Ariana Yekrangi

Contributing editor

This issue of The Gordian includes some examples of the damage certain high-profile companies have caused to human health and the environment. We also take a closer look at Russian tourist visas and their importance in international relations. This issue contains exclusive reporting by Zhi Wang and Ruby Goldenberg.

On Thursday 27th February, a British appeals court ruled that a planned expansion of Heathrow airport is unconstitutional because the planning process was not in accordance with the government’s own climate policies set out in the Paris Agreement. Lords Justice Lindblom, Singh and Haddon-Cave ruled that when setting out their support for the measures in their National Policy Statement (NPS), the government did not take adequate account of its contribution to the Paris Agreement on climate change.

In December 2019 the Government of India, led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), secccesfully amended a bill to the Citizenship Act of 1955, offering amnesty to non-Muslim illegal immigrants, who arrived in India prior to 2004. These immigrants must be able to prove that they are citizens of one of the three neighbouring countries: Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan. Half the truth is often a whole lie Spokespeople of the Indian Government have repeatedly claimed that the new law intends to give sanctuary to people fleeing religious persecution.

What happened? Although people are long used to the erratic twists and turns of Donald Trump, his decision to sell the Kurds down the river by withdrawing American troops from Syria caught everyone by surprise. Whether Trump was right to extricate his forces from Syria remains debatable, but just as there is rarely a good time to start international military interventions, so there is rarely a good time to discontinue them.

This year we took it upon ourselves to go through every speech of the United Nations General Assembly and brief you about the most important updates. In doing so, we got to hear some of the most bold and exciting statements from leaders around the world. We believe that the President of El Salvador’s speech was courageous, effective and to the point and thus, deserves the prize of the best statement of the debate.

A number of thorny topics were on the agenda this year. Some of the key issues included: foreign policy, trade and, of course, climate change.

UN-aligned is slowly, but surely, taking its place in the world arena of politics. We are also increasingly being criticised by different sides of the political spectrum.

A bike campaign In the autumn of 2015, a young environmentalist in Arak, a city with pollution levels as staggering as those in Tehran, started a “car-free Tuesday” campaign to encourage people to commute by bike. The campaign soon turned popular with municipal authorities across the country beginning to encourage residents to ride bikes and leave their cars at home.

While the global political scene is beginning to look more and more like a Theatre of the Absurd, UN-aligned has become an alternative platform for many to turn to. This is not surprising; long lasting peace and prosperity can only be achieved with the kind of values and principles that UN-aligned advocates.

Last Friday’s successful launch marks a new milestone in the world of politics, getting us ever closer to a world that works for and belongs to everyone. What makes this event so important is that UN-aligned doesn’t aim to make changes within our broken political systems, but aims to change the global framework itself as its primary goal.