli officials blatantly announcing intent to commit genocide and, more recently, explicitly stating their intent to repeat their crimes in Gaza, this time in Beirut and Tehran. 

These public statements are not mere bluster; they serve as advance notice of intended violations. When officials announce their intentions to make living conditions unbearable for a group of people, they are essentially admitting to plans that violate fundamental principles of international law and literally the definition of genocide, including “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” We have seen this again and again in Gaza, and later in Lebanon and now also in Iran, with Israeli and U.S. officials boasting their intended crimes before committing them. 

Selective outrage

While condemnations of Iran and Hezbollah are issued with predictable regularity, imposing sanctions and unleashing armies, there is deafening silence about the aggressors who are not only responsible for starting the ongoing war in the first place, but whose war crimes are immeasurably larger and certainly more deadly. This includes the murder of over 175 Iranians, most of them little schoolgirls, on the first day of attacks by the U.S. The international community’s selective outrage reveals the hypocrisy that underpins the so-called “rules-based international order,” and only confirms to those who feel unprotected by it that they need to seek alternative ways to protect themselves. 

What makes this double standard particularly glaring is the economic calculus driving the silence. All that matters, it seems, is keeping the Hormuz Strait open so that oil continues flowing and money continues to change hands. The lives of civilians in Lebanon and Iran, and elsewhere in the region, for that matter, appear to be secondary to economic interests.

The end of international law’s façade

What we are witnessing is not just the escalation of conflict; it is the death of international law as a meaningful constraint, however limited, on powerful states. When war crimes are announced in advance and committed openly, when civilian displacement becomes a stated objective, and when environmental destruction is treated as collateral damage, we have moved beyond the realm of legal gray areas into a world where might makes right.

The international community’s failure to act, its selective condemnation, and its economic complicity all point to that same conclusion.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas openly acknowledged the collapse of the international legal order when they called on Europe to adapt to a “chaotic, coercive world order” amid “mounting violations of international law.” In her March 2026 speech, von der Leyen admitted that “we cannot solve every global issue or perfectly reconcile our values and our interests on each occasion,” effectively signaling the EU’s acceptance of a post-international-law reality. 

This admission of powerlessness comes as the European Union itself bears significant responsibility for the current destruction. Through decades of appeasement toward Israeli occupation policies, complicit silence on collective punishment in Gaza, and prioritization of energy security over human rights, the EU has actively enabled the normalization of war crimes that are now being replicated in Lebanon and Iran. 

The bloc’s strategic interests, including maintaining access to Hormuz Strait oil flows, have consistently overridden its professed commitment to international law, making von der Leyen’s call for adaptation less an acknowledgment of external circumstances and more an admission of the EU’s own role in dismantling the very legal framework it claims to uphold.

In a recent speech during the Munich Security Conference, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called on his European allies to “not be shackled by guilt and shame” over their “culture and heritage,” and called for a return to “the West’s age of dominance.” Rubio continued: “This is what we did together once before, and this is what President Trump and the United States want to do again now, together with you.” The speech was met not with horror about a call for reviving one of humanity’s most brutal centuries of colonialism and slavery, but with a standing ovation from the European leaders in the room.

A future of normalized atrocity

Unless there is a dramatic shift in global consciousness and political will when people in the countries that produce the world’s most advanced weapons and unleash wars abroad react not because gas prices are rising but because bankrolling war crimes committed in their names is wrong, we can expect this pattern to continue. 

The normalization of these war crimes has created a dangerous precedent — or return to a tradition of brutal colonialism — that could be applied anywhere, anytime, yet again. When powerful states can act with impunity, when they can announce their intentions to commit atrocities and then follow through without consequence, the entire framework of international law becomes meaningless, even as a smokescreen.

The warning issued over two years ago — that Gaza was the blueprint for a bleak future for the whole world — was not hyperbole. It was a factual observation of where we were headed. Today, that future is not just closer; it is already here.

The question no longer is whether these actions are war crimes; we have enough evidence to make that determination. The question is whether the world will finally muster the courage to acknowledge the truth and hold the powerful accountable by applying sanctions to the criminals and practical measures to pressure them, or whether it will continue down the path of complicity through silence and selective outrage.

The answer will determine not just the fate of Lebanon, Iran and Palestine, but the future of a planet reeling under the pressure of human-made destruction.

Originally published on Global Voices

Women advocate for equal participation and inclusion in Tanzanian society at Dar es Salaam’s Mchikichini market. Image from UN Women’s Flickr. License CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

By Clarisse Sih and Bibbi Abruzzini

At a time when democratic backsliding is no longer an abstract warning but a lived reality across continents, feminist leaders are quietly — and often at personal risk — holding the line. 

From election monitoring in Tanzania to newsroom reform in Cameroon, from challenging toxic masculinities to confronting the power of digital platforms, women and feminist allies are defending the enabling environment for civil society in ways that reveal a critical truth: democracy is not gender-neutral, and when women’s participation is restricted, democracy itself weakens. 

An enabling environment for civil society is the foundation, not a footnote

In Tanzania, feminist advocate Martina Kabisama has spent years working at the intersection of women’s political participation and social protection. For her, the link between democracy and gender justice is structural. “You cannot advance gender justice where civic space is restricted,” she argues. 

Women organizing and pushing for economic inclusion at the Dar es Salaam’s Mchikichini market in Tanzania. Image from UN Women’s Flickr. License CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Kabisama’s work underscores a reality often overlooked in global policy debates: women’s political participation does not begin at the ballot box. It begins with safety, economic security, and the ability to organize. 

When women lack access to social protection systems — income support, legal protections, basic services — they are effectively excluded from civic life. Economic precarity limits mobility. It silences dissent. It narrows participation to those who can afford it. 

A digital painting of China’s “feminist five.” Image from Wikimedia Commons. License CC BY-SA 4.0. 

In contexts where the enabling environment for civil society is shrinking, whether — through restrictive laws, surveillance, or informal intimidation, — women activists are often the first to feel the pressure. In China, members of The Feminist Five were detained in 2015 simply for planning a public campaign against sexual harassment on public transport, a move widely seen as an attempt to silence feminist organizing. 

Similarly, Moroccan blogger and human rights defender Saida El Alami has faced repeated arrests linked to her online criticism of authorities and advocacy for political detainees. Online spaces can also become sites of coordinated attacks: Brazilian journalist Patrícia Campos Mello faced a major harassment campaign after reporting on election disinformation, including threats and sexualised smear campaigns amplified by political actors.

Across parts of East Africa, women have taken leading roles in election observation, community mediation, and civic education — not as symbolic participants, but as architects of democratic accountability. 

For Kabisama Martina, feminist leadership is not about representation alone. It is about transforming power structures so that democracy works for those historically excluded from it.  

Media narratives and the politics of masculinity 

In Cameroon, journalist and media executive Beau-Bernard Fonka Mutta approaches democracy from another angle: the cultural narratives that shape who is seen as legitimate in public life. 

Raised in an environment where boys were taught not to cry, not to show vulnerability, and to equate masculinity with dominance, Mutta reflects critically on how these norms spill into politics and media.  “Society imposes on us what a man should be,” he says. You should not show emotion. You should be strong. Brave. Dominant.”

These expectations do not remain confined to private life. They influence leadership styles, political discourse, and even newsroom cultures. 

“I remember a top executive at our news agency saying that whenever he wants to discuss serious issues, he makes sure just men are at the table because women are not intelligent. Their job, according to him, is to be pretty and on air; the brainstorming is reserved for men,” Beau-Bernard recounts. “I remember asking myself where I was and with what sort of people I was dealing with because I know many super intelligent women.”

When dominance is normalized as strength, dialogue becomes weakness. When aggression is coded as authority, democratic debate narrows. 

MuttaBeau-Bernard identifies as a feminist African man — a position that challenges the idea that gender justice is a “women’s issue.” For him, healthy masculinity means rejecting violence, embracing emotional literacy, and supporting women’s leadership not as a concession but as a democratic necessity. 

The media plays a decisive role here. Newsrooms can either reproduce harmful stereotypes — portraying women as secondary, emotional, or unfit for leadership — or actively dismantle them. 

Journalism, Mutta argues, must interrogate the narratives it amplifies. Because the media does not simply report on democracy, it shapes the conditions under which democracy functions.

Digital power and democratic risk

If traditional civic space is shrinking, digital space offers both opportunity and new danger. 

Cameroonian journalist and media leader Evelyn Mengue A Koung, recently appointed the first woman and youngest Central Director for Television at the country’s national broadcaster, sees the digital era as double-edged.  

On one hand, social media platforms allow women, even those in remote villages, to bypass traditional gatekeepers and tell their own stories. Digital tools can amplify marginalized voices, create networks of solidarity, and put local struggles on the international scene.

“From your smartphone, you can make yourself known to the world,” Kounge explains. 

But the same platforms can quickly and easily become tools of silencing. 

Cyberharassment, coordinated disinformation campaigns, and algorithmic bias disproportionately target women in public life. A single false rumour can take years to repair. Online abuse pushes women out of political and media spaces — effectively shrinking democratic participation through digital violence. 

Koung also raises concerns about agenda-setting power. Tech giants and content aggregators increasingly determine what is visible, what trends, and what disappears. 

In this environment, democratic discourse can be distorted — not by overt censorship, but by attention economies that privilege sensationalism over substance. 

According to her, public interest media must reclaim its ethical responsibility: to elevate overlooked social issues, to protect marginalized voices, and to resist becoming passive conduits for algorithm-driven narratives. 

Digital governance, then, is not just a tech issue — it is a democratic one. 

Democracy is not gender neutral

Taken together, these stories reveal a shared pattern: feminists are not only participating in democracy, but they are also sustaining it. 

They are monitoring elections when trust erodes. They are advocating for social protection systems that enable civic participation. They are reforming media institutions from within. They are confronting toxic gender norms that normalize domination over dialogue. They are challenging online violence that seeks to silence them. 

Yet their work unfolds in increasingly hostile environments: shrinking enabling environments, rising authoritarian tendencies, digital repression, and cultural backlash. 

The erosion of women’s rights to organize, speak, and lead is not collateral damage. It is an early warning sign of democratic decline. When women are pushed out of public life, – whether through legal restrictions, economic exclusion, media stereotypes or online harassment, – democratic institutions lose legitimacy and resilience. 

Conversely, when feminist leadership expands, democracy deepens. It becomes more accountable, inclusive, and participatory. Women’s civic participation is not about political correctness but about democratic survival.   

As these leaders demonstrate, democracy does not defend itself. Women are defending it — in courtrooms, in classrooms, in newsrooms, in digital spaces, and in communities.

The question is whether institutions will meet them with protection, resources and recognition, — or continue to treat their work as peripheral. In times of shrinking civic space, one truth remains constant: without women, democracy erodes — both offline and online.