The glowing coals give off a wonderful aroma: the smell of the incense fills churches, temples and baths. The best sort comes from Somaliland. Entire villages earn their living from the sale of the precious resin from the trees. The stony path winds down along…
Maritime piracy in the Gulf of Guinea is a threat not only to the welfare of seafarers and ship-owners, but also to the politics…
The difficult journey of the Ethiopians of Jewish origin towards complete integration. Unifying music may help avoid discrimination. Hidden among the Semien mountains in…
In a spectacular turnaround, the former President Kabila who was still in control of the institutions through proxies two years after the Presidential election,…
March 2021 will mark the tenth anniversary of the Syrian war. The bulk of the fighting ended in 2017, but Syria continues to suffer. The people, those outside Damascus and Latakia especially, live on the edge of famine, and the country is completely devastated. No reconstruction has occurred, and half the population has been displaced. Russians, Hezbollah…
On 6 March 2011, a group of teenagers wrote anti-government graffiti on a school wall in Dara’a, a Sunni-majority city in the south of the country, suffering from a long drought and poor harvests. During the following days, the regime reacted with arrests and one of the students was found dead. But instead of fear, the opposition…
The definition of civil war has never quite applied in the case of Syria. Ever since the armed insurrection against the Assad government began in 2011, it has never been a clear case of insurgents fighting against the ‘regime’. Rather, the war quickly degenerated into a series of ethnic, confessional and national conflicts of which the ‘Sunni…
The Russians are the ones who, having taken a direct military role alongside Damascus in 2015, have done most to defeat ISIS and perhaps, more importantly, the other rebel forces. The Turks will want to ensure that they can maintain a military presence in northern Syria to watch over Kurdish separatist ambitions. Israel keeps the Golan and…
A Sunday with Father Anthony Assebiah, Parish Priest of Beyin in Kengen,…
An unstable region. “Young people abandoned to themselves find a solution to…
Holy Week in Taxco involves one of the most moving and impressive…
The most important period of the year for Orthodox Christians in Ethiopia…
The Ghanaian band Santrofi demonstrates that Highlife music is still a…
In his last Encyclical, “Fratelli Tutti”, (“Brothers All”), Pope…
The pandemic forced it to close just a week after it…
A museum project has been launched this year under the care…
The European Green Deal is the European Union’s (EU) strategic plan to take the lead on…
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The coronavirus pandemic has taught us how vulnerable and interdependent we are. The pandemic is global;…
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In the Autumn of 2011, the Occupy movement was growing like a weed – quickly and strongly. In groups as small as two and as…
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Long, long ago, Giraffe did not have the long, elegant neck that he has now. In those days his neck was short and squat, resembling Rhinoceros's…
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A wave of self-organised youth-led groups across the world has joined the growing momentum behind the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit, which will peak in September. The…
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