IVP609 - October 2025

For a year now, young people in Serbia have been continuing their fight for a democratic society in the face of Aleksandar Vučić’s authoritarian regime. On both sides of Serbia, student marches are criss-crossing the country in the direction of Novi Sad to commemorate the collapse of the railway station, responsible for the deaths of 16 people on 1 November 2024. This tragic event triggered a political protest on an unprecedented scale.

While diplomatic manoeuvres take centre stage, the Ukrainian people, in an increasingly difficult context, continue to resist, including in the occupied zones.

As international pressure mounts to demand the restoration of constitutional order, young people from GenZ and workers are sketching out what the Madagascar of tomorrow could look like.

“The recent decision by Ibama (the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) to grant the state-controlled oil company, Petrobras, an environmental licence for exploratory drilling along the Equatorial Margin, near the mouth of the Amazon River, represents a huge step backwards for the country’s environmental and energy policy. It shows that the logic of fossil fuel-based development continues to dominate within the Brazilian state, something that we urgently need to overcome.”

The United States is preparing for war against Venezuela. While President Donald Trump has asserted that the country’s goal is to stop shipments of Venezuelan drugs to the United States, in private conversations U.S. officials have made it clear that Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. This forms part of Trump’s goal of reasserting U.S. domination in Latin America such as it exercised in the nineteenth century by gunboats and in the twentieth century by installing friendly governments.

Catherine Connolly’s resounding victory in the Presidential election in Ireland is a watershed moment. It is the first time that the left has won a majority of votes in a national election. This was not a narrow victory either; Catherine won the largest percentage and largest total vote of any Presidential candidate in history.

On Sunday 26 October 2025 the mid-term legislative elections will take place in Argentina. The far-right president was in danger of suffering a major defeat. But his friend Trump came to his rescue.

“On that day, in the midst of repression, we learned that international feminist solidarity is a bulwark against barbarism, a source of hope and a weapon against oppression.”

On 1st October 1, a general strike was called in Greece by the GSEE (single private sector confederation), ADEDY (public sector federation) and many other federations and unions. It was very popular and focused on the rejection of a monstrous bill: allowing a13-hour working day for the same employer (we know that many Greeks have long been reduced to having two jobs).

The movement of the Moroccan youth is but the latest manifestation of the regional crisis revealed by the 2011 Arab Spring.