News from our Global Network

The European region’s own annual reports and meeting minutes now form an unbroken record from 2008 to 2016, with a further report from the pandemic year of 2020. They show chapter numbers rising and falling with the times, and leadership passing from one volunteer to the next: Rolf Dahlberg, Valeria Magistrelli and Richard “Chalks” Corriette are among the Regional Chairs who carried the European network forward across this period.

In June 2026 the historian Rutger Bregman published an essay and video essay under the title “An Inconvenient Truth About AI”. His argument, addressed mainly to progressive readers, is that artificial intelligence is advancing faster than most commentators are willing to admit, and that decisions about safety, transparency and who benefits are being taken while the public looks the other way.

Kindness is also, word for word, the first stated objective of HATE-LESS, a European project that sets out to combat hate speech and disinformation through media literacy, critical thinking and participatory storytelling. Our chapter in Tallinn is one of its five partners.

Public debt is the money governments owe to lenders at home and abroad. In 2024 it reached a record 102 trillion US dollars worldwide, close to the value of everything the world produces in a year. The International Monetary Fund puts it at just under 94 per cent of global output in 2025 and expects it to pass 100 per cent by 2029, its highest level since 1948.

PTPI has spent much of 2026, our 70th anniversary year, rebuilding the structures that hold the organisation together: governance, finances, safeguarding, digital infrastructure. That work matters, but it is not why any of us joined. The next step is to move the rebuilding into rooms, cafes and homes where people can actually meet.

We see the images repeatedly. An overcrowded boat crossing the English Channel. People attempting the dangerous journey from North Africa towards Spain.

Forty-eight nations. Three host countries. More than 6.8 million spectators, the highest attendance in World Cup history, with fans from 210 countries and territories in the stands and broadcast records falling in market after market. For nearly six weeks this summer, flags were everywhere.

SIPRI estimates that the world spent US$2,887 billion (EUR 2,540 billion) on its militaries in 2025, measured at market exchange rates. Separately, the Institute for Economics and Peace estimates that peacebuilding and peacekeeping expenditure came to US$49.2 billion, just 0.5 per cent of military expenditure when both are calculated in its purchasing-power-parity methodology.

Right now, parliaments are debating how fast to rearm. People are protesting in the streets of cities across Europe and beyond, angry at governments that simultaneously claim poverty while pledging billions more for weapons. The rhetoric of threat and counter-threat dominates every news cycle.

There is a particular kind of human encounter that gets almost no attention. It is not a friendship. It is not a romantic connection. It is not a professional relationship. It has no name in everyday language.

The US spends hundreds of billions every year teaching children how to read, write and calculate. But what about kindness? In some places, kindness is now a subject in school — and a remarkable free programme is making it possible for educators everywhere.

I have been fortunate to work in worlds where the improbable encounter is almost a professional hazard. Community building, citizen diplomacy – the art of ordinary people building trust across borders, no title required – logistics at a global scale. These are environments where the unexpected introduction is less an exception and more a feature of the landscape.