Forgotten Stories of the Global South

Volume XXII.III

Not every story goes untold because it lacks witnesses. Many go untold because the structures that determine what counts as news, editorial priorities, geopolitical interests, the economics of global media, quietly decide they do not. They are decisions, shaped by the epistemological hierarchies that ask, implicitly and persistently, whose knowledge counts. This winter issue of The Observer, “The Forgotten Stories,” is our attempt to push back against that sorting.

In the months between December 2025 and February 2026, transformative political and humanitarian developments unfolded at the edges of international attention. Sexual violence was weaponised in the mines of eastern DRC. M23 consolidated control while the Global North continued consuming the minerals funding the violence. Iran’s protest movements pressed against the walls of a regime with deep historical roots and deeper repressive capacity. A multinational security mission in Haiti struggled under the weight of unclear mandates and inadequate resources, revealing the hollow architecture of outsourced intervention. European political actors grappled with what it means to build a continental order whose peace has always been contingent on a guarantor now looking elsewhere. And Alaska, vast, strategic, overlooked, continued to practise a form of political pluralism that the rest of the continent would do well to understand. In this issue, contributors have approached these stories with the analytical care they deserve.