The President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has called for drastic parliamentary reform including abolition of the Senate and a return to a unicameral legislature, mirroring the single-chamber Supreme Council of the early post-independence years. President Tokayev made the call on 8th September as he delivered his annual address to the nation before the Kazakh parliament. In his speech, Tokayev touched on topics as varied as artificial intelligence, electric scooters, inflation, nuclear power development, the scandalous behavior of women, and the need to shift to a unicameral parliament via a future constitutional referendum.

The agreements reached in the US-mediated summit of the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders in Washington on August 8 are poised to fundamentally reshape the region's future. Particularly, the deal concerning the Zangezur corridor – rebranded as the “Trump Route for Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP) – holds significant geopolitical importance. If implemented, the TRIPP agreement would deal a severe blow to the regional standing of Russia and Iran. More importantly, it would pave the way for a strategic U.S. presence in this critical geography. This outcome represents a success that few would have predicted for the United States, especially for the Trump administration, given the region's notoriously complex and volatile geopolitics.

Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab made history at the Venice Film Festival, continuing the rise of Palestinian cinema on the world stage, writes William Mullally, Arts & Culture Editor of the UAE newspaper, The National. The Oscar-nominated Tunisian director's latest effort received a record-setting 24-minute standing ovation on Wednesday (3 September), before winning the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize on Saturday (8 September). The film, which The National's review said “will break you”, reconstructs the death of five-year-old Palestinian Hind Rajab, who was killed in Gaza city last January alongside four cousins, her aunt and uncle, and two paramedics who attempted to rescue her after the family's car came under fire from Israeli forces. Hind was trapped for hours in the vehicle while on the phone with the Palestinian Red Cross. When paramedics finally reached her, both she and the rescuers were dead. Reports later concluded an Israeli tank had likely fired more than 300 bullets into the vehicle. Hind's voice recording from the call is used in the film. Shooting the project over three weeks in Tunisia last November with Palestinian performers, Ben Hania first went to Hind's mother to seek permission to use the voice recording rather than dramatise it, she tells The National. “Hind’s mother told me something about the voice of her daughter: 'It should be heard, and not be forgotten,'” she recalls. While critics have questioned the ethics of using the girl’s plight for dramatic purposes, with Variety accusing Ben Hania of “tear-jerker tactics”, the filmmaker makes no apologies for using Hind’s own voice, rather than that of an actress. “The voice of this little girl can make people uncomfortable. I can totally understand it, and that’s why I’m doing this movie. I’m not doing this movie to make people comfortable because Gazans are not having a comfortable life,” she says. The movie has garnered international attention to a level that few productions reach, with major Hollywood figures getting behind the project to amplify its message.   Both Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara, who signed on to the film as producers after the fact to help boost its reach, along with several other major names, walked the red carpet with the filmmaking team, holding up a photo of Hind as cameras flashed. As Ben Hania said in her acceptance speech on Saturday: “We all believe in the force of cinema. It is what gathers us here tonight, and what gives us the courage to tell stories that might otherwise be buried.” The film is not the only Palestinian effort to garner international attention of late, as Israel's aggression in Gaza continues to turn the eyes of the world to Palestinian stories. this week, as 1,300 major names in the film community worldwide, including Mark Ruffalo, Olivia Colman and Josh O'Connor, are making permanent pledges to boycott working with Israeli film institutions that are “complicit in genocide”. Palestinian cinema has reached one major milestone after another, and as support grows, that streak should continue long into the future.

LINKS Europe is pleased to announce the launch of the campaign Landmine Free South Caucasus 2025. This will be the fourth Landmine Free South Caucasus campaign that LINKS Europe is co-ordinating since 2019, and like previous editions, the campaign will be regional, involving Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, and will have five official languages: Armenian, Azerbaijani, Georgian, Russian and English. LINKS Europe will work with stakeholders in the three countries in the delivery of the campaign. The campaign will run from 1 September to 15 December. The first part, from 1 September to 15 November, will be largely informative, using media and social media, whilst engaging with decision makers and civil society in the three countries. In the second part of the campaign, from 15 November to 15 December, the focus this year will be on the human and economic costs of landmine contamination. The Campaign will again mark 30 November as the Day of Solidarity with the victims of landmines and other remnants of war in the South Caucasus. A spokesperson for LINKS Europe said this year the campaign takes special significance following the progress in the Armenia-Azerbaijan Peace Process and the historic meeting between the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders, together with the US president in the White House on 8 August. For six years, between 2018-2024, LINKS Europe worked on landmine issues in a very difficult political context, but always insisted that a regional approach was necessary for successful mine action in the South Caucasus. It consistently held that mine action could serve as a confidence-building measure in the region. Landmine Free South Caucasus 2025 will again push these ideas, but the context has changed, and the chance of success is now higher.