author - oman observer

A story often told in development circles concerns a health programme in Africa. Experts spent years teaching men about nutrition, hygiene and childhood disease. The information was sound. The...

The glacier gave way, and a wall of ice, rock, and mud descended through valleys along the Tibet–Nepal border. Settlements were engulfed, bridges destroyed, and lives swept away. Scientists have...

Ordered by Emperor Hadrian in AD 122, Hadrian's Wall marked the north-western frontier of an empire whose armies had crossed continents. It was not an impregnable barrier, nor was it meant to be....

The world economy is moving from an era in which uncertainty was treated as a temporary disturbance to one in which uncertainty itself has become an economic variable. Markets, companies and...

The defining feature of contemporary geopolitics is no longer power. It is paradox. Wars continue without decisive victories. Allies increasingly compete while rivals quietly cooperate. Migration has...

As we commemorate the 170th anniversary of George Bernard Shaw's birth on July 26, it is worth asking why an Irish playwright should still command the attention of those concerned with...

Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past.” T S Elliot, Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton. Watching a recent adaptation of Homer's...

When war returned to Gaza, and earlier when the Russia–Ukraine conflict erupted into full-scale war, I found myself returning with my GUtech students to the first axiom of our study of culture and...

On the same day, somewhere in the world, three financial transactions take place. A green bond helps finance a solar energy project designed to reduce carbon emissions for the next thirty years. An...

The significance of this week’s Omani Council of Ministers meeting lies less in the individual decisions announced than in what they may reveal about the next phase of policymaking in the Sultanate...

For most of human history, oceans were seen as barriers. Today, they are increasingly understood as connectors, enablers and strategic assets. They regulate the climate, sustain biodiversity, support...

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lord Acton’s warning feels increasingly relevant in an age where unpredictability itself has become a political instrument. What...

Sustainability disclosure is no longer a matter of corporate image or public relations. It is increasingly becoming part of the infrastructure of modern capital markets. Investors today are not...

Many romanticised versions of the emerging world order are now being projected. Yet the reality is more sober. The emerging fracture inside the Western alliance is not a divorce. It is something more...

Watching King Charles III’s speeches at the White House and before Congress, I was reminded of The King’s Speech. The parallel is not exact, but it is revealing. In the film, George VI’s wartime...

Corporate governance is no longer a narrow question of board procedures, formal independence, or disclosure mechanics. Around the world, it is being redefined as part of a larger architecture of...

When this conflict ends, the world will rush to congratulate itself too quickly. There will be familiar statements about restraint, renewed diplomacy and the urgent need for reconstruction. Markets...

The Sultanate of Oman does not suffer from a lack of heritage or cultural assets. It suffers, at times, from lack of structured conversion. If we want our cultural and heritage assets to become...

In an age of fluid alliances and normalised destruction, the burden shifts to responsible states to act together, restore restraint, and bring power back within limits — for no power is omnipotent....

The US-Israeli war on Iran has exposed more than Europe’s diplomatic divisions. It has revealed a deeper structural truth: even when Europe refuses to own Washington’s war, it remains bound to its...