IVP603 - April 2025

Two years have passed since the war broke out in Sudan between the two sides of the military regime that the country inherited from the infamous Omar al-Bashir. While the situation in Sudan does not get even a tenth of the global media attention that the ongoing Zionist genocidal war in Gaza receives, the scale of the human catastrophe there is equally horrific. The death toll from the military-on-military war is estimated at more than 150,000, while the number of displaced people stands at approximately 13 million, and the number of those threatened with severe famine reaches 44 million—a record number that makes the war in Sudan the greatest humanitarian crisis in today’s world.

It’s essential to change the production-based agricultural system, which is driven by petrochemicals, destroys jobs and exacerbates the ecological crisis. We need small-scale farming on a human scale, that creates jobs and generates income, produces high-quality food and supports living organisms. This alternative is a bulwark against bio-aggressors and climate change. To achieve this, we recommend:

A growing movement of civil rights organizations, Latino community groups, labor unions, and legislators is demanding the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego García, who President Donald Trump had deported to a prison in El Salvador in violation of the U.S. Constitution, and they have pushed this case through the federal courts to the U.S. Supreme Court. Abrego García’s case has at the same time become the center of the struggle between Trump and the courts, a contest that has now become a constitutional crisis, raising the question of whether the United States will remain a liberal democracy or become an authoritarian dictatorship.

Erdogan’s attempt to eliminate his likely rival in the upcoming presidential elections by arbitrarily placing him under detention has sparked mobilizations of rare magnitude. Faced with what could be a major turning point in the construction of Erdogan’s neo-fascist autocratic regime, millions of citizens, including a newly radicalized youth, have taken to the streets once again.

On 16 April 2025, the UK Supreme Court ruled that “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 (the EA) refer to the sex assigned at birth in a case that was pushed for and funded by the UK gender critical movement. In essence, the judgment has found that being a woman entails having an XX chromosome, large gametes and the ability to produce children. This judgment means that trans women with gender recognition certificates (GRC) will no longer be legally defined as women under the EA.

This is a fundamental attack on the human rights of trans people.

The abduction of Mahmoud Khalil — the Palestinian graduate student and green card holder seized March 8 at his Columbia University residence — is now multiplied by other high-profile detentions and deportation threats, and dozens or even hundreds of unpublicized cases. Secretary of State Marco Rubio openly boasts as much.

Last spring, huge demonstrations took place across Kenya against the finance bill under the slogan “#RejectFinanceBill2024”. This IMF-backed project aimed to impose new taxes on the population in order to pay off debts amounting to $79 billion. The mobilization, mainly by young people, forced President William Ruto to cancel the bill.

Since the abrupt reversal of US policy towards Ukraine, the Russian concessions obtained by President Trump have been non-existent. The ceasefire on energy infrastructure has not been implemented; worse, bombing on Ukrainian territory has never been so intense, while the opening of a corridor to resume maritime trade in the Black Sea only benefits Russia.

This year’s Newroz festival in Diyarbakir drew huge crowds with one hope: to finally find a political solution to the decades-long conflict in the Kurdish region. A Newroz message from the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan, was broadcast over the loudspeakers, something that had not happened for several years, as Öcalan has been in total isolation. The portrait of the charismatic PKK president was everywhere, which was not previously allowed. So was the portrait of Selahettin Demirtas, former chair of the HDP party (now DEM). Negotiating a ceasefire is no simple matter.

President Donald Trump’s macho, white, nationalist ideology leads him to attack women, LGBT people, workers, the poor, the disabled and others, but his racism is particularly striking. He has in myriad ways made racism against Blacks, Latinos, and immigrants official U.S. policy. From the highest levels of government to the lowest economic levels of society people of color are being discriminated against, mistreated, and victimized as at no time since the 1920s.