Category World News

An invisible threat is threatening our communities around the world, causing more deaths, lowering the quality of life, and compromising our shared cultural fabric. A person who lacks sufficient social contact, feels unsupported in their current relationships, or has strained or negative relationships is a growing threat to their well-being and well-being. Loneliness and social isolation are two other social disconnections that are present.

Worldwide, nearly one in six people express loneliness today. The rate is even higher among young people, teenagers, and those who reside in low-income nations. However, social isolation and loneliness can be fatal as well. They are more than just emotional states. Loneliness was linked to more than 871, 000 deaths annually between 2014 and 2019, according to a recent World Health Organization (WHO) report, or 100 deaths per hour. We now have unquestionable proof that our ability to form and maintain lasting human connections is just as important for our well-being as our physical and mental health. Health systems and policymakers have ignored it for too long, respectively.

The World Health Assembly adopted the first social connection resolution in a month with the release of the report from WHO’s Commission on Social Connection. This enormous threat to global health is at a turning point, and the report emphasizes the need for decisive leadership and action. In line with the commission’s recommendations, the report provides concrete steps forward and provide concrete steps to strengthen bonds that support individual and social progress.

Humans have a strong connection mechanism. Relationships have a profound impact on our brains, our feelings, and our ability to live well. Conversely, disconnection can lead to devastating consequences, including heart disease, stroke, depression, anxiety, dementia, and premature death. It can also lead to subpar academic performance in schools and workplaces, which costs societies billions annually.

The good news is that there are solutions. From national policies and community programs to campaigns and individual support strategies, the commission’s report lists effective interventions. It identifies a number of successful examples, including peer-to-peer support for low-income older people in South Africa, “social prescribing” activities like music, storytelling, gardening, and self-help groups, incorporating social connection into broader development policies in Albania and Spain, establishing dedicated national strategies in nations like Denmark, Germany, Japan, Finland, the Netherlands, and Sweden, and campaigns to encourage small acts of kindness in Australia, Great Britain, and the United States.

We urge all nations to give social connection a prioritization.

Not just about personal well-being and health. It serves as the foundation of social cohesion, national resilience, and economic prosperity. Societies that foster trust and connection are more creative, more secure, and able to handle crises more effectively. This fact was only ever greatly improved by the COVID-19 pandemic. The human need for connection became unmistakable as physical separation was forced by lockdowns, as did the expense of its absence.

A five-pillar global roadmap, which the WHO commission recommends, is built on the foundation of research, interventions, measurement, and engagement.

The main recommendations are to develop national policies that incorporate social connections into the labor, health, and education agendas, fund research to improve the effectiveness of interventions that are culturally relevant, collect better data to track the issue and assess progress, and create a global movement to change attitudes and combat stigma.

It is crucial that this movement includes the voices of those who have experienced loneliness and social isolation to gain insight into what true solutions look like.

We as leaders have a choice: to remain passive. Every day we delay adds to the day’s lost potential, unnecessary suffering, and preventable death. However, we can create more resilient, connected, and healthier societies if we take bold steps, work together, and show compassion on a large scale.

Socializing is not a luxury. It is necessary for humans. And now must it be a political priority more than ever.

A Palestinian man develops self-assurance and anxiety after signing an online petition.

The filmmaker’s direct phone conversation with a friend, “I Signed the Petition,” makes the documentary short about how the pair examine and question the significance of announcing a cultural boycott of Israel.

Includes footage from the Council for the Relief of Palestine’s Arab Refugees’ film Sands of Sorrow, which was filmed in 1950.

A small but significant piece of news passed by almost unnoticed: the announcement of a new research project on the website of a Washington, DC think tank as Israel loudly beat the drums of war one day before its surprise attack on Iran. The Balochistan Studies Project (BSP) was officially launched on June 12th, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). In addition to mentioning Balochistan’s abundance of natural resources, including “oil, gas, uranium, copper, coal, rare earth elements, and the two deep seaports of Gwadar and Chabahar,” MEMRI’s statement also defends the project’s necessity by citing the area as “the ideal outpost to counter and keep Iran’s nuclear ambitions under control and its dangerous relations with Pakistan, which may provide Tehran with tactical nukes.

MEMRI is well known for its careful transcribed translations of screenshots from Arabic, Persian, and Turkish-language media, which frequently end up being shared as memes on social media platforms. The think tank, which was founded in 1998 and has had its founder, Colonel Yigal Carmon, who has spent more than 20 years in the Israeli Military Intelligence Corps, has consistently promoted a pro-Israel agenda. Additionally, MEMRI has been “unofficially” involved in the Israeli state’s intelligence gathering since at least 2012.

In light of this context, MEMRI’s creation of the BSP may serve as an indication that Israel is trying to co-opt the Baloch national struggle against both Iran and Pakistan in order to advance its geopolitical goals. There is a need to examine the limitations of geopolitical thinking within national liberation movements in light of the advantages that a successful co-optation of the Baloch cause would offer Israel and the potential repercussions it might have on the resistance of stateless peoples in the region, including Palestinians and the Baloch themselves.

The BSP announcement from MEMRI contains logical contradictions and falsehoods regarding Balochistan’s actual exploitation and resistance. In contrast, Western companies like Barrick Gold and BHP Billiton have a significant role in enabling colonial resource extraction and ecological destruction in the region, while insisting that “the international community” should understand that Balochistan is a natural ally of the West.

The project’s staff is another good example. Mir Yar Baloch, a “reputated Baloch writer, scholar, and political scientist,” is described as a “special adviser” in one article on the BSP website of MEMRI. Baloch made headlines in May of this year when he unilaterally declared Balochistan’s independence in a number of posts on X, and he also revealed to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that India had “the backing of 60 million Baloch patriots” following Operation Sindoor against Pakistan.

Mir Yar Baloch is intriguing for the mystery that surrounds him, given his alleged status as a significant and influent Baloch intellectual, more than for his grand pronouncements. None of the outlets that have covered him have resisted repurposing a biography as sparingly as the one published in the MEMRI article, despite being profiled by a number of news outlets, especially those that are all Indian. However, more well-known Baloch activists have been vocal about their disapproval of him. For instance, Nissan Baloch of the Baloch National Movement stated on X that Baloch leaders do not have a common ground for declaring independence. Additionally, he specifically listed four “fake accounts,” including Mir Yar Baloch’s, that he claimed “should be reported and unfollowed immediately.” Therefore, Kabo activists speculate that Mir Yar Baloch was a fabricated persona by a state with regional interests to support its goals.

Balochistan, a region that spans Iran and Pakistan’s border, is where both nations engage in counterinsurgency campaigns, which frequently cause tensions between them. Each has claimed that allowing militant groups to cross the border to foster instability has been done by one. On both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border, many Baloch people view themselves as marginalized and systematically oppressed by the states they are in.

In this context, an Israeli support for the Baloch cause opens up new avenues for establishing Israeli influence in the region’s wider West. Beyond the Iranian state and security apparatus, Israel’s infiltration, which was clearly demonstrated by the events of June 13, allows Israel to establish diplomatic ties with sectarian organizations in areas with limited Iranian and Pakistani political legitimacy. Support for these groups also creates conditions that allow Israel to actively undermine efforts to build transnational solidarity among Palestinians and other stateless populations, such as the Baloch, in light of Israel’s goal of containing and overthrowing Palestinian resistance.

Israel’s strategic partnership with India, which has long established itself as a major supporter of the Baloch cause, has notably undermined efforts to build bridges between the Baloch and stateless peoples who have been forced to live under Indian rule, such as Kashmiris, to support any gesture Israel makes toward Balochistan. In a significant way, Mir Yar Baloch, who has tweeted support for Israel and India, almost exclusively owes his public image to the Indian media. Additionally, his messages are overwhelmingly directed at Indian audiences. Thus, the BSP serves as an example of how India and Israel’s strategic partnership is reflected in an Israeli and Indian cross-regional influence projection.

I don’t dispute the importance of geopolitics in developing resistance strategies and capacity-building, but making it a top priority can be detrimental. A “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” mentality could undermine long-term, principled alliances. A statement made by Sadiq al-Azm that the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) alliance with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was “unprincipled” alienated Kurds and indirectly contributed to the establishment of relatively warm relations between Israel and the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq. Concerns about possible collaboration with Israel were raised more recently in Iran’s crackdown on Kurdish and, to a lesser extent, Baloch organizations.

Therefore, a post-geopolitical approach to formulating foreign policy among stateless groups would have to consider the nation-states’ factory defect, which requires that survival and the preservation of a constellation of privileges and interests over a meaningful struggle for justice. A principled anticolonial inter- and transnationalism that transcends geopolitics is not a utopian ideal that is detached from the realities of conflict in this context. Instead, it is a long-term pragmatism in and of itself that challenges the short-term gains made by placing geopolitics above principles.