Yet among those of us from the former Yugoslavia, discussions had a habit of returning to familiar territory – BAD GOVERNANCE.

Someone would mention a new tax for entrepreneurs or a municipal parking fee, and within minutes, we would conclude that people are being robbed of their money for what they ( don’t) get.

Governments are wasteful, they buy new cars and new villas and make new deals that citizens know nothing about. Public services are poor, landfills are unmanaged, roads and highways are unfinished, hospitals are in decay, science is pushed out of the public sphere, and new investments are distant from what communities want and need.

Nobody needed convincing. We could all easily list a number of examples of the same story.

A few days after returning to Vienna, I found myself thinking about those conversations while walking through a park near my apartment.

The park is new, or rather, it is newly reborn.

Until recently, the site had been occupied by an old hospital complex. Almost three years ago, the city announced plans to transform it into a mixed residential development, combining private housing with Vienna’s famous social housing system, along with public facilities and green space.

Before construction began, there was a series of consultations with residents.

By pure chance, I attended one.

The meeting took place on the site itself, in the park. I was expecting a handful of activists, but instead, a few dozen people turned up.

Young parents pushing strollers, elderly couples, dog owners, and cyclists. People who had lived in the neighbourhood for forty years and people who had arrived six months earlier.

Everyone seemed to have an opinion.

“If there were to be a kindergarten, it should remain affordable,” said a young mom with a stroller. Two young men wanted to know if there was to be a sports hall. District representatives were answering the questions.

Then came the park. In recent years, Vienna has taken tons of initiatives to make the city greener, at this point visibly greener, by seizing concrete blocks of the streets and creating green islands. In that respect, this park was a gem to be treasured.

Annette, an energetic woman in her early 60ies, introduced herself as a community representative, saying that she was born in Vienna, lived in 4 different districts, and would like to stay in this one as long as possible. Then she unfolded a large map.

Every tree on the site had been individually marked. Red, blue, green. Their location, their species, their size. Red for the large, beautiful grown-up trees. Blue for mid-size. Green for the young ones.

Then Anette explained that the residents‘ request is simple – every existing tree should remain, but for the park to reach its full potential, more trees must be added. There was a number on the map. Fifteen new grown-up trees were to be added to the park, each at least 7 years old.

Wow, wow, wow, I could not believe what I was witnessing.

The map had other notes. A playground, sports equipment for an open-air gym, a dog area, and drinking water stations. Twenty-eight new benches and two leisure swings.

And then, and this is where I began to feel genuinely disoriented, the discussion moved to materials and colours.

Not only should there be benches. The residents wanted to decide what kind of benches to have. Wood or metal? Natural tones or something brighter? What materials should the playground structures use? Should the climbing frames be wood? They should be wood.

What???

Is this for real? Who are these people?

The meeting lasted almost two hours. Details were agreed. Representatives from the district took notes, questions were answered, and suggestions were recorded.

I left utterly impressed but also unconvinced.

Part of me thought this whole thing was designed to create the appearance of consultation before developers and the city did whatever they intended to do anyway.

Construction took a bit longer than expected. Then this spring, the construction fences started disappearing. In the final weeks, enormous trucks arrived carrying fully grown trees. Oaks, willows, and pine trees. Soon afterwards came the playgrounds.

Beautiful wooden climbing frames, swings, small labyrinths, and benches.

Then one morning, a notice appeared in all buildings, announcing the official handover of the completed development. Residents were invited to attend, and district representatives will attend.

Curious, I went. The crowd gathered near the park entrance. I recognised Anette, but this time certain Jonas was representing the residents. The district person welcomed everyone and said that the facilities will be opened shortly, and residents are invited to inspect if the works are to their satisfaction in the next few weeks. Today, however, we want to inspect the park and open it- he said. Then he invited Jonas, who pulled out the map, the dotted map from almost three years earlier.

And then something extraordinary happened. Residents moved into the park and began checking everything, literally.

The old trees?

All are preserved and well kept. Check!

New trees? Jonas counted fifteen new trees, all marked with a new number tag – Check!

Benches? Twenty-eight new benches -Check!

Playground equipment? Counted individually – Check!

Materials? Checked.

Colours? Checked.

This little convoy of residents moved through the park exactly as it had years before, moving from point to point on the map.

For nearly an hour, residents verified the project item by item.

I was utterly shocked. Never, ever in my life have I seen anything remotely similar.

At the end, district representatives thanked everyone for their patience during this construction, for their engagement, and for helping shape the final result.

The park was officially opened.

In the days that followed, there were open-air events, children’s programmes, sports tournaments, and community gatherings. Families moved into their new homes. The kindergarten opened. Life slowly filled the spaces that had existed only as coloured markings on a map a few years earlier.

I had grown up believing that public consultations were decorative, that plans existed to be ignored. The residents in my district clearly believed something else.

They believed that public space belonged to them.

Most remarkably, they believed that if something was written down, agreed upon, and paid for through public money, it should actually happen.

And then they actually checked.

Every tree.

Every bench.

Every swing.

The conversations in Cres returned to me.

All governments can perform well when citizens expect them to.

For many, raised in the ruins of broken institutions, disappointment comes naturally. Citizens learn to expect nothing. What shocked me most that afternoon was witnessing an entire community that had no habit of lowering its expectations.

My father was born in 1945, in the wreckage fascism left behind.
He has seen socialism, war, reconstruction, privatisation, nationalism, globalisation, the European dream, and the decline of the European dream.

As long as I can remember, we have discussed politics and current affairs, and he is probably the reason I started watching and even enjoying the news from a young age. On September 11th, 2001, we watched the news together in Sarajevo. I remember his face froze as those jets hit the twin towers. He kept on saying: "Nothing will be the same ever again."

In many ways, he was right. Months later, the United States launched its war on terror and invaded Iraq. Millions would die. The world was changing before our eyes.

Years later, as I began traveling, working abroad and moving through the kinds of circles that make a profession out of discussing and forecasting potential conflicts, elections and geopolitical shocks, my father developed a habit. Every so often, he would call and ask, where I thought the world was heading.

Who knows, dad, who knows? I would say.

But he would insist. And because I am his daughter, and because children never entirely stop wanting to appear smart in front of their parents, I would offer him a blend. A little of what diplomats and analysts are saying, a little of what think-tank people believe and a little from what I've learned in closed-door meetings and dinners with political pundits.

In 2022, he asked me if Putin would invade Ukraine.

I told him that most people I talk to feel fairly sceptical about the idea, and many believed Russia would not invade. They argued that it would be silly and too risky, and that Putin is, after all, a rational player.

"Mark my words, Putin will go after Ukraine," - he said.

A month later, as Putin launched the full-scale war, he reminded me of that conversation.

Clearly, my dad was not attending high-level meetings with top thinkers in the world, but he had a modest amount of accessible information, a long memory and a great deal of common sense.

Philip Tetlock’s work helps explain why that matters. In Superforecasting, Tetlock showed that experts in politics and public affairs are often far less accurate than their public certainty suggests. Many forecasts, even by highly credentialed people, turn out to be little better than guesswork. But Tetlock also found that a smaller group consistently performed better. Through the Good Judgment Project, he and his colleagues identified the habits that set these “superforecasters” apart: they think in probabilities, draw on diverse sources, collaborate well and, crucially, are willing to admit error and revise their views.

Then came Trump’s second presidency.

“Will he win?” my father asked.

Like many people, I was influenced by my own information bubble: conversations, meetings, podcasts, commentary, snippets of analysis accumulated over weeks and months. Among the voices I listened to was Rory Stewart, a former Harvard professor, a writer and a former British politician whose writing I like and who argued with confidence that the polls were not capturing the real picture and that Kamala Harris would win.

So I told my father some version of that. I talked about the data, the demographics, the algorithms, the mood.

He was unconvinced.

“He might win,” he said.

Then Trump won.

My father called.

“Have you seen this?”

“Yes,” I said. “Depressing.”

“What did Rory say?”- he asked.

Oh, dad, I don't know, he said he was wrong, I guess – all these pundits are often wrong, aren't they?

He laughed.

Over the years, I have come to suspect that my father's real advantage is not information. He does not know more than the experts. He knows less. Vastly less. He does not sit in closed door meetings. He has no access to intelligence assessments or strategic forecasts.

But he has lived long enough to recognise recurring patterns and use common sense.

That is perhaps why Francis Fukuyama has become such a useful figure in my mind. He is the emblem of a certain kind of intellectual confidence: the belief that events, properly understood, have a direction. His "end of history" thesis argued that liberal democracy had emerged as the final form of human government. The decades since democracies have hollowed out from within, and we have seen a steady surge of authoritarianism. He also initially supported the Iraq war, and decades on, he has acknowledged, in his own writing, that he had been too optimistic about freedom's inevitable spread.

So, why do we trust these pundits? Certainly not because they know it all. Of course they don’t. We trust them because they relieve us of the process of having to judge for ourselves. They make uncertainty sound manageable, reassururing us that someone, somewhere, has a framework. In reality, often, nobody does.

Common sense, by contrast, is terribly underdressed. We have spent so long training ourselves to crunch complexity that we sometimes forget simplicity may make more sense.

As I write this post, we are in the middle of a new global mess. Many wars are raging, from Ukraine to Sudan. Europe is anxious and unprepared. The USA is unpredictable. We are flooded with information. There has never been more data, more commentary, more forecasting, more maps, more war rooms, more explainers, more newsletters, and more men saying, "Let me be clear."

And still, we know remarkably little.

That may be the central embarrassment of our age. We thought information would save us from uncertainty. Instead, the sheer quantity of what we know can create the illusion that prediction must improve.

Sometimes the person who sees more clearly is simply the one least impressed by complex, eloquent explanations.

Which brings me back to my father.

He still calls and asks what is on the horizon. I still answer, the best I can. He is still more right than most pundits around. That may not make him a superforecaster. But it does make him harder to fool.

My son went on a six-day school ski trip to a wonderful place in Upper Austria with his friends. They are eleven and twelve, still children in so many ways, and yet already standing at that border where childhood begins to loosen its grip.

When he came back, he was full of stories, as children are when they have briefly lived in a world without parents. The school also imposed a full cell phone ban for the trip, so the separation felt more real than ever before.

He talked about the slopes and views and hotel, skiing, and the competition over who was best at what. There were a few broken arms, injured fingers, and the usual minor dramas that, of course, become major events when you are twelve. Then, in the middle of telling me all this, he mentioned almost casually that one of his friends, the one he shared a bunk bed with, had met a girl there, they got together and had spent most of the week skiing with her, and all that with my son’s help.

With your help, I asked. What do you mean?

Well, I was his “special adviser," – he replied.

A special adviser?

Oh dear, I thought, I hope he did not pick that word up from me.

Because in my world, a special adviser is someone appointed to advise a minister or president, pretending to advise them while everyone involved knows perfectly well that the powerful will do whatever they want regardless, and their job is obsolete. Special advisers are people you meet in government offices, not on school ski trips. Or so I thought.

But little did I know.

A special adviser, he explained, is also a trusted friend. And a trusted friend has a clear role. He helps his friend write letters to a girl. He helps him formulate what to say because, as my son said, “you know, mom, these things cannot be rushed and must be phrased properly.” He carries the letters back and forth. He delivers them. He waits for replies.

But, as he continued to explain, when the girl writes back, the trusted friend does not read the letter. That is private.

I was surprised on so many levels.

First, I was struck by the existence of letters themselves. Not texts. Not emojis. If I am honest, my son’s calls and text exchanges with me are usually made up of half-sentences, disappearing messages, and, at times, single-syllable words. And yet, I was now learning that these boys write letters. I had not realised this was still available to their generation.

I was then surprised by the level of attention involved.

My son told me he already knew the girl from primary school. He remembered, for example, that she was gluten intolerant and used to bring her own food to school. So, when he saw what was on offer during the trip, it immediately occurred to him that the usual snacks would not do. He suggested to his friend that they swap some of their coupons for free drinks and use them instead to get her gluten-free cookies at the hotel café. Apparently, this made quite an impression on her.

Again, a shocking revelation.

The patience. The effort. The seriousness with which they approached the whole endeavour.

We spend so much time thinking about what our sons will turn into, what they absorb, what they imitate, and what kind of men they will become. And often for good reason. The world offers them many poor examples.

But now and then, there is a story like this.

Two boys who understand that friendship means discretion. That words matter. That letters are, apparently, still cool. Boys who do not laugh at sympathy and care but participate in it.

And it also made me think about girls.

About how they expect letters and nice gestures, and refuse more quickly what they do not like. Perhaps this generation of girls is already teaching boys, without speeches and slogans, that affection includes attention, and attention includes respect.

Perhaps that is the real March 8 story.

Not that all is well. Not that equality has arrived. That would be a lie. If anything, many of women’s rights are rolled back, and that pendulum is still waiting to swing. But maybe what changes history is not only what women fight against, but also what younger generations of girls quietly begin to refuse.

It may be that the girls coming after us know better than we did and better than our grandmothers could. And it may be that, because they know better, they will insist on something better too: to be heard as fully as men, paid as fairly as men, respected as naturally as men, and appreciated for who they are.

The story goes back to April 2023. Only a few months after I had reached the Himalayas, or as far as over 5000 metres, I decided to try to reach the top of North Africa as well. Why not, I thought. The body was still willing, aclimatised, the ticket to Marrakesh already bought and Mount Toubkal was there, offering an entirely different landscape.

I will skip the part about finding a guide online who spoke only French, arranging the entire trip through Google translate, and then proceeding to speak exclusively French for the duration of the journey. My French is non-existent. You can imagine the fun. But that is not the story.

The real story begins downtown in Marrakesh, where I met a young French woman named Chloé while waiting for transport to the high Atlas mountains. She was in her early twenties, small in stature, blonde, and dressed in an incredible number of details: bracelets layered on both wrists and ankles, several small scarves loosely wrapped, brooches, pins, and tiny stuffed animal pendants pinned to her rucksack.

The arrangement was to wait for the transport at 6 a.m., not far from the souks. The minibus driver was late, so we talked while waiting. She told me she was from Paris, though not the Paris of postcards. Nothing fancy. She came from a family that had been struggling financially and never been able to afford travel, so she had promised herself she would try to see the world. Hiking Mount Toubkal seemed like an adventure within reach. It was a French-speaking environment and still wild enough to feel like a real departure. I should add that hiking Toubkal is incomparably less expensive than the Himalayas or anything similar, which also made sense.

On the bus to Imlil, a gateway village to the Berber settlements of the high Atlas, we talked for hours. About everything and nothing, travel, family, expectations, hiking. She was incredibly open, with a big, lovely smile, giggling all the time. I told her about my children and how I hoped they would grow up as open and curious about the world as she was. Just before we reached Berber villages, casually, she told me she had a rare condition.

She explained that she suffered from some kind of short-term memory loss. That tomorrow, she would only vaguely remember me and our conversation, if at all. And that this would happen again and again as we travelled together over the next few days. She asked me not to take offence. She wanted to prepare me. She told me her rucksack held a stash of notes and contact numbers in case something happened, though so far, nothing serious had.

I was surprised, of course. But also, deeply curious. I asked what that meant for daily life, school, friendships, and relationships. She explained that school had been difficult and that she had been partly educated at home. Friends, she said, she made easily, some stay around, others not. She had learned to live with it, saying this without any drama, without self-pity. Just as a fact.

At dawn on Mount Toubkal, the air is thin enough to make you aware of every breath. That April, the mountain was covered in an extraordinary amount of snow, at times more than forty centimetres deep. I was lacing my boots and crampons on the second day of the ascent when the young woman I had hiked with for eight hours the day before turned to me, smiled warmly, and asked my name. She introduced herself as Chloé, as if we were meeting for the first time.

In a way, we were.

Each morning began with a clean slate. On the first day, we stopped halfway to the refuge for exceptionally good oranges and fresh juice. The following day, when I mentioned them and said I hoped we would find them again, she had no memory of those oranges at all. And yet she was open, kind, warm, and ready to walk another long day with a stranger she believed she had just met.

I remember telling my children about this extraordinary encounter when I returned home, and then forgetting about it myself. But these days, those memories have come back to me.

We live in a world that is calibrated on continuity. We build identities out of past achievements, relationships out of shared memory, and legitimacy out of being known and recognised.

She had none of that scaffolding. And she moved through the world with incredible easiness.

What also struck me most was her kindness. Every morning, she chose to trust again. She greeted the world without suspicion, truly living in the present. In worlds like business or politics, people can spend entire lifetimes convinced that someone is always after them, a colleague, a group, a competitor, ready to take their place or undermine their work.

The next two days, Chloé and I spent on the floor of a single bunk-bed room, as there was a shortage of beds in Toubkal refuge Luis Neltner, the French alpine club, Casablanca section. I remember struggling to sleep, the noise, the smells, everything irritating me. She put on her small hat and slept like a child. On the summit day, we woke at 5 a.m. I had barely slept. She woke up, looked at us snuggled together in sleeping bags, and said, “I’m Chloé. What’s your name?” We introduced ourselves again, still wrapped in our sleeping bags, and then started the final climb.

She was almost an hour faster than me, rushing to the top and did not recognise me on the way down when I waved.

We parted ways the next day. She will not remember me. But I will remember her, not as a curiosity, but as an extraordinary young woman.

In a world obsessed with being seen and remembered, she is a great reminder that sometimes, a present is only thing we need. What she lacked in continuity, she made up for with openness, warmth, and kindness, moving through the world without fear.

My daughter, who is thirteen and attends one of Vienna’s Gymnasiums, came home from school the other day, visibly moved. She dropped her bag on the floor, sat on the couch, and stayed quiet for a while. When she finally spoke, she said she is confused, hurt, and sad, but also glad that she has discovered something.

What preceded was a geography class, she said, but not the usual kind. Instead of the usual stuff, the teacher had taken them on a journey of a migrant. Each pupil could choose where they came from: Western Africa, Ukraine, Syria, or Southeast Asia.

That first choice, the teacher explained, would shape everything that followed. Geography wasn’t just a place; it was skin colour, language, religion, and chance. Their origins determined everything: how they looked, how they prayed, how they would be received by the world. A geography in its most unforgiving form.

The pupils also had to choose their health condition, whether they began their journey strong, sick, weak, or with some form of disability, another element that determined their chances of survival long before borders entered the picture.

The second choice was gender. A man or a woman. That, too, would determine the road ahead, the dangers faced, the routes open or closed, the violence endured, the sympathy earned or denied.

The last choice was money. They could start their journey with anything from twenty to two hundred euros. The richer ones could pay smugglers more for safer routes. The poorer ones had to risk everything, trusting strangers who saw them as cargo.

The goal was simple, the teacher said: to reach Sicily, arrive on Europe’s southern shores, and apply for asylum. What happened along the way depended on a combination of chance, prejudice, climate, and the peculiar logic by which borders operate, granting meaning to some suffering and dismissing other kinds as administrative inconvenience.

In forty-five minutes, thirty children relived the experience of millions. Some stumbled early, lost in deserts or seas. Some paid smugglers who disappeared. Some were assaulted. Some were robbed. Others died of hunger, thirst, or exhaustion. A handful made it to Europe, only to be told their stories were not convincing enough. Poverty, insecurity, lack of opportunity, not urgent reasons, not tragic enough for protection.

My daughter didn’t make it either. She “died” halfway, somewhere between the sea and the border, of hunger and exhaustion. When she told me, I was moved beyond words. I thought of the painful reality of that experiment, about my daughter not surviving it, but most of all about the brilliance of the teacher who orchestrated it. What a rare, brave mind it takes to turn empathy into a geography class.

In a world where schools teach everything except what we might actually need, courage, imagination, empathy, here was someone who dared to give children an education in moral imagination.

I instantly wrote to thank her. It felt necessary, almost urgent. She had done in one lesson what entire policy frameworks pretend to do at great expense and with little conviction.

It reminded me of a story in The New York Times, about parents who raised a million dollars to keep an extraordinary teacher in their school. They argued that if someone could awaken minds, they were worth any sum. And if another extinguished curiosity with equal efficiency, perhaps it was worth raising another million to let them go.

Throughout my own education and later in my professional life, I’ve met countless education experts over the years, each with plans to “modernise” schooling. But none of them could design what that geography teacher managed in forty-five minutes. She created a world where learning was not about knowledge, but about so much more.

Sadly, empathy isn’t taught in schools. But sometimes, through imagination, a good teacher can bring it close enough.

The rest of the day, we talked about that experiment, what it did, and how other kids felt about it. Mom, she said, “I never knew geography could decide if someone lives or dies. I think I understand now why people leave, and why they cry when they arrive.”

What she had learned that day had nothing to do with geography and everything to do with humanity.

I was in my mid-twenties, just entering circles that were considered important and relevant, attending high-level conferences, closed-door sessions, and the like, when someone who loved me gave me a piece of advice that I didn't think much of at the time.

“Be careful who you end up with in a picture frame,” he said.

Back then, it sounded very dramatic, the kind of thing your parents might say when they think you’re moving too fast through life. I certainly didn’t think much of it.

Years later, I understood exactly what he meant. I began noticing faces from old photographs, taken at conferences, receptions, “historic” moments, only this time reappearing in headlines, court cases, and public scandals. Some had been judges, prosecutors, or ministers. Others were senior international officials who once set the tone of “good governance” in the post-conflict Balkans, before moving on to another war-torn country and repeating the cycle.

They were people who decided how our societies should function, who deserved funding, who were an ally, who wasn’t. Together, they governed big and small segments of our everyday lives, defining what justice looked like, how democracy should be rebuilt, and who was deserving of trust.

And yet, years later, many of them ended up in the disgraceful footnotes of history. Some for corruption, others for moral hypocrisy or hiding in some rabbit hole when their voice was so much needed, some simply for failing so spectacularly at what they once lectured others about. Looking back at those old photos, I realised how right that advice had been. “Be careful who you end up with in a picture frame.”

That memory came back to me one spring in Germany, a few years ago, during what was promoted as a high-level conference on the Western Balkans. In truth, it was little more than a polite exchange of ideas, three panels with predictable talking points, and the same faces making the same promises. Nothing transformative. Nothing that would be remembered.

Except for the photo sessions.

During one of the coffee breaks, I noticed a group of Balkan politicians hovering near the door, waiting for senior U.S. officials to finish their conversations. The moment one of them stepped aside, the Bosnians pounced, one by one, asking for a photo. The Serbians and Albanians followed. Jackets straightened, smiles rehearsed, one must admit, the choreography was perfect.

I watched with quiet amusement. It felt absurd, almost touching in its desperation. Why did they want those photos so badly? A day later, my social media feed was flooded with triumphant posts:

“Important bilateral meetings in Germany.”

“Firm support for my political efforts.”

“Strong partnerships reaffirmed.”

Really? All from a thirty-second encounter at the coffee machine? Wow.

It was a masterclass in transformation, how a quick snapshot becomes a narrative of legitimacy. A photo that lasted seconds became a claim to political relevance. Because in my world, the world of think tanks, policy forums, and international organisations, this ritual is universal. Being photographed next to power has become a form of currency. The closer you stand, the more you’re worth.

The photo is both proof of access and validation of existence. It says, I was there. Even when “there” means standing beside someone who wouldn’t remember your name by lunchtime. You may not have influence, but you have evidence that you brushed against it.

And social media turned this ritual into a profession. On LinkedIn and X, the caption is always the same: ‘Honoured to have met…” Networking becomes performance, and visibility replaces actual achievement.

I’ve seen people chase those moments as if their lives depend on it, and professionally, who knows, maybe they do.

And when I scroll through my own photos, I regret not having more of the people I genuinely admired, those I met during meetings with ministers, prime ministers, and presidents, who always understood and articulated things far better than their bosses. The project managers, assistants, and drivers, doing fieldwork that was nothing short of miraculous at the time, while their directors couldn’t even pronounce the countries they were posted in.

I should have taken those photos. But that’s how self-branding sneaks in disguised as participation and framed as impact.

This habit isn’t unique to politics or the NGO world. Not at all. It’s part of a broader addiction or validation through proximity. Yet the more we depend on borrowed importance, the more we hollow out our own.

I haven’t seen the man who gave me that advice for more than a decade, but I think of it quite often: “Be careful who you end up with in a picture frame.” Because one day, the frame might stay, but the meaning will change. What once looked like success may age into embarrassment. Some of those faces you once stood beside might become symbols of everything you fought against.

A week ago, I was invited to a discussion with a group of Syrian women visiting Vienna. Their country re-emerges from a long conflict, or just about, and the visit was planned to share some views and some experiences from the region that has faced war itself, so-called lessons learned. Minutes into the conversation, I felt a strange urgency to warn them, to pass on whatever truth could be rescued from our own experience. And yet, I also knew how impossible that was. We all must learn from our own ruins.

They asked about Bosnian women and their role in war and peace.
I told them that it was the women who kept the country breathing. They went to work when there was work, queued for food that rarely came, raised children, buried husbands, endured violence, and kept families whole by force of will alone.

Then one of them asked if those same women had been part of rebuilding the country afterwards, if they had been invited to shape the new institutions, and actively continued to build a society that was re-emerging.

That question stung. Because the truth could not have been further away. Women were not even acknowledged, let alone invited to take part. For the women who survived sexual violence, recognition came decades too late, and for some, it never came at all. The war was theirs to endure, but the peace was someone else’s to own.

And that someone was the new elites, the domestic ones wearing suits instead of uniforms, and the foreign ones carrying policy papers instead of weapons. Together, they announced the dawn of reform. Everything that had existed before was declared old, corrupted, inefficient, redundant: the administration, the judiciary, the education system, even our ways of thinking.
They called it modernisation.

The international organisations came in waves, each armed with a vision of what a “modern” country should look like.

What emerged was not the democracy that had been promised, but a system perfectly designed for paralysis. Wartime nationalist parties became entrenched, bringing with them patronage, corruption, and clientelism. They dismantled what remained of the old system.
An unjust transition, especially the chaotic privatisations, created an oligarchy with a vested interest in preserving the status quo. The factories that had once sustained entire towns were sold for one euro.

Political power became a mechanism for rewarding loyalists, controlling public companies, and maintaining divisive narratives that ensure a captive electorate. The result was not transformation but stagnation, a permanent transition that never quite ends.

Education was restructured into confusion and dragged to deterioration, a deliberate, not accidental deterioration. Education that does not aspire to create critical thinkers or informed citizens, but to secure ethnic identity above all else. Diplomas that can be bought around the corner and Universities without an address.

As I listened to the Syrian women, I felt fear that they did not yet see what was coming their way. That they could not yet grasp how what is coming their way will be nothing short of dispossession. How reconstruction, in the wrong hands, becomes a form of extraction.

I told them that the line between help and control is thin and often drawn in invisible ink. That the people who arrive with good intentions often leave with your wealth, your resources, and while they praise your resilience, they are quietly redesigning your society to serve someone else’s vision and interests.

And that they must know that not everything that existed before the war was bad, as much as that not everything imported after is good. But hey, nuance is the first casualty of peace, it disappears just when it’s needed most.

Looking back, I only hoped they would be cautious when the world comes to “rescue” their country, to listen, but not obey. To be sceptical. To listen, but not obey. To use their own wit, their own wisdom.

Because what is at stake after the war is not only the ruins of buildings, but the ruins of judgment, the ability to distinguish between generosity and theft, between advice and intrusion, between solidarity and possession.

And if they lose that, they will lose more than the war ever took.

Last night, I watched a principled young woman I know on television. Principled, yes. She was speaking about rejecting the unjust transition that so many countries close to my home have fallen into and now spin endlessly. A thirty-year-long transition where capitalism collects the gains, private companies take rivers and forests, and people are told to be thankful for the progress that effectively robs them. She had just organised a gathering of miners, men left alone, treated as burdens in a country “in transition.”

I watched it carefully. Then I watched it again with my husband. And intimately, I felt that the way she spoke about power, about returning power to the people, is something we urgently need back on the agenda. It resonated with the ideals of our childhood, ideals that built the country we no longer have.

She talked about privilege. She urged us to think of it and to question ourselves: Do we have privilege, do we use it, and what for?

She also brought up the matter of academic titles. She said she was not there as a PhD, that she never uses it, and that a homemaker should stand on equal footing with a professor, a master, a doctor, and speak. It was a reminder that the titles we wear, too often, become merely devices for hierarchy.

And she was right. Let’s talk about privileges. The academy instantly comes to my mind. The academy is perhaps the greatest concentration of unspent privilege we have. A class of people with extraordinary advantages, time, freedom, platforms, resources, and access. People paid to think, and to shape the public conversation. And yet, what is the return of this privilege? Most often, a cultivated silence. Nothing, zero, nada. Not all, of course, but many, perhaps too many.

Think about it. The most privileged minds choose irrelevance. They congratulate themselves for analysing yesterday’s injustices while staying silent about today’s. They guard their titles and careers. And when injustice roars outside, they retreat further inward, as if the walls of the university will protect them from history. For academics, courage is often carefully disguised as principled neutrality, forgetting that neutrality is a choice, and it is siding with the powerful.

But it would be too simple to say it is only the academics. They alchemise their fears over tenure, or reputation, into neutrality, okay, but what about the rest?

I thought of my own circles, friends, colleagues, myself included. We, too, carry lots of privilege in different forms. Some hold important positions in multinational companies, some run government departments, some publish books, some have voices, platforms, and money, some sit on panels that others will never be invited to. And yet, how many of us leverage this access for anything beyond the project of the self? How many of us choose not to “meddle” in other things, because it unsettles the balance of our own lives?

The miners who gathered in Bosnia to demand decent work and dignity certainly did their part. They used what little they had, staking their voices and bodies to defend a principle larger than themselves. But what about the rest of us?

The question is not whether we have privilege, of course, we do, we all do, in different forms. The question is whether we are willing to use it.

So, again, as she asked, what do we do with our privileges?

Maybe we should all watch that show again. And again. And remember, as Patti Smith once sang, that people have the power.

Patti Smith

I was dreaming in my dreaming

of an aspect bright and fair

and my sleeping it was broken

but my dream it lingered near

in the form of shining valleys

where the pure air recognized

and my senses newly opened

I awakened to the cry

that the people have the power

to redeem the work of fools

upon the meek the graces shower

it's decreed the people rule

The people have the power

The people have the power

The people have the power

The people have the power

Vengeful aspects became suspect

and bending low as if to hear

and the armies ceased advancing

because the people had their ear

and the shepherds and the soldiers

lay beneath the stars

exchanging visions

and laying arms

to waste in the dust

in the form of shining valleys

where the pure air recognized

and my senses newly opened

I awakened to the cry

The people have the power

The people have the power

The people have the power

The people have the power

Where there were deserts

I saw fountains

like cream the waters rise

and we strolled there together

with none to laugh or criticize

and the leopard

and the lamb

lay together truly bound

I was hoping in my hoping

to recall what I had found

I was dreaming in my dreaming

god knows a purer view

as I surrender to my sleeping

I commit my dream to you

The people have the power

The people have the power

The people have the power

The people have the power

The power to dream, to rule

to wrestle the world from fools

it's decreed the people rule

it's decreed the people rule

Listen

I believe everything we dream

can come to pass through our union

we can turn the world around

we can turn the earth's revolution

we have the power

People have the power

The people have the power

The people have the power

The power to dream, to rule

to wrestle the world from fools

it's decreed the people rule

it's decreed the people rule

we have the power

People have the power

we have the power...

It is a weird sentence to write, but here it is: Melania Trump got this one right.

For years, she existed in the public imagination as a former model in designer heels, orbiting her husband’s everlasting chaos, which made her either invisible or complicit, depending on whom you asked. Yet here she is, inserting herself into one of the most unbearable aspects of the war in Ukraine, the abduction of children by Russian forces, by sending a letter directly to Vladimir Putin.

Back in 2023, Ukraine’s top presidential adviser for children’s rights, Daria Herasymchuk, reported that nearly 14,000 children had been abducted and deported to Russia since the invasion began. Only 125 have been returned. At least 456 have been killed, and almost 900 have been injured. Since then, these children have been forced to live in places and with families that are not their own. And as if that were not enough, just days ago, news emerged that in Luhansk, Russian authorities created a “catalogue” of 294 abducted Ukrainian children, complete with filters for eye colour, hair colour, age, and temperament. Some were described as “obedient,” others as “not conflictive.” It is the grotesque bureaucratisation of stolen lives, an online marketplace of coercion masquerading as adoption.

One might argue, with good reason, that Melania’s gesture is symbolic, that letters written by former First Ladies carry no weight, and that Putin is unlikely to be swayed by the urgings of a woman the Kremlin regards as politically irrelevant. But here we are, and symbols matter, particularly in wars whose resolution is largely shaped as much by perception as by power.

To raise this issue is to pierce through the usual military vocabulary of territorial integrity, ceasefire, safety guarantees, and troop withdrawals. It reminds negotiators that behind every clause in a peace agreement, there are children who are already labelled, sorted, and described for the convenience of strangers.

And more importantly, that a peace agreement that overlooks them will be built on sand.

There are precedents for interventions like this. Eleanor Roosevelt, dismissed by many as “only” a First Lady, became one of the architects of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, formed under Argentina’s military dictatorship, transformed into a moral compass for a nation in denial about its disappeared.

True, such gestures did not end wars or topple dictators, but they certainly did the right thing where official diplomacy had collapsed.

Soft power is often dismissed as sentimental, yet it slips past the formal barriers of diplomacy. A letter from Melania Trump may not bring back a single child, but it forces the issue into the conversation. 48 hours after the letter had been handed to Putin, at the White House, Ursula von der Leyen immediately followed up, declaring that as a mother and grandmother, she believes every child must be returned. And there you have it, already, a letter has gained traction.

And in negotiations where maps and ceasefires dominate, the fate of abducted children may prove more relevant than anyone thought. Who knows, maybe her gesture may even embolden others, religious leaders, cultural figures, perhaps even estranged political spouses, to insist that peace talks confront the suffering of the youngest victims.

One should not exaggerate. Melania Trump has not suddenly become Eleanor Roosevelt, and Putin is unlikely to be swayed by her intervention. But here is the truth: every war is fought on two fronts: one of missiles, another of meaning. In the first, she is irrelevant. In the second, she has, for once, played a role.

And so, reluctantly but...credit where it is due. In war, unexpected messengers sometimes open doors that the official envoys cannot. If Melania Trump’s letter keeps the abducted children from being treated as expendable bargaining chips, then she will have done more than many seasoned statesmen.

Across the globe, you hear the same questions on loop: Why don’t young people want to have children? What would it take to make them start families again? What incentives are missing?

We hold summits and write position papers, and adjust tax breaks. The entire policies are built around the answers we imagine might be true.

And yet, I was reminded this week how rare it is that we do something simpler, and infinitely more illuminating. We rarely ask. Even less so, we listen carefully.

The lecture I’ve given was part of a fellowship programme in Sarajevo. The room was filled with young people from around the world, incredibly articulate, politically alert, and endlessly curious. They came from both affluent and less secure societies, shaped by vastly different ideas of what it means to build a future, let alone start a family. And when we began talking about the choices their generation is making, the room shifted, charged with energy and urgency.

“Why would I give a government another reason to control my body?” one young woman asked when we discussed family planning in conservative states. Her question was not rhetorical. She came from a country where abortion is banned. “What if something goes wrong, and my child is born with a disability. “The state isn’t there when things go wrong,” she said. “You’re on your own. There’s no support. No services.”

Some shared the resolute feeling of having made an active choice not to have children, not out of despair, but agency. “People assume we’re just selfish or depressed,” one young woman said. “But for many of us, this isn’t about doom. It’s about being honest with the world we live in.” “Neither my grandmother nor my mother had a choice to decide, so we should also celebrate small wins women made across the globe.”

“Some of my friends are choosing to have children,” a young man said. “They talk about it like it’s a vote of confidence in humanity.” Hope, in other words, becomes a demographic act.

One woman described how suggesting the idea of male contraception she discussed with her husband and shared views on, caused more backlash from women than from men.

Just lived realities were in that room: unstable housing, economic anxiety, and no patchy health insurance. And above all, the sense that the systems being built to support families aren’t built for the families we have now.

We also spoke about winners and losers in the demographic shifts. Are there any?

“Corporations are losing, capitalism is losing,” one student said, “because they just want people to reproduce, work, spend, and reproduce again, and healthy families are winning,”- “the ones who’ve made a conscious choice to have children, not because of the society’s pressure.

It’s an important distinction. In rural areas, some students noted, “people still marry young, have children early, and then divorce before they hit thirty. Not because they were foolish, but because no one ever asked them what they wanted. Society did. The church did. Their parents did. And the baby followed.?

And then there was this: the suggestion that the whole winners vs. losers framing may be wrong altogether.

“Maybe everyone’s losing,” one student said. “The states are losing people. The workers are losing protection. The elderly are losing care.”

It wasn’t a bleak conversation, though. It was refreshingly unafraid of complexity. These young people weren’t ideologues. They were simply making the case, with stunning clarity, that if we want better answers, we might begin with better questions.

So here’s one: Have you tried asking them?

Not about how many children they plan to have, but about how they live, what they fear, what kind of society they believe is worth contributing to. Demography isn’t just about numbers. It’s about stories. And if the policymakers tuned out of their talking points long enough to listen, they might find — as I did — that those stories contain a kind of wisdom no graph can show.

In North Macedonia, a country not short on political experimentation, a new idea is making the rounds: tax the childless. Not the billionaires, but the singles, the unmarrieds, the ones who haven’t reproduced.

It’s not the first time a personal decision has been recast as a national crisis.

Falling birth rates have become the new bogeyman of state policy across the globe. Japan is panicking. Russia is legislating morality. China is rolling back reproductive rights. And now, in the Balkans, a country of two million people imagines it can tax its way out of demographic decline. This echoes earlier scripts. If you can’t reward motherhood, you can always punish its absence.

North Macedonia is not alone. From Moscow to Skopije, governments are experimenting with increasingly aggressive and bizarre measures to encourage citizens to have more children. The proposals vary, but women are always at the centre. And this time as wombs.

In Japan, a right-wing politician recently suggested that women over 30 undergo hysterectomies (having their uteruses removed). He later said it was “just science fiction,” the kind written by novelists.

The backlash was swift, but the damage, the normalisation of these ideas, was already done.

In Russia, the government has banned the public promotion of a “child-free lifestyle.” If you think about not having children, best not to say it out loud.

China, once defined by its one-child policy, has reversed course, now urging more births. Maternity benefits have grown, but so have limits on abortion and contraception. The rhetoric is softer, but the pressure isn’t. Officials visit homes asking about pregnancy plans, and universities teach “positive views” on marriage and childbearing.

These policies share a blind spot. They ask: Why won’t young people have children? They do not ask: Why should they?

Women delay childbirth not out of whim, but because housing is costly, jobs are unstable, care is unpaid, men are rarely expected to share parenting, and the future looks uncertain. Infertility is ignored, and IVF is underfunded. Women are also more educated and mobile than ever, making the most of their youth.

It is not the wombs that are empty. It is the policies.

And yet, the blame is mostly focused on women. The unmarried, the childless, the women “who wait too long” or “prioritize careers.”

What unites these campaigns, from Tokyo to Skopje is a fixation on fertility statistics as a proxy for national strength, economy, and an erosion of women’s autonomy. Behind the panic is a dangerous idea: that the female body is a public resource, and motherhood is not a choice, but a duty.

Demographics don’t improve through coercion. Change comes from paid childcare, shared parental leave, affordable housing, and gender equality. Even then, gains may be limited. Engineering reproduction does not work. What can help is to create societies where people can imagine having kids, if they choose to.

A few hours ago (allegedly), history was made at the NATO summit, and this time, with spreadsheets. After months of pressure from President Donald Trump, NATO leaders (except Spain) agreed to ramp up defence spending to 5% of their countries' economic output by 2035. Defence plans worth billions were released, part of a promised overhaul to transform European militaries from “not ready for combat” into forces capable of responding to an age of war.
The U.S. president hailed the summit as a "big success."

Europe had lagged in defence spending for decades. Now it’s leading the charge. Even historically neutral countries are reconsidering old doctrines.

What comes next? Billions in contracts for missiles, vehicles, and surveillance systems. A shopping list of “hard power.”

It would be dishonest to say it’s all unnecessary. The return of war to the continent is no longer theoretical. The threat from Russia is evident, and the American umbrella is increasingly full of holes.

But as Europe retools for conflict, I can’t help but wonder, what else could this money do?

Because if you ask young people in Zagreb or Berlin what worries them most, it isn’t whether their country can intercept a drone. It’s whether they’ll need three jobs to afford one apartment. The young people who marched for climate justice are now wondering whether their cities will be livable.

So what if military investment wasn’t just about new aircraft and drones, but about jobs, infrastructure, and interconnection? Could Europe’s defence boom also lay the foundation for civic renewal?

The idea isn’t new. The last time Europe rebuilt itself with such urgency was also after a war. That reconstruction created alliances and welfare states.

Will that be the case this time?

At the moment, most answers point inward. Germany urgently needs to reinvent its economy, and the defence sector looks like an opportunity. France and Poland are doing the same. But for small countries on the EU’s edge, outside NATO or the EU, the race is already unequal. Billions in defence contracts will likely benefit the usual suspects, big firms, and established suppliers.

But what if these contracts go to small companies in depopulated, rural areas, bringing back jobs and life? Or support large rail and road projects, maybe even in the Balkans, that, at long last, can be journeyed by train? Could cybersecurity investments be tied to universities and local tech hubs, innovation for the climate change fight, turning these efforts into shared infrastructure?

Because if we don't, we risk a dangerous disconnect. Yes, Europe may become better armed. But it won’t necessarily be better held together.

In my world, you learn about the Chatham House Rule very early on. It’s printed on every conference program before every closed-door session. The rule goes back to 1927, as a guideline at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, meant to encourage openness and the free exchange. It states:

"When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed."

It’s frequently used in academic, policy, or diplomatic circles to let people speak candidly.

Not always, but sometimes, this rule truly softens the atmosphere at these meetings. Smart scholars, politicians, former presidents, and generals talk openly about migration, conflicts, and even their voters, whom they often describe as “well-meaning but poorly informed people.”

You hear things that would never make it onto television. Honest doubts, missed opportunities, private regrets, even the occasional sentence that starts, “I probably shouldn’t say this, but…” I’ve heard people passionately defend countries in these meetings that they routinely satanise in public statements. There’s a strange intimacy to these rooms, too. People also laugh more. They lower their guard.

It can be oddly refreshing. You think, if only more people could hear this version of the world.

And then, the door opens and the microphones switch on. And the same speaker who just criticised border fences and warned about the dangers of populism now leans confidently into the camera and declares: “We must protect our borders at all costs.”

Something happens in that short walk between the table and the podium.
Why is that? Why can’t we get more of the real version of these people? Is it cowardice? Or just politics?

After hearing enough of these Jekyll-and-Hyde performances, one begins to wonder if the system was built for this kind of deception. Does it depend on it?

At its core, the Chatham House Rule was designed to foster honest dialogue. And to be fair, these meetings do have value. They create space for nuance, for second thoughts, for ideas still not in the spotlight. But somewhere along the way, they also became sanctuaries for our collective conscience. Places where honesty is expressed but not owned. Where confessions are made not to change anything, but simply to feel better, before doing or saying exactly the opposite in public.

If the only time some of these great minds and policy-savvy people speak openly is when no one can quote them, do we even know who they are? If the Chatham rule room is the only space where politics makes more sense, then what, if anything, is left for democracy outside those walls?

And maybe that’s the real question. Not whether the Rule should change, but why we’ve made truth so unsafe in the open.

After buying Twitter for $44 billion, Musk—father of 12 children—cut parental leave from 20 weeks to two, sparking backlash. It was later adjusted to 16 weeks for birthing parents and seven for others, still a major cut. For comparison, in Sweden, parents get up to 12 months. In fact, the economic challenges of raising children in the U.S. highlight are quite profound. Only 10% of the federal budget supports over 73 million children. A 2024 Childstats report indicated that about 23.6 million young children are at risk of not reaching their developmental potential. The U.S. consistently ranks last among OECD countries in family care.

By 2025, Musk's pet project DOGE, cut funding for Wisconsin's "Head Start" nonprofit, leaving low-income children unsupported. He also halted foreign aid for population stability programs, slashing funds for families, healthcare, and disease prevention. Cuts to MPox and Ebola aid will cost thousands of lives, while defunding contraception and HIV prevention risks millions of preventable deaths, straining struggling governments and deepening disparities.

The irony is glaring. Musk warns of declining birth rates while pushing policies that undermine population growth.

Musk is not interested in supporting happy, healthy families—at home or abroad. The real question is who profits from these policies? By slashing aid, deregulating programs, and labeling them fraudulent, he paves the way for private-sector profit.

From immigration to childcare, deregulation shifts control to corporations. Pension funds and elder care deregulation benefit private schemes in aging societies. Pharma companies stand to gain as budget cuts weaken global health systems, creating demand for costly treatments. His friends, venture capitalists, especially those focused on AI, biotech, and automation, could also see substantial returns as they step in to address the gaps created by a shrinking workforce, while prolonged instability fuels the military industry.

His strategy appears to cater to the interests of the industries in which he has considerable sway—profit corporations. Healthy, thriving families will have to wait. Ultimately, billionaires prioritize one thing above all else: their wealth.

February 2025.

But I can't help but wonder if there could be a silver lining to this drastic shift. After all, haven't we invested billions in exploring alternative funding mechanisms for precisely situations like this? I’ve personally attended countless conferences and round tables on innovative global solutions and met countless consultants crafting compelling reports on successful global initiatives that deliver results. Isn’t this the moment to finally put them into practice?

For example, open science. Open science development has seen rapid growth for many years. There is no better way to preserve expertise and key program insights than by promoting collaborative networks, digitally archiving essential program insights, and building open-access data repositories. Initiatives such as South-South cooperation, where developing countries exchange knowledge and best practices, are essential to this goal.

Where the new money could come from?

Then, of course, there is the question of money. If traditional state-funded models of aid are gone, for the time being, where will the new money come from? Here, the role of the private sector is becoming more significant. Businesses in developing countries thrive only when populations are stable and healthy, making them invested in areas such as disease control, maternal health, and infrastructure development. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, which are already widespread, could increase their commitment when government funding is lacking. More organized collaborations between companies and NGOs could help, too. An even bolder strategy would be to increase impact investing, an approach that aims to create not only financial but also social and environmental gains. Directing just a small portion of these resources into global development programs, like Blue Horizon does, could lead to significant changes.

More Philanthropy please

Philanthropic organizations may now need to take on a more prominent role in mobilizing significant funds for research and crisis response. The establishment of pooled philanthropic funds for large initiatives such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, which blends public and private funding, could be very useful. A similar model could be developed to support cancer research, infectious disease surveillance, and governance-strengthening programs in low-income countries.

Local Ownership

One potentially beneficial outcome of decreasing international aid is the greater chance for local ownership of development projects. Many countries are currently testing community-driven development (CDD) strategies, which transfer decision-making power and financial and technical resources directly to communities. One such program is the Philippines' Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan-Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services (KALAHI-CIDSS) national CDD program. These approaches have shown success in areas such as education, public health, and infrastructure, leading to improved results and enhanced sustainability. Mobilizing domestic resources is another thing to consider. Health taxes on tobacco, alcohol, and sugary beverages can be implemented to reduce the consumption of unhealthy products while filling in the budgets for health programs.

Innovative Financing Mechanisms

A 2012 UNDPA study on innovative financing for a sustainable future includes quite a few interesting ideas, including the Solidarity Levy on Airline Tickets, implemented by several countries. In simple terms, a small surcharge on airline tickets funds global health initiatives. The study also explains the International Finance Facility for Immunisation (IFFIm), an instrument that raises funds by issuing bonds in the capital markets, with long-term donor pledges as collateral, providing immediate resources for immunization programs.

In one of the papers I've come across by the World Bank from 1992, the author analyzed the financial benefits of debt conversion projects, concluding that they provide a valuable opportunity for strengthening institutions. According to this research, countries can also negotiate debt swaps, using Debt Conversion Mechanisms, where external debt is forgiven in exchange for commitments to invest in local health and education projects, effectively redirecting funds to critical sectors. Issuing thematic bonds can also attract investors interested in both financial returns and positive social outcomes. In the first three months of 2023, India tackled part of its funding challenge to achieve the government's net-zero emissions target by issuing their inaugural $2 billion green bond.

Now, there is no doubt that the path forward will be tough as conventional aid systems are being dismantled, but we must not ignore the investment in creative solutions already explored. I’m neither an economist nor an investment banker, but some of these well-researched and proven models seem like a good alternative now. Anything from open science to new models of financing is an opportunity. The future will probably feature a mix of private sector involvement, philanthropic funding, local ownership, and regional leadership from emerging economies. The key is to capitalize on all the good stuff that is out there.