On March 4 the International Criminal Court indicted Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The very next day Bashir expelled international and national aid organisations from Darfur. And it has been four weeks since Arab leaders, knowing all of this, in their words, "stressed our solidarity with Sudan and our rejection of the ICC decision," writes Jody Williams, 1997 Nobel Peace Prize laureate for her work to eliminate landmines and Chair of the Nobel Women's Initiative.

Before an end of the US embargo of Cuba became even remotely conceivable, certain major international developments had to take place: the profound political shift in Latin America, the moving election of the first black president of the United States (a man, moreover, committed to change in its widest sense), and the financial and economic cataclysm that has shaken the capitalist system to its roots, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a dozen languages.

While the front pages report on the billions of dollars developed countries are pumping into their largest banks, and rising unemployment and lagging growth in the industrialised world, information on the recession in the other two thirds of the planet is scant and fragmentary, writes Mario Lubetkin, Director General of IPS news agency.

The new Shi'ite Personal Status Law recently passed in Afghanistan legalises rape within marriage and officially relegates women to second class citizens; it is a barefaced denial of human rights that needs to be condemned loudly, unequivocally and universally, writes Emma Bonino, vice-president of the Italian Senate.

Cubans are placing their hopes not in the G7 or G20 meetings, or in possible crisis-driven modifications of the global capitalist system, but rather in the social and economic changes announced by the government two years ago, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a dozen languages.

As the global economic crisis continues to unfold, it is having severe effects on international trade. UNCTAD estimates that merchandise exports from developing countries could decline by 15.5% this year. At the regional level, we expect export growth to shrink by 16.8% in Asia, 12.5% in Africa, and 10% in Latin America, writes Supachai Panitchpakdi, Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

The G20, comprised of a tiny fraction of the world's nations, is not the best place to work out the details of how to address the multiple global crises the world faces. The details need to be addressed at the UN, which has 192 member states, writes Kumi Naidoo, co-chair of Global Call to Action Against Poverty.

The financial meltdown generated by Wall Street and the "too big to fail" culture of global money-centre banks and financiers is generating local initiatives and demands to decentralise and democratise finance, writes Hazel Henderson, author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy (2006), president of Ethical Markets Media, an independent social enterprise covering local economies, new currencies, and the growing green sectors.

If ever an international conference was bound to fail, it is the coming G20 meeting in London, billed as a 'new Bretton Woods' that would forge a coordinated global response to the developing depression and create a new order of global economic governance, writes Walden Bello, professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines at Diliman, president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition, senior analyst at the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South.

The G8 leaders meeting early July must address a crisis resulting from a sharp decline in investment in agriculture, Oxfam demands in a new study.