Indonesia and Australia are moving toward clinching a new, stronger defense treaty that could potentially affect the Indo-Pacific security landscape, particularly in the South China Sea, where tension has been building in recent years due to overlapping territorial claims between China and several Southeast Asian countries. 

Prabowo skipped the G20 summit, even though the gathering of the world’s 20 largest economies would have marked the culmination of his global diplomacy this year.

The UN resolution references a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.

The ASEAN+3 mechanism, where ASEAN nations sit with Japan, South Korea and China, would become one of the most relevant political forums in the region for discussing the Taiwan issue.

Southeast Asia’s forests are not untouched wilderness, but social-ecological systems shaped over millennia of indigenous and local stewardship.

Many governments with legitimate social-justice concerns are reluctant to support the phaseout, fearing it would impede efforts to reduce inequality and fund essential services.

Law enforcement agencies seem to operate not according to the rhythm of law, but according to the rhythm of politics and online sentiment.

The contribution of natural resource export receipt (DHE) to Indonesia's foreign reserves remains limited, intensifying calls to revise Government Regulation (PP) No. 8/2025 on DHE. While the policy temporarily keeps export proceeds onshore, much of the forex (forex) ultimately flows back overseas to service external debt. As a result, the regulation has fallen short of its stated goal of strengthening reserves, an issue that has become more urgent as the rupiah faces renewed depreciation pressures.

Curaçao's qualifying for the 2026 World Cup finals presents a dichonomy of what the tiny island nation has done right and what our sprawling archipelagic country has yet to get right in developing the national soccer ecosystem.

Saudi Arabia has explicitly linked joining the Abraham accords to a plan for a Palestinian state.

GenAI tools are reshaping the information environment in ways most audiences never see. From the data that trains them to the labor that maintains them, their inner workings raise urgent questions for journalism and democratic accountability.

The G20's decision to include air quality on its agenda presents an opportunity for Jakarta to ramp up evidence-based efforts to take a lead in ensuring clean air for its residents as part of its aim to become a global city by 2045.

As the geopolitical contours of the wider Asia-Pacific shift, ASEAN’s role as the central manager of regional affairs is under intense scrutiny. 

Indonesia is endowed with abundant resources yet impoverished in sovereignty; vast in territory yet constrained in resolve; populous yet fragile in strength.

Over the past two decades, for unclear reasons, we have pushed specialized universities to become broad, general-purpose institutions.

After nationwide protests swept the country in late August, the demand for institutional police reform rose to the top of the national agenda following an incident where an armored police vehicle struck and killed a civilian during the demonstrations. Just two months later, President Prabowo Subianto responded by establishing the National Police Reform Acceleration Commission.

The recent series of child bullying cases reveals a systemic failure of our education system to protect children.

The oust-Marcos plotters misread the lay of the land if they expected a massive migration of support for VP Sara.

Indonesia’s remarkable cultural diversity, spanning thousands of islands, hundreds of ethnic groups and countless living traditions, has long made the archipelago one of the world’s great meeting points of civilizations.

As inequality increasingly shapes economies, politics and transnational cooperations across the globe, we need a world panel to specifically address the issue by collating and synthesizing data from across varying regions.

An electoral democracy can gradually drift toward dictatorship, step by step, until it reaches the point of no return.

The new KUHAP grants the police more powers at a time when the public is demanding reform of the police, stemming from widespread reports of abuse, criminalization, torture, case fabrication and corruption. 

The jail sentence for former ASDP Ferry Indonesia CEO is a warning siren for anyone hoping Indonesia’s state-owned enterprises (BUMN) might someday behave like Singapore’s Temasek or France’s EDF.

The Indonesian government has issued a new regulation to accelerate the construction of facilities under the Red and White Cooperatives (KMP) program, one of President Prabowo Subianto's flagship initiatives. Progress has lagged expectations, with only a fraction of the buildings required to reach the target of 80,000 cooperatives (co-ops) completed so far. State-owned enterprise (SOE) PT Agrinas Pangan Nusantara, formerly the engineering consultancy Yodya Karya, has been appointed to lead the construction. However, the funding mechanism has sparked controversy, as the village fund is being allocated for loan repayments channeled through the Association of State-Owned Banks (Himbara). This reduces the budget available for other essential village functions, such as stunting prevention.

The true reasons behind the announcement of a new security treaty between Indonesia and Australia are not clear, especially when the neighbors have yet to exploit the many economic potentials of their strategic partnership as well as other nondefense collaborations.

Reducing inequality should be a guiding principle to decisions on climate change.

Without political leverage and democracy, civil society’s struggle will keep turning in the mud.