Photo Source: Google Images The government of Maldives extended the state emergency by 30 days in February 2018. The nation, surrounded by 99 percent water, has been increasingly looked as a strategic island by neighbouring countries. President Abdulla Yameen believes that there is a threat to national security in the country. He had refused a Supreme Court order of freeing imprisoned opposition leaders, including ex-President Mohammad Nasheed. The families of these imprisoned leaders have also been harassed. There can be a new start of a cold war in the Indian Ocean between China and India. The Maldives International Airport and the major highway connecting the airport falls under China’s “One Road, One Belt Plan”. Chinese State has plans to make islands out of water in the Maldives. According to inputs, China has acquired rights over seventeen islands of the Maldives. Many of them are believed to be converted into working stations, with sophisticated naval airbases and commun...

Photo Source: Google Images By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront The landlocked country of Kosovo will celebrate its tenth anniversary, on 17th February, 2018, but it faces myriad challenges in the future. Since its independence in 2008, it has been a partially recognised state. It seems that Kosovo’s six main ethnicities (Albanians, Serbs, Turks, Gorani, Romani and Bosnians), stand close in terms of collective national conscience, but in real life, they carry burdens of their war-torn past. Out of 193 UN member states, only 113 have voted in favour of Kosovo’s sovereignty. Countries such as Russia and China do not recognise it. Kosovo is yet to receive membership of UN and EU. During the winter and spring of 1999, a NATO intervention in a 78 - day airstrike began in favour of ethnic Albanians against the Serbian forces led by Slobodan Milosevic. As NATO bombs fell, millions of Kosovar Albanians, predominantly Muslims were expelled from their villages in an unfortu...

Photo Source: CNN.com By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront The Democratic Republic of Congo had one of the largest number of people displaced, in 2016. A report by the International Displacement Monitoring Centre, of the Norwegian Refugee Council, puts it around 922,000 in 2016. This figure was more than that of Syrian and Iraqi refugees within the same year. According to Global Conflict Tracker, as of February 2018, there have been up to 4.1 million internally displaced people, and there is a presence of around 21,000 UN soldiers, in the DRC. In 2017, around 120,000 DRC Congolese, fled to neighbouring countries. Since the beginning of 2018, around 22,000 DRC Congolese crossed to Lake Albert to Uganda, bringing the total number of DRC Congolese refugees to 34,000 this year. The refugees, along with their luggage and fishing nets, use canoes or overcrowded fishing boats, often carrying around 250 people on an average. The journey takes them up to ten hours. Since December 2017, t...

Photo Source: Google By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Up Front T he foreboding events of genocide compelled eighty thousand South Sudanese, to leave their homes, beginning 2013. The refugee population, has made Sudan the second largest host of South Sudanese, in the region. Since the eruption of civil war in 2013, peace has remained absent for over five years. Various forces in the region have been accused of killing villagers, burning homes and stealing food. The Bentiu massacre in 2013 was regarded by The Economist as the worst massacre in the civil war. Since then, six more major war offensives have happened in South Sudan. The journalists have often observed the buildings in various South Sudan cities without iron roofs. The doors and windows of these homes have often been taken away by the looters for their own means. Humanitarian aid groups have estimated that around $1.72 billion is required to save the 5.1 million population. Save The Children, a UK non-profi...