In an interview with Al Jazeera, Masrour Barzani denies any ‘pressure’ to enter the Iran war despite over 1,000 attacks. Published On 8 Aug 20268 Aug 2026 Masrour Barzani, the prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, says the semi-autonomous Kurdish region does not want to become involved in the ongoing…
As Ethiopia’s National Dialogue seeks to chart a path toward peace, it faces an immense task. The Dialogue aims to address some of the country’s most difficult political, historical, institutional, social, and peacebuilding questions. Yet its success may ultimately depend on confronting a more basic question: why do Ethiopia’s major conflicts keep returning? A problem…
The Ebola outbreak that emerged in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and crossed into neighbouring Uganda may have been killing people for weeks before the alarm was raised. When Médecins Sans Frontières investigated in May 2026, it reported that at least 55 people had died since the beginning of April. On May 17, the…
Wars regularly make headlines. Preventing them rarely does. Yet for the past 20 years, the UN Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) has quietly been helping countries to avoid violence, recover from conflict and build more peaceful futures for their citizens. Today, it’s the UN’s main vehicle for investing in peace before crises spiral out of control. As…
The European Union (EU) has defended the rules-based international order and condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine while warning that rising global conflicts were worsening economic hardships across the world, including in Zimbabwe. Speaking during Europe Day celebrations in Harare Friday, Katrin Hagemann said the world was facing “profound global change” marked by growing instability, conflict…
Nairobi — The Horn of Africa is facing a “dangerous crossroads” marked by interconnected conflicts and rising geopolitical competition, the Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, Workneh Gebeyehu, warned on Tuesday, calling for urgent reforms to mediation strategies as wars in the region grow more fragmented and prolonged. Speaking at the IGAD Mediation…
Last week’s Munich Security Conference clearly signalled that Africa needs security alliances beyond its traditional partners. The peripheralisation of Africa was again evident at last week’s Munich Security Conference – the world’s premier forum on global security issues. Conflicts dominating world news, such as Ukraine, Venezuela, the Indo-Pacific, and Greenland, monopolised the debate. Africa struggled…
Washington, DC — The Africa Bureau at the State Department has a new top official, Nick Checker. Unlike his recent predecessors who were career diplomats, he has been at State for only four months, having served for the previous decade as a military analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He spent part of last…
Adopted by the Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the African Union (AU) at its 1314th meeting held on 21 November 2025, which was dedicated to an Open Session on Children Affected by Armed Conflicts. The Peace and Security Council, Recalling Decision [Assembly/AU/Dec.753(XXXIII)] adopted by the 33rd Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the Union…
In a landmark move aimed at preventing future water-related conflicts and strengthening regional integration, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Mano River Union (MRU) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on Tuesday sealed a historic agreement to jointly manage shared river basins across the Mano River sub-region. The agreement…
