Members of a search and rescue team use a rubber dinghy on Nov. 25, 2025, to evacuate residents from a flooded neighborhood in Padang, West Sumatra.

Disasters, women and the people we choose not to see

Indonesia needs to reform its disaster management system so it is designed with vulnerable groups at the center, or we will continue to see the same established cycle of response with each disaster that strikes.

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The fifth amendment: A path back to the people?

In the previous four constitutional amendments, many articles were written in haste, compromises were born of fear and decisions were made in backrooms shielded from public scrutiny. ...

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Why global environmental coordination matters now

Planetary threats require planetary governance. ...

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The Latest

Remote connection: Asmat tribespeople try a smartphone on June 1, 2023, in the rural district of Agats in Asmat regency, South Papua.

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Indonesia needs a stronger legal backbone for its subsea cables

Indonesia is crisscrossed by global data routes yet lacks a unified mechanism to govern what happens beneath its own seas.

2 days ago

Riva Siahaan, the president director of PT Pertamina Patra Niaga, the commercial arm of state-owned oil and gas giant Pertamina, is detained on Feb. 25 after being named a suspect in a corruption case by the Attorney General's Office (AGO) in Jakarta.

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Why rules of corporate reputation are still ignored in Indonesia

Reputation now sits at the heart of how the public understands corporate power and responsibility.

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An aerial photo shows damage left by a flash flood on Dec. 2 in Rigeb, Blangkejeren, Gayo Lues regency, Aceh.

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Self-inflicted wound: When ignorance sells the forest

The floods are the bill we are paying for decades of cultivated ignorance.

3 days ago

Traditional Russian wooden nesting dolls, Matryoshka dolls, depicting world leaders and celebrities are displayed for sale on Feb. 13 at a gift shop on tourist-oriented Arbat street in downtown Moscow.

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Seeing global change without the Western lens

Simultaneous disruptions offer a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the deep transformation of global institutions and ideas.

2 days ago

A villager affected by flash floods walks amongst a pile of log debris on Dec. 2, 2025, in Tukka village, Central Tapanuli regency, North Sumatra. The death toll from floods and landslides that have struck Indonesia's Sumatra island since late November has risen to 712, the National Disaster Management Agency said on Dec. 2.

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Sumatra’s floods are not just nature’s fury, Indonesia must act together

To prevent similar disasters in the future, regular audits of plantation, mining, and logging permits, especially in upstream watersheds, are needed to ensure that land-use decisions support ecological protection.

2 days ago

A participant takes the 2025 Computer-Based Written Exam for the National Selection-Based Test (UTBK-SNBT) at Diponegoro University (UNDIP), Tembalang, Semarang, Central Java, on April 30, 2025.

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Beyond the theories: What Indonesian classrooms need

Indonesia possesses the capacity not merely to catch up with the West, but to forge its own distinctive path forward.

2 days ago

Villagers use a makeshift cable car to cross the river on Dec. 2, 2025, after the bridge was destroyed by a flash flood in Bireuen, Aceh.

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Governments need to prepare for more frequent large floods

Governments and experts need to consider both the frequency and size of floods to better prepare for future ones.

2 days ago

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When sovereignty turns into a service

How much control can a state truly exercise over its digital space when the core architecture of the internet is owned and operated by foreign private corporations?

2 days ago

Rescue teams work in a search and rescueoperation in an area hit by deadly landslides following heavy rains in Sibalanga, North Tapanuli, North Sumatra, on Nov. 29, 2025.

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Sumatra disasters reveal our climate policy failures

These disasters underscore that Indonesia’s ecological, political and institutional systems are no longer adequate for the climate realities of today.

4 days ago

A woman walks on Sept. 20, 2024 across the dried-up bed of the Bendo Reservoir in Ponorogo, East Java, which has been hit by severe drought.

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Why a just land transition needs real funding

Up to 40 percent of our planet’s lands are degraded and deteriorating, jeopardizing the health and livelihoods of more than 3 billion people.

3 days ago

Flood-affected residents walk along a muddy road in Kuala Simpang village in Aceh Tamiang, North Sumatra on Dec. 2, 2025.

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ASEAN floods 2025: Governance at a crossroads

The flooding that peaked last month across the region illustrates a fundamental truth: disaster risk reduction is inextricably tied to governance, including economic policies, and ASEAN must tackle climate issues as a collective agenda.

3 days ago

An offshore support vessel approaches the Cidade de Caraguatatuba MV27, a floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel deployed for TotalEnergies’ production activities in the Lapa Field, off the Brazilian coast near Rio de Janeiro on Oct. 25, 2025.

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New OPEC+ quotas ignite spending surge

The new MSC mechanism for setting output baselines from 2027 looks set to spur investment via a more equitable and transparent capacity measurement system, leading to a more sustainable market.

3 days ago

A truck loaded with a donation of oxygen concentrators on March 8, 2021, from the Tanoto Foundation leaves a freight depot at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Banten.

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Philanthropies shift focus to scale, transparency, measurable outcomes

Philanthropies can begin by designing learning systems that move beyond counting outputs to understanding outcomes.

3 days ago

Former executives of state-owned ferry operator PT ASDP Ferry Indonesia, namely president director Ira Puspadewi (second right), planning and development diretor Harry Muhammad Adhi Caksono (third left) and commercial and service director Muhammad Yusuf Hadi, walk into the courtroom of the Jakarta Corruption Court in Jakarta ahead of their verdict hearing on Nov. 20, 2025.

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How presidential clemency fuels impunity

Prabowo’s increasingly reckless use of pardons reflects a troubling pattern of presidential overreach.

3 days ago

Rescuers carry a body bag of a victim recovered on Friday from an area hit by flash floods following heavy rains in Malalak district, Agam regency, West Sumatra.

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Sumatra floods: A test of national coordination, not just status

Indonesia has real-time disaster maps using crowdsourced reports and a national portal for disaster risk reduction, but they lack integration

5 days ago

A fisherman parks his fishing boat on Nov. 11, 2025, in Kupal village, on Bacan Island, at coastal area in South Halmahera regency, North Maluku.

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The triple-return ocean economy

Advancing regenerative ocean solutions provides a hedge against systemic instability by protecting one of Earth’s most powerful stabilizing forces.

4 days ago

A woman walks among tree trunks on the shore on Sunday following deadly flash floods and landslides, in Padang, West Sumatra. The death toll from floods that hit Indonesia this week has reportedly risen to more than 400 people.

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The early warning that Sumatra never received

In the event of disasters, what protects people is not a perfect environment, but a reliable flow of information and a clear structure of action.

4 days ago

President Prabowo Subianto receives flowers from the Indonesian diaspora on September 20 upon his arrival at a hotel in Manhattan, New York, where he stayed during his visit to the United States. Prabowo delivered his speech at the United Nations General Assembly’s general debate on September 23.

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Citizenship without certainty

The Global Citizenship is commendable initiative but it lacks legal certainty, professional security and a genuine sense of belonging that can convince Indonesian diaspora to return home.

5 days ago

Protesters take part in an anti-corruption rally on Nov. 30, 2025, along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue in Quezon City, Metro Manila.

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Outrage alone won’t save the Philippines

Democracies move slowly; but when paired with civic education, vigilance and public participation, their institutions stand a better chance of surviving and renewing themselves.

4 days ago

This photo taken on July 17 and released on July 18 by Agence Kampuchea Presse (AKP) shows military police personnel looking at computers, smartphones and other equipment seized during a raid on a scam center in Kandal province, Cambodia.

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ASEAN inaction on cybercrime poses a risk to regional security

If left unaddressed, these criminal networks will not only destabilize individual member states but also threaten the credibility, security and economic future of the ASEAN as a whole.

4 days ago

A health worker examines a resident’s chest X-ray on Nov. 11, 2025, at the Cibodasari Puskesmas (community health center) in Tangerang, Banten.

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Funding gap looms, will progress against AIDS, TB, malaria suffer?

However, with global funding pledges falling short of the target required to sustain health programming, how can countries, including Indonesia, win their goal to end AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria as global health threats?

4 days ago

A vehicle rides past stacks of cargo containers on July 7, 2025, at the Jakarta International Container Terminal at the Tanjung Priok Port in North Jakarta

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ASEAN and East Asia’s response to a fragmenting global economy (2 of 2)

Cross-pillar coordination within ASEAN and acceleration of all integration initiatives should become the main agenda, while at the same reviving ASEAN’s role in the greater Asia region, and Indo-Pacific.

6 days ago

A mosque is surrounded by residual mud and standing water on Nov. 30, 2025, after a flash flood in Meureudu, the administrative seat of Pidie Jaya regency in Aceh.

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The disastrous trap of Indonesia’s extraction strategy

The recent series of disasters that hit Sumatra illustrate the worsening collective outcomes Indonesia risks if it continues to choose the wrong option as posited in the classic game theory problem of the prisoner's dilemma.

5 days ago

Students take part in an Indonesia Gelap (Dark Indonesia) rally on Feb. 17, 2025, in front of the East Java Legislative Council in Surabaya.

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Rehabilitating and reconstructing the republic

Indonesia can take a page out of its own playbook for rehabilitating Aceh and Nias after the 2004 tsunami and apply it to the institutional tidal wave that is threatening all citizens as well as the future of the republic.

5 days ago

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Why cyclones have hit Southeast Asia so hard

While we cannot say for certain if climate change can be linked to the intense storms that caused devastation in countries across Southern Asia this year, they do indicate the advent of unknown conditions.

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