Maria del Mar Pageo is not a woman who startles easily. Born in Almería in 1961, she is a doctor by profession, but her real education in human vulnerability and solidarity has come through four decades of service with the Red Cross. She joined as a young volunteer and has experienced every facet of the organisation, from grassroots youth work to the highest national leadership, becoming its president in 2023. She describes these three years as intense, marked by a peculiar beginning when the effects of the pandemic were still visible, followed by a series of major emergencies that tested…

Manipur has become a place where the word “conflict” is no longer enough to capture the pain. What began as an eruption of violence between the Meitei and Kuki communities in May 2023 has since widened into a more tangled, more dangerous landscape. In the midst of this, a new layer of political and ethnic tension is being laid down, one that involves armed groups, peace talks, and the fragile trust between communities that have long lived side by side in the hill districts. The Kuki National Organisation, or KNO, an umbrella body that represents a number of armed Kuki…