COMMENT | When I arrived in Malaysia with my family almost five years ago, we lived in another world.

Covid-19 had the country and much of the world in its firm grip. We spent our first two weeks in quarantine and lived then under the lockdown, and had to wait for another year to discover our beautiful new host country.

Nobody imagined at that time what turmoils the world would be exposed to shortly after.

The assault on the Capitol in Washington DC, the coup d’état in Myanmar, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the massacre by Hamas, the relentless answer by Israel, the tragedy in Sudan, the turbulences of the markets as a result of the US tariff policies, to name just a few.

Instead of cooperating to cope with the crises which really threaten our species, such as global warming, wildlife extinction and the plastic flood in our oceans, some decision makers frivolously decided to add on new calamities.