On January 1st, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, and Muse Bihi Abdi, the leader of Somaliland, surprised the international community with an announcement. During a joint press conference in Addis Ababa, they disclosed that landlocked Ethiopia would lease a naval port and a 20km stretch of the Red Sea coastline in Somaliland. In return, Somaliland would receive shares in Ethiopian …

Background The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is an organisation which aims to achieve unity and cooperation amongst petroleum exporting countries, particularly in regards to their exporting policies. The organisation thus operates to achieve a certain stability in the market. In order to join, a state has to have a substantial net export of crude petroleum. An advantage of …

Public diplomacy refers to any of the different government-sponsored operations aimed at directly connecting with foreign publics. Public diplomacy encompasses all official efforts to persuade certain segments of foreign opinion to support or tolerate a government’s strategic goals. In our contemporary world, when economies all around are working together, embassies conduct more than simply diplomatic duties. Embassies not only assist with …

The serious consequences of a funding gap become more apparent as the obscure scepticism rests over Western support for Ukraine. The White House’s latest warning that Ukraine’s aid money may run out by the end of the year raises serious concerns regarding the country’s battle against Russian attacks. The United States was proving Ukraine with air defence, artillery, small arms ammunition, …

Due to its position, Egypt is more vulnerable to the consequences of the conflict in Gaza. Sharing a border with the region, it has often been pressured to play a more active role, specifically, to welcome Palestinian refugees. Egypt has historically determinately refused to do so claiming that it would mean to abandon the Palestinian cause. The recent developments, however, …

The war between Israel and Hamas has divided public opinion is a way that other conflicts have not. Importantly, the whole West has been identified with Israel. A process that was facilitated by the, at least initially, unwavering support given by Europe and the US to Israel. Nonetheless, this conflation of the West with Israel has been widely instrumentalised by …

Australia has recently entered into bilateral security accords with Papua New Guinea focusing on enhancing its police capabilities and sustaining peace. However, the agreement also has far-reaching ramifications against growing great power rivalry in the Pacific. Under this agreement, Australia will increase support to internal security needs of Papua New Guinea, through training, equipment and provision for the justice sector issues …

At a recent summit in San Francisco, Chinese President Xi Jinping openly stated that Beijing will reunify Taiwan with mainland China. According to the officials present at the meeting in question, Xi told Biden that China would prefer a peaceful reunification. Nonetheless, were that impossible, according to the anti-secession law passed in 2005, China would be compelled to act militarily. …

After months of political deliberation, the European Union officially initiated a protracted process on Tuesday to fulfil its commitment to allocate funds derived from frozen Russian central bank assets for the reconstruction of Ukraine. The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, announced that it had reached an agreement on a proposal outlining a legal framework to utilize the …

The rare earth minerals are seen as the basic riches of earth’s crust which is defined as an accumulation of peculiar atom attributes. As little as this amount of input is sufficient for generating an electromagnetic energy equal in magnitude to that produced by oil and coal when subjected to industrial processing. Rare earth minerals are at the position of prominence …