Category World News

Fighting between Thailand and Cambodia has continued for a third day, with cross-border shelling and air raids forcing more than half a million civilians to flee their homes and seek shelter, according to authorities.

Officials from the two Southeast Asian neighbours on Wednesday also accused each other of restarting the conflict that has killed at least 13 soldiers and civilians so far this week and led more than 500,000 people from both sides of the border to evacuate for safety.

“More than 400,000 people have been moved to safe shelters” across seven provinces, Thailand’s Ministry of Defence spokesperson Surasant Kongsiri told reporters at a news conference.

“Civilians have had to evacuate in large numbers due to what we assessed as an imminent threat to their safety,” he said.

The Thai military also reported that rockets fired from Cambodia had landed near the Phanom Dong Rak Hospital in Surin on Wednesday morning, prompting patients and hospital staff to take cover in a bunker.

In neighbouring Cambodia, “101,229 people have been evacuated to safe shelters and relatives’ homes in five provinces”, Cambodian Ministry of National Defence spokeswoman Maly Socheata said.

Cambodianess, a website operated by the Cambodian Media Broadcasting Corporation, reported that Thai F-16 jets had attacked two areas in the country, while Thai shelling continued in three other areas.

Thailand’s Matichon Online news portal also reported that the country’s military had deployed F-16s to attack “one Cambodian military target” along the border on Wednesday morning.

Cambodian rockets and artillery fire also targeted 12 front-line areas in four Thai provinces early in the morning, according to Thailand’s The Nation newspaper, citing military sources. There were no immediate reports on casualties.

Al Jazeera’s Rob McBride, reporting from Surin province in Thailand, said the Thai military reported earlier on Wednesday that fighting took place in almost all of the provinces bordering Cambodia.

In Surin province alone, there were reports of exchanges of fire in five different locations, McBride said, adding that many thousands have evacuated.

“Most people have left here,” he said.

“Hundreds of thousands of people now on both sides of the border have sought refuge as they have done in the past and as the fighting continues,” he added.

“The Thais have been saying that they do want peace. But they said peace has to come with what they call security and safety of Thai people. As the attacks are continuing, they have not achieved that yet,” McBride said.

Reporting from Oddar Meanchey in northwestern Cambodia, Al Jazeera’s Barnaby Lo said local people are moving to evacuation centres as the fighting has expanded to five border provinces with Thailand.

At one camp housing some 10,000 displaced people, Lo said conditions are “far from ideal” with many people sheltering under makeshift tents of blue tarpaulin, while others do not even have materials to build shelters to protect from the heat and rain.

“People here are saying there is not enough aid going around,” Lo said.

“But the bigger fear or the bigger concern here is the fear. Fear that the violence could spread further, and right now, there are people packing because we’ve been hearing loud explosions even though we are kilometres away from where the fighting is taking place. So people are packing and getting ready to move to another evacuation camp,” he said.

“But the problem is that wherever they go, it seems like danger will follow them.”

Lo added that Cambodia’s Senate President and former leader Hun Sen, who is the commander of the military, suggested retaliatory attacks on Thailand, and the conflict is unlikely to end quickly.

This week’s clashes are the deadliest since five days of fighting in July that killed dozens and displaced some 300,000 people on both sides of the border before a shaky truce was agreed, following an intervention by United States President Donald Trump.

Trump said late on Tuesday that he would make a phone call to stop the renewed fighting.

“I am going to have to make a phone call. Who else could say I’m going to make a phone call and stop a war of two very powerful countries, Thailand and Cambodia,” Trump said while speaking at a rally in the US state of Pennsylvania.

However, Thai Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow told Al Jazeera that he saw no potential for negotiations in the border conflict, adding that Bangkok did not start the clashes.

Cambodia’s Defence Ministry also said on Tuesday that its troops had no choice but to take action, accusing Thailand of “indiscriminately and brutally targeting civilian residential areas” with artillery shells, allegations Bangkok rejected.

In a further sign of worsening relations between the two countries, Cambodia announced on Wednesday that it was withdrawing from the Southeast Asian Games, which are currently being held in Thailand, citing “serious concerns”.

Tensions have simmered between Bangkok and Phnom Penh since Thailand last month suspended de-escalation measures that were agreed at an October summit in Trump’s presence in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, after a Thai soldier was maimed by a landmine that Bangkok said was newly laid by Cambodia. Cambodian officials have rejected the allegation.

The catastrophic violence in Gaza has unfolded within an international system that was never designed to restrain the geopolitical ambitions of powerful states. Understanding why the United Nations has proved so limited in responding to what many regard as a genocidal assault requires returning to the foundations of the post–World War II order and examining how its structure has long enabled impunity rather than accountability.

After World War II, the architecture for a new international order based on respect for the UN Charter and international law was agreed upon as the normative foundation of a peaceful future. Above all, it was intended to prevent a third world war. These commitments emerged from the carnage of global conflict, the debasement of human dignity through the Nazi Holocaust, and public anxieties about nuclear weaponry.

Yet, the political imperative to accommodate the victorious states compromised these arrangements from the outset. Tensions over priorities for world order were papered over by granting the Security Council exclusive decisional authority and further limiting UN autonomy. Five states were made permanent members, each with veto power: the United States, the Soviet Union, France, the United Kingdom, and China.

In practice, this left global security largely in the hands of these states, preserving their dominance. It meant removing the strategic interests of geopolitical actors from any obligatory respect for legal constraints, with a corresponding weakening of UN capability. The Soviet Union had some justification for defending itself against a West-dominated voting majority, yet it too used the veto pragmatically and displayed a dismissive approach to international law and human rights, as did the three liberal democracies.

In 1945, these governments were understood as simply retaining the traditional freedoms of manoeuvre exercised by the so-called Great Powers. The UK and France, leading NATO members in a Euro-American alliance, interpreted the future through the lens of an emerging rivalry with the Soviet Union. China, meanwhile, was preoccupied with a civil war that continued until 1949.

Three aspects of this post-war arrangement shape our present understanding.

First, the historical aspect: Learning from the failures of the League of Nations, where the absence of influential states undermined the organisation’s relevance to questions of war and peace. In 1945, it was deemed better to acknowledge power differentials within the UN than to construct a global body based on democratic equality among sovereign states or population size.

Second, the ideological aspect: Political leaders of the more affluent and powerful states placed far greater trust in hard-power militarism than in soft-power legalism. Even nuclear weaponry was absorbed into the logic of deterrence rather than compliance with Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which required good-faith pursuit of disarmament. International law was set aside whenever it conflicted with geopolitical interests.

Third, the economistic aspect: The profitability of arms races and wars reinforced a pre–World War II pattern of lawless global politics, sustained by an alliance of geopolitical realism, corporate media, and private-sector militarism.

Why the UN could not protect Gaza

Against this background, it is unsurprising that the UN performed in a disappointing manner during the two-plus years of genocidal assault on Gaza.

In many respects, the UN did what it was designed to do in the turmoil after October 7, and only fundamental reforms driven by the Global South and transnational civil society can alter this structural limitation. What makes these events so disturbing is the extremes of Israeli disregard for international law, the Charter, and even basic morality.

At the same time, the UN did act more constructively than is often acknowledged in exposing Israel’s flagrant violations of international law and human rights. Yet, it fell short of what was legally possible, particularly when the General Assembly failed to explore its potential self-empowerment through the Uniting for Peace resolution or the Responsibility to Protect norm.

Among the UN’s strongest contributions were the near-unanimous judicial outcomes at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on genocide and occupation. On genocide, the ICJ granted South Africa’s request for provisional measures concerning genocidal violence and the obstruction of humanitarian aid in Gaza. A final decision is expected after further arguments in 2026.

On occupation, responding to a General Assembly request for clarification, the Court issued a historic advisory opinion on July 19, 2024, finding Israel in severe violation of its duties under international humanitarian law in administering Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. It ordered Israel’s withdrawal within a year. The General Assembly affirmed the opinion by a large majority.

Israel responded by repudiating or ignoring the Court’s authority, backed by the US government’s extraordinary claim that recourse to the ICJ lacked legal merit.

The UN also provided far more reliable coverage of the Gaza genocide than was available in corporate media, which tended to amplify Israeli rationalisations and suppress Palestinian perspectives. For those seeking a credible analysis of genocide allegations, the Human Rights Council offered the most convincing counter to pro-Israeli distortions. A Moon Will Arise from this Darkness: Reports on Genocide in Palestine, containing the publicly submitted reports of the special rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, documents and strongly supports the genocide findings.

A further unheralded contribution came from UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, whose services were essential to a civilian population facing acute insecurity, devastation, starvation, disease, and cruel combat tactics. Some 281 staff members were killed while providing shelter, education, healthcare, and psychological support to beleaguered Palestinians during the course of Israel’s actions over the past two years.

UNRWA, instead of receiving deserved praise, was irresponsibly condemned by Israel and accused, without credible evidence, of allowing staff participation in the October 7 attack. Liberal democracies compounded this by cutting funding, while Israel barred international staff from entering Gaza. Nevertheless, UNRWA has sought to continue its relief work to the best of its ability and with great courage.

In light of these institutional shortcomings and partial successes, the implications for global governance become even more stark, setting the stage for a broader assessment of legitimacy and accountability.

The moral and political costs of UN paralysis

The foregoing needs to be read in light of the continuing Palestinian ordeal, which persists despite numerous Israeli violations, resulting in more than 350 Palestinian deaths since the ceasefire was agreed upon on October 10, 2025.

International law seems to have no direct impact on the behaviour of the main governmental actors, but it does influence perceptions of legitimacy. In this sense, the ICJ outcomes and the reports of the special rapporteur that take the international law dimensions seriously have the indirect effect of legitimising various forms of civil society activism in support of true and just peace, which presupposes the realisation of Palestinian basic rights – above all, the inalienable right of self-determination.

The exclusion of Palestinian participation in the US-imposed Trump Plan for shaping Gaza’s political future is a sign that liberal democracies stubbornly adhere to their unsupportable positions of complicity with Israel.

Finally, the unanimous adoption of Security Council Resolution 2803 in unacceptably endorsing the Trump Plan aligns the UN fully with the US and Israel, a demoralising evasion and repudiation of its own truth-telling procedures. It also establishes a most unfortunate precedent for the enforcement of international law and the accountability of perpetrators of international crimes.

In doing so, it deepens the crisis of confidence in global governance and underscores the urgent need for meaningful UN reform if genuine peace and justice are ever to be realised.

Colombo, Sri Lanka – Sundaram Muttupillai, 46, had been working on a tea estate in Thalawakelle in Sri Lanka’s central district of Nuwara Eliya since he turned 17.

However, a devastating cyclone last week, the worst to hit the Indian Ocean island in a century, has left him without work or a home.

Cyclone Ditwah left a huge trail of destruction across the island, killing at least 635 people and affecting more than two million people, or a 10th of the country’s population. Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake declared a state of emergency last week and named 22 of the island’s 25 districts as disaster zones.

Central Sri Lanka – the country’s tea and vegetable heartland – was the worst hit, with official data on Monday showing at least 471 deaths in the region, apart from the massive destruction across the hilly plantations.

“It is all gone. We know the rolling hills to be unpredictable, and from time to time, there have been mudslides and homes destroyed by the rainfall. Now the roads are impassable. We do not have the essentials, nor any hope of overcoming the cyclone’s impact,” Muttupillai told Al Jazeera.

‘Homes and livelihoods gone’

Tea is a key Sri Lankan export and the second largest source of its export revenue after apparels. Ranked the world’s fourth-largest tea exporter by value, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), Sri Lanka is globally known for its unique tea blends and value-added products such as tea bags and packaged tea, often commanding higher prices.

Despite economic challenges and political upheavals, the country’s tea industry has retained an annual revenue of $1.3bn in recent years, with a projected revenue of $1.5bn by the end of the year.

However, the cyclone-induced floods and landslides uprooted many fully grown tea plantations, destroyed roads and railway lines, and affected the delivery of essentials, such as fertilisers for crops. Thousands of plantation workers have been rendered homeless.

“Nothing we ever faced could have prepared us for what we endured last week. It has killed our hopes of being able to continue living and working in the plantations. Our homes and livelihoods are gone,” said Muttupillai.

Senthilnathan Palansamy, 34, who works at a tea plantation in Badulla in Uva province, says the cyclone buried entire hamlets under the soil, forcing him to consider a shift in his livelihood.

“The plantations are unsafe. There will not be any work for several months. We will have to snap out of plantation lives and work somewhere else,” he told Al Jazeera from a government shelter where he has taken refuge along with his 30-year-old wife Mariappan Sharmila, also a tea plucker, and their two children.

Prabath Chandrakeerthi, Sri Lanka’s commissioner general of essential services, last week estimated the total economic losses caused by the cyclone to be approximately $6bn, which is almost 3.5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

In the tea industry, preliminary estimates predict an output decline of up to 35 percent, according to a member of a presidential committee on cyclone recovery, who requested anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media. He said the plantation community would be especially hit.

“The plantation sector has faced many challenges in recent years. The cyclone’s impact will take some time to recover. This would mean the resumption of work for plantation workers will get delayed, making an already vulnerable community more vulnerable. Workers will face severe livelihood problems,” he said.

Economic vulnerabilities

In 2023, as Sri Lanka reeled under its worst economic crisis since gaining independence from the British in 1948, its government entered into a $2.9bn bailout loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund. On Friday, the global lender said it was considering a request by the Sri Lankan government for a $200m fund on top of the $347m tranche due later this month for post-cyclone relief works.

Moreover, Sri Lanka’s current public debt stands at nearly $100bn, 99.5 percent of its GDP, leaving barely any room for further financial shocks. But the cyclone has exacerbated the country’s economic vulnerabilities, which threaten its exports and domestic food availability, say the experts.

Dhananath Fernando, chief executive at Advocata Institute, an independent think tank in Sri Lanka, believes the economic devastation caused by Ditwah is at par with what happened during the catastrophic 2004 tsunami, which killed more than 35,000 people.

However, Fernando says, the impact of the cyclone is likely to be harsher as he predicts a sharp increase in consumer prices due to the disruption of supply chains.

“The cyclone has dealt a heavy blow, and this shock will significantly reduce overall growth, not just our export capacity, but also local consumption. The export basket will reflect the shock, reducing foreign earnings, vital to keep the economy afloat,” he told Al Jazeera.

Fernando warned that tea plantation workers would be forced to shift to other professions – “inevitable, considering the level of shock”, as he put it – adding that the shift would not be good for the economy.

“Sri Lanka’s approach to debt sustainability is founded on economic development. Our focus is to repay debt by growing the economy. For this to happen, we cannot afford people to shift from the plantations in search of other options,” he said.

In October, the Tea Exporters Association of Sri Lanka (TEASL) had set a target of $1.5bn in export earnings for 2025, a slight increase from $1.43bn in 2024. The projection was supported by a global rise in demand for more value-added products such as tea packs and bags.

But a source at TEASL told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity that the target may not be feasible now due to the cyclone’s impact on tea-growing highlands. “Destruction to the sector is so vast, and it has dealt a huge blow to an industry that was picking up. Rebuilding will require both time and resources,” he said.

Omar Rajarathnam, executive director of Factum, another think tank based in Colombo, said the government should consider external shocks, given the island’s high vulnerability to extreme weather and climate crisis, before setting up revenue targets in sectors like tea.

“Even if we did not face a disaster of this magnitude, extreme weather should be factored in as part of industry preparedness, and projections should include multiple scenarios and mitigation methods,” he told Al Jazeera.

As the South Asian country recovers from the deadly cyclone, many tea plantation workers say they are lucky to be alive.