Article

Every year on 30 March, Palestinians mark Yom al-Ard, Land Day. The phrase sounds almost harmless to those who have never lived inside its meaning, like a date for folklore, celebrating our roots, or perhaps honouring our sentimental attachment to olive trees and generationally inherited fields. But Land Day is not a charming ritual of heritage. It is a political wound. An annual acknowledgement of a truth that much of the world still tries to ignore, soften, or bury: In Palestine, our struggle has always been about the land. Simply, it is about our right to exist on our own land, and the violence that has been mobilised against us because of our refusal to disappear from it.

I am well familiar with the term “war between the Taliban and the government” because I have witnessed the trade-offs and conflicts between the two sides since my childhood. Our fate has always fluctuated because of their actions and decisions.

What began with surprise US and Israeli strikes on Iran one month ago has hardened into a grinding stand-off, with no clear way out. The conflict’s opening blows on February 28 killed senior leaders in Tehran, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – prompting retaliatory missile and drone attacks on Israel, US bases and Gulf infrastructure.

Survivors of sex trafficking offences similar to those committed by Jeffrey Epstein may be refused support under the UK’s modern slavery system due to immigration law changes introduced by the previous government, experts have warned.

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.