Palestinian liberation
The ongoing genocide in Palestine remained a key focus of TNI’s work in 2024. In a series of seven articles, we invited scholars and activists to reflect on the Palestinian liberation struggle and its reverberations around the world, from Africa to Asia to Latin America. The series featured articles connecting Palestine’s anti-colonial struggle with past and present struggles in Vietnam, Algeria, China and Sudan. The series also provided incisive analysis of the inextricable connection between fossil capitalism, ecocide and genocide in Palestine, attracting significant attention on social media, with tens of thousands of viewers.
In other work, we placed Israel’s war and occupation of Palestine in the context of energy deals. With the article Pipeline to genocide: BP’s oil route to Israel, a collaboration between TNI, Shado Magazine and Energy Embargo for Palestine, we described how energy corporations are fuelling the machinery of war. The article, which honed in on the history of BP in Israel and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, revealed how settler-colonialism is central to the continued extraction of oil in the Middle East. Another article focused on Israel’s gas deals, including one with the EU, which serve to normalise and sustain the country’s brutal occupation of Palestine. At the UN climate talks in Baku, we drove home the message that fossil fuels are powering genocide, including in actions of the Global Energy Embargo for Palestine campaign, and in a press conference on militarism, war and climate justice. Our interventions were covered widely in the media, including interviews by TRT-Spanish, Democracy Now, Associated Press, L’orient du Jour and Palestine News Network, and a clip that went viral, reaching more than 20,000 people after being picked up by Al Jazeera Documentary. A variety of speaking engagements in the UK and Ireland reached hundreds of activists, helping to strengthen understanding of the war against Palestine as a climate and environmental justice issue.
Throughout the year, we urged immediate action to end Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, including in an article examining the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) ruling on South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, which received more than 60,000 impressions on social media. With the report Partners in Crime, we showed how the EU’s ongoing support for Israel – including funding of research projects, export of arms and military cooperation – makes the EU complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The report was widely shared with social movements and on social media, receiving hundreds of thousands of impressions and coverage in major media outlets, including the EU Observer, El Salto, Al Jazeera, and others. We also took our message directly to EU decision-makers, including at a hearing in the European Parliament and in a letter to EU decision-makers signed by a coalition of over 200 European civil society groups, where we called for the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
The costs of militarisation, the joy of peace
With cutting-edge research, TNI is bringing to light the profound social and environmental costs of increased militarisation. In 2024, on the occasion of NATO’s 75th anniversary, we co-published a new briefing, Climate in the Crosshairs, which summarised and updated previous research showing how increased military spending diverts finance from climate action, increases greenhouse gas emissions, and consolidates an arms trade that is fuelling instability. At the invitation of the EU Observer, we published op-eds critiquing NATO’s two percent of GDP spending target, and the proposal for an EU Defence Commissioner. TNI’s work on climate and climate militarism was picked up in major media, including Al Jazeera, Euronews, The Guardian, El Espactador, Die Tageszeitung and other smaller outlets such as the Irish Examiner, Euronews.
TNI continues to play a key role in connecting climate and peace movements, and strengthening their strategies at the intersection of the two issues, including as co-convener of the International Working Group on Arms, Militarism and Climate Justice, which involves over 50 organisations worldwide. In September, we conducted a social media campaign as part of the International Working Group’s Global Week of Action for Peace and Climate Justice, which featured 58 events in 16 countries. A TNI video about the military’s impact on climate change was watched more than 3,800 times and gathered more than 400 engagements. Other social media posts during the week had more than 9,500 views and gathered more than 570 engagements.
In cooperation with diverse allies, including International Peace Bureau and Transform! Europe, we hosted a six-week peace education webinar series focused on neutrality and non-alignment in the 21st century. Designed to reach a wide audience of peace activists, civil society organisations, academics and students, the series provided a comprehensive examination of neutrality, including consideration of current practices and challenges. In April, we co-organised and attended a four-day Neutrality Congress in Bogotá, Colombia which drew over 100 people from 25 countries. Delegates were received by political and government leaders from Colombia. The event was the first of its kind globally, and a promising effort to revive a non-aligned, active neutrality movement from the Global South.
We were also pleased to participate in two important events in the Irish parliament on the question of EU militarism. At the first event, TNI was invited to comment on how the expansion of the EU as a military union encroaches on Ireland’s neutrality policy. At the second event, a parliamentary committee examined the legality of EU public money being channelled directly to arms companies. TNI spoke as an expert during the hearing’s opening panel. Coverage of the hearing made the front page of the Irish Times. Later in the year, in the run-up to the general election, we published an influential policy briefing aimed at protecting Ireland’s policy of neutrality and challenging the government’s flawed rationale for dismantling Ireland’s ‘Triple Lock’ safeguards for overseas military deployment.
Strengthening local civil society in Myanmar
For decades, TNI has worked to promote peace and justice in Myanmar. Despite ongoing military rule and armed conflict, we continue to support communities, CSOs and local governments in Myanmar’s ethnic territories to develop and implement sound policies – particularly on land, gender, and drugs – and to share these across territories. Through diverse trainings and awareness-raising activities, we are helping pave the path toward a future federal democracy backed by the ‘5Rs’ of recognition, restitution, redistribution, regeneration and representation.
TNI shares research and critical analysis with a wider audience, in Myanmar and globally, to keep people informed about key issues and developments in the country. A new comprehensive guide on Myanmar brings together decades of TNI insights into diverse social and political issues. New additions in 2024 include an exploration of the creation of new federal constituent units, an account of the displacement and suffering of Pa-O communities caused by renewed conflict in their territories, and an analysis of the rapidly shifting military and political dynamics in Arakan. We also shed light on Lahu food systems and customary land use practices, and the current political and social challenges facing the Lahu people from the perspective of a young Lahu activist. In response to the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar, including terrible floods in September, TNI provided emergency support for CSOs and internally displaced people in 2024, including medical training, safe houses, transportation, food, basic medicine and media support.
